Chapter 2 - THE MONSTER IN THE NORTH WING
My first night in the Vale mansion felt like sleeping inside an iron vault.
I was given a small, elegant maid's room on the second floor, just across the hall from Noah’s nursery. The room smelled faintly of lavender and old paper, but no amount of luxury could erase the suffocating feeling that the walls themselves were listening.
At 2:00 AM, the screaming started.
It wasn't the crying of a tired child. It was a high, frantic shriek of pure, unadulterated terror that sliced through the dark quiet of the house like a straight razor.
I bolted awake, my side throbbing painfully as I threw on my robe and ran across the hallway.
The door to Noah’s room was wide open. Outside in the dim corridor stood two night guards in dark suits, their hands resting on their holstered weapons, looking stressed and helpless.
"He's at it again," one of them muttered under his breath. "Boss said we can't go in."
I ignored them, stepping through the doorway and closing the heavy mahogany door firmly behind me.
The nursery was massive, filled with expensive custom-made wooden toys, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, and a hand-painted mural of an enchanted forest. But the room was completely wrecked. Books were scattered across the plush Persian rug, a hand-carved rocking horse had been overturned, and lamps lay smashed against the baseboards.
In the farthest corner of the room, wedged into the narrow gap behind a heavy oak wardrobe, sat Noah.
He had wrapped his arms tightly around his legs, pulling his knees up to his chin. He was rocking violently back and forth, his eyes wide and wild, staring fixatedly at the heavy velvet curtains covering the north window.
"Noah?" I called softly, keeping my distance.
He didn't look at me. "The man," he gasped, his voice cracked and horse from screaming. "The man with the silver fingers... he's in the wall."
My chest tightened. Mrs. Hargrove had explicitly warned me earlier: Noah hasn't spoken a full coherent sentence since the night his mother died. Yet here he was, whispering about a man in the wall.
"There's no one here, sweetie," I said gently, taking one slow step toward him.
"HE IS!" Noah shrieked, slamming his head back against the wardrobe. "He came through the glass! He made Mommy sleep!"
The air in the room instantly turned ice cold.
I stopped. The official police report—which I had read on my phone earlier that evening—stated that Julianna Vale had been killed in a drive-by ambush on Interstate 90 while riding in her armored SUV. The police had claimed it was a rival mob hit executed by the Moretti syndicate out of South Chicago.
If Julianna had been killed on the highway... why was her four-year-old son talking about a man coming through the glass in his nursery?
Before I could process the thought, the door swung open behind me.
Dominic stood in the threshold. He had stripped off his suit jacket, wearing only a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing dark tattoo sleeves wrapping around his muscular wrists. His dark hair was slightly messy, and his gray eyes swept the room with lethal intensity.
"What did he say?" Dominic demanded, his voice dropping into a dangerous whisper.
Noah immediately clamped his mouth shut, curling into an even tighter ball behind the wardrobe, hiding his head entirely.
I turned to face Dominic, placing myself subtly between the mob boss and his terrified child.
"He had a night terror, Mr. Vale," I lied smoothly, keeping my face completely expressionless. "He was frightened by the storm outside."
Dominic stepped into the room, his long strides taking him directly toward the corner. "He was talking, Clara. I heard his voice from the hallway. What did he say about his mother?"
"Nothing," I insisted, standing my ground as Dominic loomed over me. "He was just crying for her. He needs sleep. You coming in here with that look on your face is only making it worse."
Dominic stared down at me. The aura of violence radiating off him was almost physical—a heavy, electric pressure that made my skin prickle. He reached out, his long, calloused fingers gripping my chin, tilting my face upward into the moonlight filtering through the window.
"If you lie to me, Clara," he whispered, his thumb resting against the pulse point on my jaw, which was pounding wildly, "you won't just lose your job. Do you understand me?"
"I understand," I breathed, looking straight into his cold gray eyes without flinching. "Now get out of his room."
For a second, I thought he was going to kill me.
Instead, Dominic’s chest rose and fell in a slow, heavy breath. His eyes traveled from my face down to my side, where a faint dark stain of blood was seeping through my white shirt—my stitches from the bronze statue incident had re-opened.
He released my chin.
"Mrs. Hargrove will bring you medical supplies," Dominic said coldly, turning toward the door. "If he screams again, call the guards."
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"I won't need to," I replied.
Dominic paused at the doorway, looking back over his shoulder through the shadows. "You have more spine than any woman I’ve met in five years, Clara Reed. It’s a shame it’s going to get you hurt."
