Chapter 2 - One Hundred Seven Nights“I need you.”
The words remained between us, heavier than the rain striking the kitchen window.
Raphael Orsini did not plead. Men like him threatened, negotiated, or commanded. They did not sit drunk in a servants’ kitchen at two in the morning and admit they needed anyone.
Especially not the woman who washed their coffee cups.
I folded my arms over my robe.
“You don’t know me.”
“I know enough.”
“You know how I take your breakfast tray upstairs. You know I work the east wing and study after everyone sleeps.”
“I know you leave every Wednesday at four-thirty to visit your brother.”
My pulse changed.
Raphael’s eyes dropped to the photograph I had carried from my room without realizing it. Micah smiled from inside the cheap wooden frame, one hand resting on a chess piece.
“I know his name is Micah,” Raphael continued. “I know he has an autoimmune disorder that attacks his lungs. I know the treatment center threatened to remove him from the program three months ago when your insurance authorization was delayed.”
I placed the photograph facedown.
“You investigated me.”
“I investigate everyone who lives beneath my roof.”
“That doesn’t make it less invasive.”
“No.”
His immediate agreement unsettled me more than an excuse would have.
Raphael finally drank the water. His hand was steady now, but his face was not. Something behind his expression had begun to break through the whiskey.
“You said one hundred seven nights,” I reminded him.
His fingers stopped around the glass.
For several seconds, only the pipes answered.
Then he looked toward the servants’ stairs.
“There’s a space beneath them.”
“I know.”
“Can anyone see it from the corridor?”
“Not unless they open the maintenance panel.”
“Take me there.”
“You still haven’t answered.”
His jaw tightened.
“I will.”
“When?”
“When the cameras go dark.”
A cold sensation moved over my skin.
“What cameras?”
Raphael stood too quickly. The chair scraped backward, and I caught his forearm before he lost his balance.
His body went still beneath my hand.
So did mine.
Through the wet sleeve of his shirt, I felt heat, muscle, and the rapid beat of his pulse. He looked down at my fingers as though physical contact had become something dangerous.
I released him.
“Sit.”
“There isn’t time.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m less drunk than I was pretending to be.”
My breath caught.
Raphael reached inside his coat and removed a small black device no larger than a matchbox.
A green light blinked once.
Then red.
“The security system cycles every night at two-seventeen,” he said. “For ninety seconds, the east wing cameras switch to backup power.”
I looked at the clock above the stove.
2:16.
“You planned this.”
“I planned to reach the secondary kitchen unseen.”
“You planned to knock on my door?”
“No.”
For the first time that night, genuine shame entered his face.
“That was the part I couldn’t control.”
The clock changed.
2:17.
Every light in the kitchen flickered.
Raphael seized my hand.
“Now.”
We moved through the door and into the dark corridor.
His grip was firm, no longer uncertain. The drunken man had vanished, leaving behind the Raphael Orsini whose name caused judges to lower their voices.
He counted beneath his breath as we crossed the hall.
“Eighty-three.”
“What?”
“Seconds.”
We reached the narrow door beside the servants’ staircase. I unlocked it with the ring of staff keys hanging from my robe.
Inside was a cramped storage space filled with folded chairs, cleaning supplies, and boxes of old table linens.
At the back, a wooden panel separated the room from the hollow space beneath the stairs.
Raphael pulled the panel open.
“Get inside,” I whispered.
He stared at me.
“You first.”
“This is my hiding place.”
“That doesn’t make it safe.”
“You’re the one who asked me to hide you.”
“And I’m the one who knows what happens to people who stand between me and whoever is watching this house.”
The overhead lights returned.
A soft electronic click sounded from the corridor.
The cameras were active again.
Then footsteps approached.
Raphael moved behind the panel and pulled me with him.
The space was barely wide enough for one person. With two, my back pressed against the wall while his chest hovered inches from mine. His coat surrounded us with the scent of rain and cedar.
The kitchen door opened.
“Someone was in here.”
The voice belonged to Damian Cross, Raphael’s chief adviser.
I had seen Damian every morning outside the study. He wore dark suits, spoke quietly, and never entered a room without knowing where every exit was.
A second voice answered.
Marco Bellini, head of estate security.
“The motion sensor triggered during the reset.”
“Search the corridor.”
A flashlight beam passed through the cracks in the panel.
Raphael’s face hardened.
His mouth moved near my ear.
“Do not make a sound.”
The footsteps entered the storage room.
A chair shifted.
A box scraped across the floor.
My heart struck so hard I was certain Damian could hear it through the wall.
Then my phone began vibrating inside my robe.
Micah’s treatment center.
I froze.
The vibration stopped.
Three seconds later, it began again.
Damian moved closer.
Raphael reached slowly between us and pressed his hand over the pocket containing my phone.
His palm rested against my hip.
Neither of us breathed.
The light paused at the edge of the panel.
“Mr. Orsini’s vehicle returned at one-fifty-eight,” Marco said. “He wasn’t inside.”
“I know.”
Raphael’s expression changed.
Damian continued.
“His driver was unconscious. There was blood in the back seat.”
My stomach tightened.
“What happened?” Marco asked.
“That is what we need Raphael to explain before his uncle arrives.”
Raphael leaned closer to the crack.
“Vittorio is coming here?”
“His plane landed twelve minutes ago.”
The room fell silent.
Then Damian spoke again, his tone lower.
“Find Raphael before Vittorio does. If he tells anyone what happened tonight, the Orsini family will have a new leader by sunrise.”
The men left.
The kitchen door closed.
For several seconds, Raphael remained motionless.
Then he stepped back from me.
The space beneath the stairs seemed colder.
“Who is Vittorio?” I whispered.
“My father’s brother.”
“What happened in your car?”
Raphael’s gaze dropped to the cut on his lip.
“I found the man who murdered my wife.”
I stared at him.
Everyone in the estate knew Raphael’s wife, Cecilia, had died in a car accident three years earlier. Her photograph still stood in the west gallery. No one touched it. No one spoke her name.
Raphael reached into his coat again.
This time, he removed a folded photograph.
A woman lay unconscious on a warehouse floor. Her wrists were bound. A digital date glowed in the corner.
Tonight’s date.
My skin went numb.
“That isn’t your wife,” I said.
“No.”
“Then who is she?”
Raphael looked at me with a terror I had not believed he was capable of feeling.
“My daughter’s nurse.”
“I thought your daughter died with Cecilia.”
“So did I.”
He turned the photograph over.
Two words had been written across the back in black ink.
ASK ELENA.
My name.
Raphael watched my face.
“One hundred seven nights ago,” he said, “someone left the first photograph on my desk.”
My voice barely worked.
“Why would it have my name?”
“That is what I came here to ask you.”
A car door slammed in the courtyard.
Then another.
Through the cracks in the panel, black headlights swept across the kitchen wall.
Raphael folded the photograph into my palm.
“Vittorio is here.”
May you like
From the corridor came the heavy sound of the mansion’s front doors opening.
And beneath the stairs, hidden in darkness with the most dangerous man in Chicago, I realized someone had spent one hundred seven nights leading Raphael Orsini directly to me.
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