Chapter 6 - ROSES AND RIVALS
The next three weeks were a strange, beautiful fever dream.
I moved into the guest cottage—a sunlit, two-story house nestled in the rose gardens of the estate. For the first time in my life, I had time to paint. I spent my mornings with Arthur, walking through the gardens, painting portraits of him while he told me stories about his late wife. Under my care, his wandering stopped. His anxiety melted away.
He started calling me his "little rose."
And then there was Julian.
He was a ghost who appeared in the margins of my days. I would see his convoy of black SUVs leaving at dawn and returning late at night. Sometimes, I would find him sitting on the patio late at night, smoking a cigar, his tie loosened, looking exhausted under the moonlight.
One evening, I brought him a cup of chamomile tea while he sat staring at a pile of financial ledgers.
"You look terrible," I said softly, setting the cup on the iron table.
Julian let out a dry, breathy laugh, rubbing his temples. "Thank you, Chloe. Your honesty is always a comfort."
"Trouble at work?"
"The Marcone family," Julian said, his eyes darkening as he took the tea. "They are squeezing our supply lines in the West Loop. Dominic Marcone wants a war. He thinks because my father is sick, the Rossi family is weak."
"Are you weak?" I asked, sitting across from him.
Julian looked up at me, his gray eyes flashing with a dangerous, dark light that sent a thrill down my spine. "What do you think?"
"I think you're holding a mountain on your shoulders," I said softly. "And you don't let anyone see how heavy it is."
Julian froze. He stared at me, his gaze softening into something deep, raw, and terrifyingly intimate. He reached across the small table and cupped my cheek with his hand. His thumb gently brushed against my lip.
"You see too much, little rose," he whispered.
Before I could answer, the silence was shattered by the sound of glass breaking in the main house.
May you like
A horn blared across the courtyard. Red emergency lights began flashing along the perimeter walls.
"Stay down!" Julian yelled, pulling a gun from his holster instantly and shoving me behind the iron table just as a spray of automatic gunfire tore through the glass windows of the patio!
