Chapter 6 - A Shadow Behind the Curtains
The silence inside the Great Hall was suffocating.
Carmine Moretti’s face flushed a deep, mottled crimson. His fingers locked so violently around his gold-handled cane that the knuckles turned white. Behind him, three North Side capos reached instinctively toward the lapels of their jackets.
Across the room, thirty Marchetti guards mirrored the motion, the metallic snick-clack of chambered rounds echoing against the vaulted limestone rafters like cracking bones.
Elias did not flinch. Underneath the cashmere blanket, his thighs were coiled iron, ready to spring, but his upper body remained leisurely, almost bored. His large hand reached out, catching Maeve’s wrist where she rested it upon his chair. He didn't pull her back. He simply held her pulse point, feeling the rabbit-fast thrum of her blood.
Terrified to her marrow, Elias noted, his eyes narrowing with dark admiration. Yet she did not take a single step back.
“Sit down, Carmine,” Elias said, his voice quiet, almost conversational, yet possessing a resonant bass that effortlessly cut through the tension. “You are sixty-one years old. Raising your blood pressure before the first course is bad for your ticker.”
Carmine let out a ragged, trembling exhale. He looked at Maeve, his eyes promising slow, unspeakable violence, then looked back at Elias.
“You’ve got a sharp-tongued bitch beside you, Marchetti,” Carmine spat, pulling out a heavy walnut chair halfway down the table and scraping it loudly against the stone floor. “Let’s see if her tongue stays that sharp when the shipping manifests for the Calumet River turn up empty next week.”
“The river runs where I tell it to run,” Elias replied calmly. He raised two fingers. “Gabriel. Serve the wine.”
Dinner was an agonizing pantomime of civility draped over a minefield. Waiters in white gloves moved between the capos, pouring vintage Barolo and serving dry-aged beef that smelled rich and savory, though Maeve felt as if swallowing a single bite would make her vomit.
Beside her, Elias ate sparingly, using his left hand while keeping his right hand resting flat on the mahogany armrest. Several times, under the guise of passing the salt or reaching for his water glass, his fingers brushed against hers. Each contact sent a jolt of heat through Maeve’s skin, a dizzying reminder that the man beside her was lethal, observant, and watching her far more closely than he watched his rivals.
At the other end of the table, Vincent Russo—the younger, sharper Don of the South Side docks—kept his dark eyes trained on Maeve.
“You’ve changed since the winter gala at the Drake, Miss Ashford,” Russo remarked smoothly between cuts of his steak. “Back then, you couldn't bear the mention of firearms. Tonight, you speak like a woman who sleeps with an open cylinder under her pillow.”
Maeve swallowed a sip of water, feeling Elias’s gaze drill into the side of her temple.
“A woman’s perspective changes, Don Russo,” Maeve answered, her voice cool and steady, “when she realizes that civilized men are merely an illusion invented by men who lack the stomach to rule.”
A low, appreciative murmur rippled through the Marchetti captains standing along the perimeter. Salvatore, leaning against a stone archway near the back, cracked a wide, tobacco-stained grin.
Elias reached down, picked up his crystal tumbler, and took a slow sip. He leaned slightly toward Maeve, his lips brushing near her temple, pretending to whisper an affectionate word.
“Careful, little bird,” his deep voice rumbled against her skin, vibrating with dark amusement. “If you play the mafia queen too well, I might decide you are far too dangerous to ever let out of this house.”
Maeve’s breath hitched, but before she could formulate a retort, the massive oak doors at the back of the hall groaned open once more.
A breathless Marchetti sentry hurried down the runner, leaning over Gabriel’s shoulder to whisper in his ear. Gabriel’s unreadable face darkened. He immediately stepped toward the head of the table, bending down between Elias and Maeve.
“Boss,” Gabriel murmured, his voice so quiet only the three of them could hear. “An uninvited guest just forced her way through the front gate checkpoint. Claimed she was family.”
Maeve’s heart dropped like a stone into an abyss.
Through the tall archway leading into the foyer, the sharp, frantic clicking of stiletto heels echoed on the marble.
May you like
A woman burst past two flustered guards into the entrance of the Great Hall. She was wrapped in an emerald-green fur coat, her blonde hair slightly disheveled from the wind, her chest heaving with theatrical fury.
It was Sienna Ashford.
