Serena POV

The black wrought-iron gates of the Marcello Estate tower over me, their spiked finials like teeth against the grey morning sky. Armed guards in black suits conduct a brisk, impersonal search, their hands moving over the seams of my wool coat and sifting through my bag before the heavy gates slowly swing open.

A man in his forties is waiting for me on the other side, his posture as severe as the tailored lines of his suit.

"Miss Serena," he says, his voice level and devoid of inflection. "I am the Consigliere of this household. I also act as the head butler. Follow me."

I follow him down a sweeping, tree-lined driveway, the sheer acreage of the property seeming to press in on me from all sides. We walk past private equestrian grounds, a massive heated pool, and an indoor botanical garden encased in gleaming glass.

This is not just wealth. This is power made manifest, solid and untouchable.

We enter the grand foyer of the main house. The veined marble floors are polished to a mirror sheen, but the silence hanging in the air is thick and suffocating. A massive portrait hangs above the staircase—a man in his prime, dark-haired, with icy blue eyes that seem to follow me across the room. Even in oil paint, Lucian Marcello's gaze feels like a physical weight.

"Mr. Marcello is currently out on business," the Consigliere says without looking back at me. "You will meet the young heir first."

He leads me up a grand, sweeping staircase to the second floor. We walk down a corridor so long that my shoes make no sound on the deep-pile carpet, the very echo swallowed by its immense length. We at last stop in front of an open door.

The Consigliere turns to me, his voice sinking to a confidential murmur.

"Nico is four years old. He has not spoken a single word since he was three. He only occasionally communicates with the Don."

I nod slowly, processing the information.

"The longest any previous governess lasted in this house was one week," the Consigliere adds, his gaze becoming pointed. "Do not touch him without permission."

I step past the Consigliere and walk into the room.

A little boy sits in the center of a plush, cream-colored rug. He has dark hair and pale skin. His eyes are beautiful, but his pupils are like two dry wells, into which the room's light falls without stirring the slightest reflection.

He is arranging wooden building blocks into a tower, his small hands moving with an obsessive precision.

The impulse to offer a greeting, or to force the kind of smile I reserved for frightened children, dies in the room's sterile air. Instead, I slowly crouch down until I am at his eye level, and settle onto the rug about two feet away from him.

I pick up a single wooden block from the pile and place it gently next to his structure.

Nico goes utterly still. He stares at the block.

His shoulder tightens first, a barely perceptible motion, and then his small hand shoots out as if sprung, snatches the block I placed, and sends it across the room. It hits the wall with a sharp thwack.

I do not flinch. I do not speak.

I wait for a count of ten seconds. Then I pick up another block and place it in the exact same spot.

Nico grabs it and throws it again.

The Consigliere shifts his weight in the doorway, a current of tension flowing from him into the room.

I reach into the pile and gather five blocks, making a point of ignoring his castle entirely. I stack two blocks vertically and place one across the top. With the remaining two, I construct a crude representation of a swing set next to my little archway.

I draw my hands back, resting them quietly in my lap.

Nico stops building his castle. He very slowly turns his head and stares at my creation. He looks at it for three full, drawn-out seconds.

Then, he slowly reaches out and takes a square block from his own meticulously built castle. He extends his small arm and carefully places his block right next to my swing set.

A sharp intake of breath comes from the doorway. I look over my shoulder and find the Consigliere staring at us, his face a mask of disbelief.

"That is the first time he has not thrown an object at a new face," the Consigliere whispers, as if to himself. "The last governess caught a glass vase to the head."

I look back at Nico, but he is already returning to his castle, ignoring me again.

"Familiarize yourself with the compound," the Consigliere says, taking a half-step back into the hallway as if to regain his composure. "Your room is adjacent to Nico's. The Don will return tonight to conduct your final interview personally."

I spend the next hour touring the estate, committing to memory the layout of the underground security levels and the first-floor living quarters. The Consigliere explicitly warns me that the third floor is the Don's private sanctum—and it is strictly off-limits.

When I enter my assigned bedroom, the luxury of it is almost disorienting. The room is vast, anchored by a king-sized bed draped in dark silk sheets. The en-suite bathroom is larger than my entire previous apartment.

I sit on the edge of the mattress. The material yields beneath me, but my body remains rigid with tension.

Three days ago, I was thrown out onto the street by the man I was supposed to marry. Today, I am sitting inside a multi-million-dollar mafia fortress, waiting to meet a man who orders executions before breakfast.

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Serena POV

At exactly eight o'clock in the evening, a sharp knock sounds at my bedroom door.

"The Don has returned," the Consigliere says through the thick wood. "He is waiting for you in the foyer."

I stand, smoothing the wrinkles out of my plain black skirt. I take a deep breath to steady the frantic beat in my chest, but it does nothing to quiet the pulse hammering at the base of my throat.

I walk out of my room and descend the grand staircase.

A man stands in the center of the foyer, in the process of shrugging out of a tailored black overcoat.

He is impossibly tall and lean, with broad shoulders that seem to alter the very architecture of the room. The expensive fabric of his suit stretches across his back as he moves, and I catch myself staring at the way the material pulls taut before I force my gaze away. His dark hair is perfectly styled, and the line of his jaw is severe and sharp—a face carved from marble by a sculptor who valued intimidation over beauty.

He hands his coat to the Consigliere and turns his head to look at me.

His eyes are a striking, icy blue. That pair of blue eyes passes over my face, and for one suspended heartbeat, I feel utterly naked under that gaze—as if he has already catalogued every secret I've ever kept and found them all tedious. Then he looks away, dismissing me as easily as he might a piece of furniture.

"You are the new hire," he says. His voice is low and deliberate, each word carrying the texture of sand scraping against metal, a sound that seems to abrade the quiet of the room. Something about that voice travels down my spine and settles low in my stomach.

"Yes, sir," I say. "My name is Serena."

Lucian Marcello walks over to a crystal decanter on a side table. I watch his hands as he moves—large, lethal hands that I know have ended lives, yet they handle the crystal with an unexpected, almost elegant precision. He pours a small amount of amber liquid into a glass.

"Your education," he demands, not looking at me.

"I hold a Master's in Clinical Medicine," I say. "I minored in child psychology."

Lucian picks up the glass. He turns and pins me with his gaze. The full weight of his attention lands on me like a physical blow, and for one terrifying moment, I forget how to breathe.

"Why is a medical prodigy applying to be a governess in my house?" he asks.

Meeting that gaze, I force my chin a fraction higher. My lashes do not so much as flutter, though a film of cold sweat has begun to form against my spine.

"I need the money," I say.

Lucian stares at me. His expression does not change, but the pressure in the room seems to increase, as if before a storm. Those ice-blue eyes hold mine for a beat too long—long enough that the air between us grows thick, charged with something I cannot name.

"The previous eight women barely lasted seven days," Lucian says. "How long do you think you can survive here?"

"I don't know," I reply. "But he didn't throw a vase at my head this afternoon."

Lucian's long finger pauses on the rim of his crystal glass. He remains perfectly still for a few seconds.

"He placed a block next to yours," the Consigliere says quietly from the shadows. "Voluntarily."

Lucian looks at the Consigliere, then back at me. Something flickers in his expression—surprise, perhaps, or a predator's calculation.

"You have a one-month probationary period," Lucian dictates. His tone leaves no room for negotiation. "Nico's routine is absolute. He dislikes strangers touching him. You are never to force him to speak."

"I understand," I say.

Lucian takes a step closer to the stairs.

"The third floor," he says, his voice dropping into a dark, threatening register. "Do not go up there."

I nod. "I will not."

Lucian walks past me—close enough that I could reach out and touch the sleeve of his jacket. The scent of expensive cologne and something sharper, like burnt gunpowder mixed with clean male skin, trails behind him. It invades my senses before I can guard against it, and I hate that my body notices. I hate that I want to breathe deeper.

"You are dismissed," he says as he climbs the stairs.

I turn to walk back to my room. As I move away, I hear the Consigliere quietly speak to the Don on the landing.

"She holds her nerve well," the Consigliere remarks.

I close my bedroom door and lean against the heavy wood, a tremor finally working its way through my legs.

My fingers curl against the doorframe. I press my palm flat against my stomach, where a strange, unwelcome heat still lingers. This is absurd. The man is a killer. A monster in a bespoke suit. And yet my body reacted to him in a way it never did to Zane—not in three years of engagement.

I shove the thought down violently and pull out my phone.

My available balance is two hundred and eighty-seven dollars. My mother's medical fee of twelve thousand dollars is due tomorrow afternoon. If I do not pay it, they will stop her treatments.

I stare at the screen. Each breath feels like dragging air through wet concrete, a dry, rasping ache settling into the hollows of my lungs.

I open my messages, find the number the Consigliere used to text me the estate rules earlier today, and type out a message, my thumbs moving stiffly over the illuminated screen.

"Is it possible to get an advance on my salary? Just for the first week."

I hit send before I can lose my nerve. I am asking a mafia syndicate for a loan on my first night. It is incredibly stupid, but I have no choice.

Two minutes later, my screen lights up.

A message from the Consigliere: "The Don has authorized a daily payout starting from day one of your probation. One thousand six hundred and sixty-six dollars a day. It will be wired to your account every morning."

I drop the phone onto the mattress and cover my face with my hands, a single shaky breath escaping me.

This is blood money. Dangerous, dirty money from a ruthless criminal empire. But even as I tell myself to be afraid, my traitorous mind conjures the image of ice-blue eyes catching the light as Lucian Marcello looked at me like he could see straight through to my bones.

And I am not nearly as afraid of that as I should be.

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