Chapter 2 - Shadow in the East Wing
The following morning brought a dense fog that wrapped around the gates of the Vale estate,
muffling the distant sounds of the city below.
Ruby moved through the corridors like a quiet storm,
her soft-soled shoes making no sound against the thick Persian rugs.
She had promised silence,
and she was a woman of her word,
at least when it came to literal singing.
However,
she could not turn off her presence.
She opened every heavy velvet curtain in the east wing hallways,
letting the gray morning light flood into dark corners that hadn't seen sun in years.
In the main study,
Dominic sat behind a massive desk carved from solid black walnut,
surrounded by stack of financial ledgers and encrypted laptops.
His world was built on control,
numbers,
logistics,
and absolute authority.
Yet,
as he tried to review the quarterly revenue reports from his shipping docks,
he found his attention constantly drifting toward the doorway.
It was too quiet.
For three years,
he had demanded absolute silence in his home,
constructing a fortress against the chaotic violence of his business.
When his father died in a hail of gunfire,
leaving him to inherit a dangerous empire at twenty-eight,
Dominic had banished laughter,
music,
and warmth from his life.
He had thought silence was peace.
Now,
after hearing Ruby's rich,
vibrant voice fill the high ceilings yesterday,
the quiet felt different.
It felt cold,
stagnant,
and suffocating.
He heard the faint sound of a vacuum cleaner starting up in the adjacent library.
He frowned,
checking his gold wristwatch.
It was barely eight in the morning.
He stood up,
adjusting the cuffs of his tailored charcoal suit,
and walked out of his office to investigate.
In the library,
Ruby was on her knees near the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves,
using a narrow vacuum attachment to clear dust from the intricate wooden baseboards.
She wasn't singing.
She was keeping her promise.
But as she moved,
she was rhythmically swaying her hips to a tune only she could hear in her head.
Her burgundy dress stretched over her full hips,
emphasizing the lush curve of her waist and the strength in her shoulders.
Dominic leaned against the doorframe,
watching her in silence.
He had spent his entire adult life surrounding himself with desperate men,
submissive subordinates,
and calculated allies.
Ruby was none of those things.
She worked with an open,
honest energy that felt utterly alien in his world of secrets and blood.
She paused,
wiping a stray lock of dark hair from her forehead with the back of her gloved hand.
She turned around to reach for a polish rag and caught him watching her.
She didn't startle this time.
Instead,
she paused the vacuum and sat back on her heels,
looking up at him with intelligent,
curious brown eyes.
"Good morning,
Mr. Vale,
" she said pleasantly.
"Am I disturbing you?"
"The machine is loud,
" Dominic noted,
though his tone lacked its usual razor-sharp edge.
"It's a vacuum,
sir,
" Ruby replied calmly.
"Dirt doesn't respond to polite requests."
A tiny,
almost invisible twitch appeared at the corner of Dominic's lips before he flattened it into a stern line.
"You are thorough,
" he conceded,
looking around at the pristine rows of rare leather-bound books.
"My mother collected those,
" he added quietly,
his gaze lingering on a set of first-edition poetry volumes on the second shelf.
Ruby followed his gaze,
her demeanor softening instantly.
"She had wonderful taste,
" Ruby said gently,
her tone shifting from playful to sincere.
"I noticed the annotations in the margins of the poetry books when I wiped down the shelves yesterday."
"She had lovely handwriting."
Dominic froze,
his eyes snapping back to Ruby.
No one in this house spoke about his mother.
Her death had been the catalyst for his dark transformation,
and her memory was a sacred,
painful wound that his men knew better than to touch.
"You shouldn't be reading private marginalia,
" Dominic said softly,
a subtle warning in his voice.
"I wasn't prying,
" Ruby said,
rising gracefully to her feet despite her size,
moving with a natural confidence that demanded respect.
"I was dusting."
"And I couldn't help but notice she wrote 'Love is the only thing worth singing about' on page forty-two."
Dominic felt a sudden,
sharp ache in his chest,
a long-buried memory surfacing against his will.
His mother used to sing while tending to the gardens in Italy when he was a boy.
Before the war.
Before the blood.
"She was wrong,
" Dominic said coldly,
turning his back on her.
"Love gets people killed in our line of work."
"Then it's a good thing I'm just a maid who likes catchy choruses,
" Ruby called out softly after him.
Dominic stopped in the doorway,
his back still turned to her.
"Keep the vacuum quiet,
Miss Bennett,
" he commanded,
though his voice lacked conviction.
"Yes,
May you like
sir,
" she whispered to the empty doorway.
