Chapter 3 - THE SECRETS OF THE EAST WING
The east wing felt entirely different in the afternoon light. The storm outside had settled into a steady, gray drizzle, casting a muted glow through the tall stained-glass windows.
When Dr. Vance opened Damian’s door, the heavy smell of antiseptic had been replaced by the faint, clean scent of crushed mint and eucalyptus.
Damian was sitting up against a stack of feather pillows. He had changed into a fresh black shirt, though his skin still held the pale, drawn look of a man fighting off a slow-acting poison. His dark eyes shifted from the door immediately to the small yellow boots stepping across the threshold.
"Come in," Damian said.
I walked slowly into the room, keeping a protective hand on Lila’s shoulder. "You wanted to see us, Mr. Volkov?"
Damian gestured to the heavy leather armchairs arranged near the fireplace. "Sit down, Clara. Standing makes you look like you're waiting for a firing squad."
I cautiously sat on the edge of the chair, pulling Lila onto my lap. She looked around the massive, luxurious bedroom with wide-eyed curiosity, then pointed at the heavy silver tray resting on the nightstand.
"She wants a cookie," Damian noted with a dry, humorless smirk. He reached out with a steadier hand than he had possessed that morning, picked up a small silver plate of shortbread biscuits from the tray, and held it out.
Lila looked up at me for permission. I nodded slowly. She slid off my lap, walked over to the terrifying mafia boss of Baltimore, took a cookie with a polite little nod, and sat cross-legged on the Persian rug right beside his bed.
Damian watched her with an expression that no one in the criminal underworld would ever have believed possible: absolute, unguarded fascination.
"You're wondering why I had you brought back here," Damian said, looking up from the floor to meet my eyes.
"I am," I admitted honestly. In my line of work, survival depended on speaking truth to power when cornered. "Every nurse who came in here was driven out in tears. Yet you let my daughter climb onto your bed and touch your chest."
Damian’s jaw tightened. He leaned his head back against the pillows, staring up at the carved plaster ceiling.
"Do you know what it feels like, Clara, to be hunted by men who call themselves your brothers?" he asked softly, his voice carrying a bitter, heavy weight. "For months, I’ve felt every heartbeat as a countdown. Every beat was erratic, fast, screaming that the poison was winning. Every doctor told me my heart was failing structurally. They pumped me full of drugs that made my veins feel like liquid fire."
He looked back down at Lila, who was happily dunking her shortbread into a glass of milk Dr. Vance had quietly poured for her.
"Then she put her hand on my chest," Damian continued, his voice dropping to a low, rough murmur. "She didn't feel sickness. She didn't feel a failing heart. She felt... the rhythm of someone who was just tired of fighting alone."
I swallowed hard, the air in the room growing thick. "Mr. Volkov... what happened to you? The staff whispers that you caught a cold, but nobody survives a bed-bound illness like this unless—"
"Unless someone inside my own house put arsenic and digitalis into my wine," Damian finished for me, his eyes flashing with a sudden, lethal grey fire that made the temperature in the room drop twenty degrees.
I gasped, my hand flying to my mouth. "Poison?"
"Yes," Damian nodded grimly. "Someone on my executive council. Someone who thought I was too weak to lead, too distracted by running legitimate real estate portfolios to notice the bleeding from within. And for two weeks, I couldn't prove who it was, because I couldn't even stand up to look them in the eye."
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his intense gaze locking onto mine.
"Which brings me to why you're here, Clara."
My stomach plummeted. "Me? I'm just a maid, Mr. Volkov. I clean the kitchens and change the linens. I don't know anything about syndicate politics or council betrayals."
"You don't," Damian agreed. "But you move through this mansion unnoticed. The cooks talk around you. The guards ignore you because you keep your head down. And more importantly..." He glanced down at Lila, who was now showing him her cloth rabbit. "...your daughter has an instinct for truth that no polygraph machine in the world can fake."
He stood up.
For a second, his legs wobbled slightly, and I instinctively half-rose to catch him. But Damian caught himself on the edge of the mahogany bedpost, gritting his teeth, forcing his tall, imposing frame upright.
"I need someone I can trust inside this fortress," Damian said, his voice dropping into the absolute, unarguable command of a mafia king. "Starting today, Clara, your job changes. You aren't cleaning the kitchens anymore. You are my personal assistant. You bring my meals, you manage my private schedule, and you stay in this east wing."
I stared at him in sheer disbelief. "Mr. Volkov—wait—I can't! I'm a single mother, I have to look after Lila, I don't know anything about—"
"You will be paid ten times your current salary," Damian cut across me smoothly. "A private suite will be prepared for you and Lila on this floor, guarded twenty-four hours a day. And anyone who tries to harm a hair on either of your heads will answer directly to me."
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He stepped closer, towering over me, his gray eyes burning with an intense, unyielding resolve.
"Help me find the rat who poisoned me, Clara. And I swear to you on my father’s grave... no one will ever touch you or your daughter again."
