Chapter 2 - The Secret Under the Desk
"Because bills don't care about your resume," Avery answered quietly, tossing the bloody gloves into a biohazard bag Dr. Harris had brought from his car. She didn't look back at the doctor. She didn't look at Dominic Kane, who was still sitting in the leather chair across the room, watching her with that unreadable, dark intensity.
Instead, Avery picked up her bucket and mop.
The medical emergency was over. The wounded men were stabilized, transferred to private safe houses or hidden clinic beds across Chicago. But the mansion was a battlefield of crimson stains, shattered glass, and torn medical supplies.
So Avery went back to being the maid.
She scrubbed the white marble foyer until her hands turned red and raw from bleach and icy water. She disinfected the leather chairs. She picked up every stray piece of gauze, every forgotten needle cap, every scrap of cloth. Hour after hour passed, the clock in the grand hall chiming away the morning, then the afternoon, then the fading light of dusk.
Her knees ached. Her lower back throbbed with a dull, burning fire. She hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours. She hadn't slept in thirty. But whenever she tried to stop, the image of her brother’s unpaid debt flared in her mind. Fifty-three days. Just fifty-three days, and she would be free.
By nine o'clock that evening, only Dominic’s private study remained.
The heavy mahogany doors were unlocked. Blood was smeared across the Persian rug where Dominic had collapsed against his desk before Dr. Harris treated his shoulder wound. Glass from a shattered whiskey bottle littered the hardwood floor.
Avery dropped to her knees, glass scraper in hand.
Just finish the study, she told herself, her vision blurring at the edges. Just clear the glass.
Her fingers trembled as she reached beneath the shadow of the heavy carved desk. Her fingertips brushed against cold glass, then wrapped around something else—something solid, small, and wrapped in heavy oilskin paper.
She pulled it out, her thumb catching on the wax seal.
It was a small, worn leather ledger. On the cover, in gold foil, were her father's initials: C.C. — Charles Collins.
Avery’s heart stopped. Her father had been an accountant for a local shipping firm before he passed away ten years ago. Why was his personal ledger under Dominic Kane’s desk?
She went to open it, but her body betrayed her. The room swayed violently. The heavy desk seemed to slide upward. Darkness rushed in from the corners of her eyes, and before she could take another breath, Avery’s hand closed tightly around the ledger as she slumped forward onto the cold floor.
She never felt the door open.
She never saw Dominic Kane walk in, his shoulder heavily bandaged under a dark velvet robe.
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When Dominic saw her collapsed beneath his desk—so small, so completely exhausted, still clutching the book—something inside the cold, ruthless boss of Chicago shifted forever. He didn't call a guard. He didn't call a servant.
Ignoring the sharp, searing pain in his shoulder, Dominic knelt down, slid his large arms beneath her soft frame, and lifted Avery Collins off the floor as if she weighed nothing at all.
