Chapter 3 - The Contract of Blood and Milk
The silence returned to the nursery, heavier now, filled only by the soft, clicking sounds of the baby nursing and the rhythmic hum of the medical equipment.
Dante pulled the leather armchair closer—the one Odalys had been sleeping in—and sat down. He rested his forearms on his knees, his hands clasped together, staring at Wren with an intensity that felt like a physical weight. Up close, without the shadows of the hallway, he could see the truth of her. She wasn't an assassin. She was a wreck.
Her uniform was frayed at the cuffs. The skin around her eyes was bruised with exhaustion, and her lips were bitten raw. There was a desperate, trapped-animal terror in her posture that he recognized instantly—it was the exact same look he saw in the mirror every morning when he woke up to a bed that was half-empty.
"How long have you been leaking through your uniform?" Dante asked abruptly.
Wren flushed scarlet, a hot, mortified wave spreading from her collarbone up to her hairline. She instinctively tried to pull her collar higher, though her hands were occupied holding the baby. "I... I bought bandages. I bound myself tightly, Mr. Salerno. I didn't mean to—I didn't think anyone would notice—"
"Why didn't your own child drink that?" Dante interrupted, his tone devoid of cruelty, driven purely by a cold, investigative logic.
Wren stopped breathing. The memory of the hospital room—the sterile white lights, the weight of a stillborn daughter, the cruel joke of her body producing milk for a baby who would never cry—slammed into her with the force of a physical blow. A single tear broke free, tracking down her cheek and landing softly on Nico's blanket.
"She was stillborn," Wren whispered, the words tearing out of her throat like broken glass. "Three weeks ago. My ex-boyfriend... he pushed me down the stairs. She didn't make it."
Dante went completely still.
The air in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. The mafia boss who had dismantled a rival syndicate over a car bomb suddenly looked entirely human, yet infinitely more terrifying. The lines around his mouth deepened. He knew about violence. He knew about men who hurt women and children. That was his world—a world of retribution and blood.
"His name?" Dante asked. The words were quiet, almost casual, but they carried the unmistakable death sentence of a man who had just added another name to his ledger.
"He's nothing," Wren shook her head frantically, tears spilling over now. "Please, Mr. Salerno. Don't. Just let me feed your son. That's all I want. I don't want trouble. I just... when I heard him crying, my body just reacted. I couldn't stop myself. You can fire me tomorrow. You can throw me out on the street. Just let him finish this feeding."
Dante watched her for a long, agonizing moment. He reached out slowly—so slowly that Wren didn't flinch—and brushed a stray lock of dark hair away from his son's forehead. Nico’s tiny hand, translucent and fragile, suddenly reached up and curled its fingers around Dante’s index finger.
It was the first time the boy had gripped his father's finger in weeks. Usually, Nico was too weak, too limp, too detached from the world to respond to touch.
Dante looked down at that tiny fist wrapped around his finger, then up at Wren’s face. The calculus of his life shifted in an instant.
"You aren't going anywhere," Dante said, his voice hard as iron.
May you like
Wren froze. "Mr. Salerno—"
"Listen to me carefully, Wren Castillo," Dante said, leaning forward until he was only inches away. "My son lives because of you. That makes you the most important person in this fortress. Starting tonight, you are no longer a maid."
