Chapter 4 - The Shadow in Red Socks
Isabella froze at the safe, her hands inside the metal cavity, her fingers wrapped around the heavy black encryption drive.
She turned her head sharply toward the open doorway. "What was that?" she muttered to herself, her voice laced with sudden venom.
Dominic listened through the deep silence of the house.
He knew that chime. He knew every scratch on its metal tubes.
Norah had woken up.
Downstairs, the three-year-old girl had slid out of her small bed. Her mother, exhausted from twelve hours of deep-cleaning the estate's marble foyer, was fast asleep in the inner room. Norah was thirsty. She wanted her tin cup of water from the brass filter tap in the butler's pantry.
Pad... pad... pad...
Small, sock-covered feet padded up the grand carpeted staircase. Norah wasn't supposed to go upstairs at night, but she had lost Bo. She thought she had left her brown bear on the velvet sofa in Mr. Dom’s quiet reading room.
In the library, Isabella hastily stuffed the flash drive into the deep pocket of her silk robe. She didn't close the safe door; she stepped quickly toward the hall to see what was moving.
Before she reached the archway, a tiny figure stepped into the soft yellow light of the library lamp.
Norah stood in the doorway. She was wearing her oversized flannel nightgown, her hair a messy cloud of dark curls, her left foot sporting a bright red wool sock, her right foot bare—she had lost the other sock somewhere under her bed. In her small hands, she held her dented tin cup, clutching it to her chest like a shield.
She stopped. Her big brown eyes looked at Isabella. Then her eyes drifted down to the floor.
She saw Dominic lying motionless on the Persian rug beside the spilled glass.
"Mr. Dom?" Norah squeaked softly.
Isabella hissed through her teeth. She took three fast steps toward the child, grabbing Norah roughly by her upper arm. Her long, manicured nails dug into the little girl's flannel sleeve.
"What are you doing up here, you little rat?" Isabella whispered harshly, shaking the child violently. "Get back downstairs to your mother's quarters! Now!"
Norah didn't cry. Her eyes went wide with terror, but she didn't make a sound. She was a child born into a house of quiet men; she knew that loud noises meant trouble.
"Mr. Dom is sleeping on the floor," Norah whimpered, her tiny voice trembling. "He looks cold."
"He's dead, you stupid brat," Isabella spat quietly, her mask completely slipping away, revealing the cruel, frantic woman beneath. "And if you don't turn around and crawl back to your hole right now, I'll make sure you and your pathetic mother end up in the river with him."
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She raised her hand to strike the child across the face—to silence her before she could run down the hall.
On the floor, Dominic’s heart rate shot from thirty-four to one hundred and eighty in a fraction of a second. The cardiac drug was instantly burned out by a torrential surge of pure, unadulterated rage.
