Chapter 1 - The Woman in the White Dress
Dominic Gallo was in the middle of a dangerous business meeting when the one phone that was never supposed to ring during business hours lit up.
HOME KITCHEN.
Beatrice, the longtime housekeeper who knew every rule of the Gallo household, sounded terrified.
“Please come home now.”
Then came the words that sent Dominic running through a rainstorm.
“She’ll destroy her.”
Vivien Marchetti, daughter of a powerful West Side syndicate leader and Dominic’s former lover and associate, had somehow entered his heavily guarded estate. She had cornered Nora—the quiet art restorer Dominic believed would barely know how to defend herself.
Dominic raced home expecting blood.
He found it.
But the victim was not Nora.
Vivien lay broken and sobbing on the drawing-room floor, her nose shattered, her expensive clothes torn and her face swollen. Nora sat calmly in Dominic’s leather chair with a drink in one hand, bleeding knuckles on the other, and a bloodstained fireplace poker resting across her lap.
Only then did Dominic understand Beatrice’s warning.
She had been afraid Nora would destroy Vivien.
The revelation shattered everything Dominic believed about the woman who spent peaceful afternoons restoring paintings and reading in his conservatory. Nora showed no panic, no apology, and no surprise that Dominic had discovered what she could do.
“I’m exactly who I needed to be to survive your world,” she told him.
Vivien was taken downstairs while Dominic confronted Nora inside the ruined drawing room.
How had she defeated someone trained to hurt people?
How had she become this woman without Dominic knowing?
Nora walked toward the broken window as rain blew inside.
Then she finally began explaining what had started the violence.
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“She slapped Beatrice.”
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