Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Ashbourne
Blair’s hysterics echoed down the corridor until the heavy sound of the estate’s double doors cut them short. Pierce had already been dragged away without a struggle, his knees giving out before he even reached the staircase.
The library was quiet again. Dr. Wallace packed his equipment into his leather satchel, offered me a respectful nod, and slipped quietly out the side door, leaving me alone with the man who ran the city’s underground empire.
Dominic walked over to the mahogany bar in the corner, poured two fingers of amber bourbon into a heavy crystal tumbler, and walked across the Persian rug toward my chair. He held the glass out to me.
“Drink it,” he said.
I looked at the glass, then up into his piercing gray eyes. “I’m on the clock, Mr. Vale.”
“Your shift ended the moment you took a whip for me, Nora,” he replied, his voice softer now, stripped of the lethal edge he had used on the Carringtons. “And as I said before, my name is Dominic.”
I took the glass. The bourbon burned pleasantly down my throat, dulling the rhythmic throb across my shoulder blades. I let out a slow, controlled exhale, leaning back into the leather.
“You aren’t surprised by Pierce,” I observed quietly.
Dominic leaned against the edge of his desk, crossing his arms. “I knew Pierce was hemorrhaging money in foreign casinos. I didn’t think he had the courage to try killing me in my own dining room. Greed makes weak men stupid.” He paused, his gaze raking over my face with intense curiosity. “What surprises me is you, Nora Vance.”
I flinched slightly at my real last name. I hadn’t heard it spoken out loud in two years. On my employment application for Ashbourne House, I had used my mother’s maiden name and listed generic housekeeping experience at budget hotels upstate.
“You looked into me,” I said.
“I run an organization that survives on intelligence,” Dominic stated plainly. “When a woman with an advanced doctorate in biochemical toxicology and an impeccable record at the Department of Agriculture starts cleaning my baseboards and scrubbing my silver for eighteen dollars an hour, I don’t ignore it. I watched you.”
“Then you know I’m a convicted felon,” I said, looking down into my glass with bitter self-derision. “Embezzlement, falsifying state lab reports, tampering with evidence. That’s what the newspapers said.”
“The newspapers print what the highest bidder pays them to print,” Dominic replied, his voice steady and resolute. “I know the real story. Julian Montgomery. Your former fiancé and the chief operating officer of Montgomery Agri-Chemicals.”
Hearing Julian’s name made my stomach twist into the same knot that had lived inside me for twenty-four months. Julian was handsome, charismatic, and rotten to the core. When I discovered his company had been dumping carcinogenic pesticide runoff into local municipal reservoirs and altering testing batches, I gathered the files to take to the federal prosecutor. Julian found out. Within seventy-two hours, state files were mysteriously wiped from my government terminal, three hundred thousand dollars of laundered company funds were found deposited into an offshore account opened under my identity, and Julian wept on local news about his ‘heartbroken betrayal by an unstable partner.’
“He had the judges,” I whispered, staring at my hands. “He had the media. I had a public defender who told me to take a plea deal if I didn't want to spend ten years in a maximum-security facility. So I took the misdemeanor plea, lost my license, lost my home, and became invisible.”
Dominic took a step closer, towering over my chair. “You didn't become invisible, Nora. You became dormant.”
I raised my chin, meeting his intense gaze. “There’s a difference between dormant and broken. I don’t break.”
A rare, faint smile touched the corner of Dominic’s lips. It transformed his harsh, dangerous face into something striking.
“No,” he agreed quietly. “You certainly don’t. Blair Carrington hit you twice with a riding crop, and you mocked her rug. Most men on my payroll wouldn't have shown that kind of spine under fire.”
“I’m too big to run, Dominic,” I said with dry humor, gesturing loosely to my wide hips and solid frame. “Standing my ground is practically a physical requirement.”
Dominic’s eyes darkened, the amusement vanishing, replaced by a sudden, intense heat that made my breath hitch. “Don't speak about yourself the way those shallow fools do. Blair Carrington is an empty shell wrapped in expensive silk. You possess something real. You protected my life tonight without asking for a reward, a guarantee, or an apology.”
May you like
He reached out, his warm, calloused fingers gently touching the side of my neck, tracing the edge of the cashmere collar where the bruise from Blair’s second blow threatened to blossom purple. His touch was shockingly gentle for a man whose reputation made city officials tremble.
“Now,” Dominic murmured, his thumb brushing my jawline, “it’s my turn to protect yours.”
