Chapter 1 - THE GRUMPY MAN
My three-year-old daughter met the most feared man in Chicago because my babysitter woke up with a fever.
By the end of that morning, one childish joke had reopened every question surrounding my husband’s death.
My name is Sophia Reed.
For eight months, I had worked as a housekeeper inside Vincent Bellaro’s Lake Forest estate.
People knew Vincent as the wealthy owner of construction companies, restaurants, freight businesses, and downtown real estate.
They whispered that his legitimate businesses were only the visible part of his empire.
I never asked.
After my husband Daniel died in a construction accident two years earlier, survival became more important than curiosity.
Rent.
Preschool.
Groceries.
Health insurance.
That was my life now.
The Bellaro estate paid almost twice what I had earned cleaning hotel rooms, but there were rules.
Never enter Vincent’s study unless summoned.
Never repeat what you heard.
Never touch anything important.
And never bring children to the property.
Then my babysitter canceled at 5:52 on a Tuesday morning.
I had no backup.
So I brought Mia.
I hid her in the laundry room near the kitchen with crackers, crayons, apple juice, and the yellow stuffed rabbit Daniel had given her before he died.
I told her not to move.
For nearly two hours, she listened.
Then she disappeared.
I searched everywhere before hearing her voice coming from the one room where absolutely no employee wanted to find a three-year-old.
Vincent Bellaro’s private study.
I ran inside.
Mia stood beside his enormous desk in a yellow dress and white sneakers, clutching her rabbit under one arm.
Vincent sat behind the desk in a charcoal suit.
His assistant, Nathan Cole, held a tablet nearby.
Two armed security men stood beside the windows.
Nobody moved.
“Mia,” I whispered.
My daughter ignored me.
Vincent’s expression hardened.
He had the kind of face that could make grown men stop talking without him raising his voice.
Mia studied him.
Then she lowered her eyebrows exactly the way he had.
She folded her tiny arms.
Vincent stared.
She tilted her chin.
“You look grumpy.”
No one breathed.
Then something happened that I had never seen in eight months.
Vincent Bellaro laughed.
It was short.
Two rough sounds, the second almost catching in his throat.
And suddenly I was no longer standing in his study.
I was back in my old kitchen with Daniel.
My husband had made that exact laugh once.
Not something similar.
That laugh.
He had copied someone while telling me about a man at work.
A man he had refused to name.
And before I could stop myself, I whispered:
“Oh my God.”
Vincent’s smile disappeared.
His eyes moved from Mia to me.
“What?”
May you like
I stared at him.
Because for the first time since Daniel died, I knew he had been hiding something from me.
