Chapter 6 - A Cold Shield
I stepped forward into the harsh yellow glow of the hanging bulb. My uniform was torn, my shoulder throbbing with dull, rhythmic fire, but I refused to cower.
Julian glared at me, his lip curling with aristocratic disgust even in defeat. “You’re listening to a cellar maid, Dante? She’s nothing! A peasant who cleans grease off your floors! My family offered you half the Atlantic shipping lines, and you throw it away for a nobody who carries her weight like a draft horse?”
Dante’s hand moved faster than thought.
He grabbed Julian by the throat, hoisting the chair off its front two legs with one arm. The veins in Dante’s forearm bulged like steel cables.
“You will address her,” Dante snarled, his voice vibrating with a primal, lethal fury, “as the future mistress of this house.”
Julian’s eyes bulged. He choked, clawing at Dante’s iron fingers. “What...?”
I froze. The cold cellar air seemed to vanish entirely from my lungs. *Future mistress?*
“Mikhail,” Dante said, not breaking eye contact with Julian. “Bring Camila down.”
“No!” Julian wheezed, panic spiking in his voice. “Leave her out of this! She didn't know about the poison! I swear on our mother’s grave, she didn't know!”
“She struck Clara with a weapon,” Dante said, his voice dropping into that terrifyingly quiet register that meant someone was about to die. “In my presence. Under my protection. That makes her guilty of treason against my blood.”
The iron door creaked open again. Two guards dragged Camila into the vault.
Her lavish designer gown was torn at the hem, her hair a wild, tangled mess, and her manicured hands were bound tightly behind her back with industrial zip-ties. When she saw Julian tied to the chair, covered in blood, she let out a shriek that echoed off the damp stone.
“Julian! Oh God, Julian!” She fell to her knees on the filthy concrete, turning her tear-streaked face up to Dante. “Dante, please! I beg you! Have mercy! We grew up together!”
“Mercy is a transaction,” Dante replied, releasing Julian’s throat and letting the chair slam back down onto the floor. “You offered none to Clara when she broke the bottle that saved my life. Why should I offer it to you?”
Camila turned her frantic, hateful glare toward me. Even on her knees, stripped of her pride, the poison in her soul couldn't be contained.
“You!” she hissed, venom dripping from every syllable. “You manipulated him! Look at you! You’re disgusting! You think he wants you? He’s using you to punish me! A man like Dante Moretti doesn't love fat, broken things—he discards them!”
I took a slow, deliberate step toward her.
For months, I had shrunk into the shadows whenever she walked past. For months, I had endured her snide remarks about my uniform size, her deliberate spilling of coffee on my freshly mopped floors, her casual cruelty that treated me like furniture.
I stopped two feet from where she knelt.
“You’re wrong, Miss Sterling,” I said, my voice echoing steady, calm, and clear through the vault. “I’m not broken. I survived five years of dock fires, syndicate wars, and cellar labor. You couldn't survive twenty minutes without your father’s checkbook and your diamond earrings.”
Camila’s jaw trembled, rage rendering her speechless.
Dante stepped up beside me. He didn't hesitate. In front of his men, in front of the Sterlings, he placed his large, scarred hand firmly on the small of my back, pulling me possessively against his side.
“Mikhail,” Dante commanded. “Strip them of all Sterling family assets. Hand the shipping codes to our port captains. Then put them on a cargo freighter bound for South America with five hundred dollars each in their pockets. If either of them ever steps foot on North American soil again... shoot them on sight.”
Camila screamed as the guards dragged her backward out of the vault, her brother sobbing beside her as the iron door clanged shut, sealing their fate forever.
Silence descended upon the cold stone chamber.
I looked up at Dante. “You said... the future mistress of this house. Why did you say that?”
Dante looked down at me, his thumb tracing the curve of my hip through the coarse gray fabric of my uniform.
May you like
“Because, Clara,” he said, his voice softer than I had ever heard it, “I never lie to my enemies. And I certainly don't lie to my queen.”
***
