Chapter 3 - Unraveling the Network
As the heavy oak door clicked shut behind Marco and a weeping Ray Miller, the study fell into a profound, suffocating silence.
I stood near the fireplace, the heat warming my freezing skin, though I was still wrapped in Dante's oversized charcoal robe. My hands trembled as I gripped the thick wool around my collar.
"You didn't have to do that," I whispered. "Ray is connected to the county commissioners. If you touch him, his associates—"
"His associates answer to people who answer to me," Dante interrupted, pouring a second glass of whiskey and walking over to hand it to me. "Drink it. It stops the shaking."
I took the glass, my fingers brushing his. His hands were steady, warm, and completely unfazed by the storm he had just unleashed. "Why? I'm just a maid from a roadside diner who wandered into your private pool by accident."
"It wasn't an accident," Dante said quietly, leaning against the stone mantelpiece. "Nothing on this estate happens by accident. You were running from him, weren't you?"
The dam broke. For three years, I had kept my head down, working sixty-hour weeks at the diner, handing over my paychecks to cover debts my deadbeat uncle had left behind, enduring Ray’s violent threats because I had no family left to protect me.
"He said if I ever tried to leave, he would burn the diner down and frame my cousin for embezzlement," I said, the words spilling out in a jagged rush. "I came up here tonight just to breathe for forty-eight hours. I didn't know the gate was private. I just wanted to sleep where nobody could find me."
Dante listened without interrupting. When I finished, his expression didn't soften into pity—it hardened into something much more dangerous.
May you like
"He used my resort as a hunting ground," Dante said, his voice dropping an octave. "And he laid hands on someone under my protection."
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a sleek silver burner phone, punching in a single speed-dial digit. "Get the legal team on the redeye from Manhattan. I want every asset Ray Miller and his associates control frozen by sunrise. And tear up that diner's debt ledger—transfer the title directly to Miss Bennett."
