Chapter 6 - Blood on the Marble
The forensic results came back at 11:30 p.m.
Dr. Silas confirmed it personally: the almond cream had been laced with enough concentrated oleandrin to stop the hearts of three grown men.
Julian Marquetti was currently locked in the cellar interrogation room beneath the stables, singing like a canary under the supervision of Rhett’s top enforcers. He had confessed to everything: the poisoned Glendronach, the bribe paid to Frank Corsi to delay medical response, and the secret alliance with Sofia Bellini to seize control of the northeast distribution corridors.
Sofia had been stripped of her phone, locked in the west wing guest suite with two armed guards outside her door, awaiting her father’s arrival from Boston to negotiate her fate.
Yet, despite the victory, Winnie could not sleep.
Her new suite on the second floor was quiet, but the silence felt razor-sharp. She sat on the edge of the lavish bed in her oversized gray sweater and leggings, staring at the locked oak door that connected her room to Rhett’s master quarters.
Rhett had had his shattered bedroom door replaced that afternoon with a temporary reinforced steel fire door until custom wood could be milled. He was inside, working through the mountain of evidence Julian’s betrayal had unearthed.
At 1:15 a.m., the estate’s power cut out.
The humming air filtration clicked off. The bedside lamp died. The room plunged into impenetrable, suffocating blackness.
Winnie jumped to her feet.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. In this house, power outages didn't happen by accident. The estate possessed three separate diesel backup generators designed to kick on within four seconds of a grid failure.
Five seconds passed.
Ten seconds.
The generators didn't start.
A faint, metallic click sounded from the exterior balcony doors of her bedroom—the French doors that overlooked the terrace garden.
Winnie’s breath froze in her throat.
She didn't scream. Screaming wasted oxygen. Instead, she dropped silently to a crouch, her bare feet navigating the thick wool rug by memory.
Julian had confessed, but Julian wasn't the only player on the board. Sofia Bellini had two personal bodyguards who had arrived with her that afternoon—men loyal to the Boston syndicate, men who knew that if Winnie Doyle took the stand before the syndicate commission, Sofia would spend the rest of her life in an upstate prison or a shallow grave.
The balcony latch clicked open.
A draft of freezing ocean air swept into the bedroom, carrying the smell of wet earth and gun oil.
A tall, broad silhouette slipped through the curtains. In the dim, ambient glow of the moonlight breaking through the clouds, Winnie saw the silhouette of a suppressed automatic pistol held low in the intruder’s right hand.
The assassin moved toward the bed with silent, practiced steps. He raised the weapon, leveling it at the lump of pillows beneath the duvet.
*Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.*
Three muffled rounds tore through the mattress, feathers bursting into the dark air.
Winnie didn't wait.
She wasn't a trained killer, but she had grown up in the rough streets of Olneyville, where survival was a game of dirty leverage.
On the bathroom vanity three feet behind her sat an industrial bottle of concentrated ammonia-based glass cleaner and a heavy porcelain water pitcher she had filled before bed.
She grabbed the heavy pitcher by its handle, stepped out from the shadows of the bathroom threshold, and brought it down with all the strength in her shoulders directly onto the back of the assassin’s head.
*SMASH.*
The heavy porcelain shattered violently. The man grunted, staggering forward into the bed frame, his scalp splitting open. But he was huge—nearly Rhett’s size—and the blow didn't drop him.
He spun around, cursing in Italian, blood streaming down his neck, leveling the suppressed pistol directly at Winnie’s chest.
Winnie thrust the spray bottle forward and held down the trigger, blasting a continuous stream of pure ammonia concentrate directly into his wide, dilated eyes.
The assassin let out a wet, strangled howl of agony as the chemicals burned his corneas. He fired blindly into the dark.
*CRACK.*
A bullet splintered the bathroom doorframe two inches from Winnie’s ear.
The assassin lunged forward, swinging his massive forearm like a club. The blow caught Winnie across the shoulder, knocking her off her feet. She hit the hardwood edge of the rug hard, the breath driven out of her lungs in a painful gasp.
The man dropped to his knees over her, his blind, chemical-burned eyes weeping blood and mucus, his heavy hands reaching for her throat to crush her windpipe.
“You dead little whore—” he snarled.
*BANG.*
The connecting door to Rhett’s master bedroom blew open with the force of an artillery strike.
Rhett Marquetti stood in the threshold. He held a customized .45 caliber Kimber 1911 in a two-handed grip. Even in the moonlight, his face looked like an archangel of death—raw, terrifying, and utterly devoid of mercy.
Rhett didn't shout a warning. He fired twice.
The heavy .45 rounds struck the assassin in the chest and neck, the kinetic impact lifting the two-hundred-pound man off Winnie and throwing his limp body across the floor. The assassin hit the wall with a wet thud and didn't move again.
Gunpowder smoke filled the dark bedroom, sharp and biting.
Rhett lowered the weapon, stepped over the dead man without looking at him, and dropped to his knees beside Winnie.
His hands—usually so steady, so lethal—were shaking as he reached for her. He pulled her up into his chest, his arms wrapping around her like bands of forged steel, holding her so tightly she could feel the frantic, wild hammering of his heart against her cheek.
“Winnie,” he whispered, his voice cracking with a terror he had never shown to any mafia don or federal prosecutor. “Winnie, look at me. Are you hit? Did he shoot you?”
Winnie gasped for air, her fingers sinking into the soft fabric of his dark shirt, clutching him with equal desperation. Her shoulder throbbed with a dull, burning ache, and her ears were ringing from the gunfire, but she shook her head.
“I’m okay,” she choked out, her voice trembling. “I got him with the ammonia... I broke the pitcher...”
Rhett buried his face in the curve of her neck, inhaling the sweet, simple scent of her soap and the citrus tang of her skin. A low, guttural shudder ran through his massive frame.
“He was Bellini’s cleaner,” Rhett rasped against her skin. “He cut the perimeter line. He came for you because you’re my shield. If I lost you tonight...” He stopped, unable to speak the words.
Winnie pulled back slightly, her hazel eyes meeting his in the moonlight. Rhett’s face was inches from hers, stripped of all arrogance, all power, leaving behind only the raw, bleeding truth of a man who had realized he could not live without the woman in his arms.
Rhett cupped her cheeks, his thumbs gently wiping away the flecks of shattered porcelain and dust from her skin.
“You’re not sleeping in this room anymore,” Rhett murmured, his voice thick with raw emotion.
“Rhett, I don't need—”
“My bed,” Rhett said, his voice leaving no room for argument, yet filled with an aching gentleness. “From tonight on, you sleep beside me. Where I can see you breathe. Where anyone who wants to touch a single hair on your head has to climb over my dead body first.”
Before Winnie could answer, Rhett leaned down and captured her mouth with his.
May you like
The kiss was fierce, desperate, and hungry—a collision of relief and long-simmering desire that sent a shockwave of liquid fire straight down Winnie’s spine. Winnie moaned softly, her arms circling his broad neck, pulling him closer as she melted against his strength, surrendering to the dangerous, beautiful storm of Rhett Marquetti.
***
