Chapter 1 - The West Wing Awakens
"The lavender room, sir?" Mrs. Gable repeated, her voice trembling as she stared at the infant nestled against the terrifying syndicate boss. For two years, the west wing of Blackwood Manor had been a mausoleum. The doors were deadbolted, the windows shuttered, the air inside stagnant with the ghost of Clara Thorne. To open it now felt like breaking a sacred, unspoken law of the underworld.
"You heard me," Silas replied, his voice a low, gravelly command that brooked absolutely no hesitation. "Strip the velvet off the mirrors. Air out the room. Find whatever we need to keep her warm and fed. If we don't have it, wake up the city and buy it."
Mrs. Gable nodded frantically, lifting the hem of her nightgown as she hurried up the grand mahogany staircase. Silas looked down at the baby girl. She had fallen back asleep, her tiny chest rising and falling in a rhythmic, peaceful motion that felt entirely alien in a house built on violence.
"Dante," Silas said, not looking away from his daughter. "Lock down the estate. Triple the perimeter guard. No one comes in. No one goes out. I want signal jammers activated immediately."
Dante Cruz stepped forward, his dark eyes scanning the shadows of the study as if expecting an assassin to materialize from the bookshelves. "Boss, if we jam the signals, Julian won't be able to call ahead. He's expecting the gates to be open for him at dawn."
"Then he can wait in the rain," Silas said coldly.
The note was burning a hole in his pocket. Trust no Thorne. Julian was his own blood, the younger brother Silas had shielded from the darkest, most depraved aspects of their father’s empire. Silas had built a clean corporate front specifically so Julian could play the legitimate businessman. But in the mafia, blood was just another fluid waiting to be spilled.
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"Should I prepare a holding cell?" Dante asked, catching the lethal shift in Silas’s posture.
"No," Silas murmured, gently adjusting the woolen blanket around the infant. "Let Julian walk in thinking he still has a brother. I want to see his face. I want to look into his eyes and know exactly what he did. And Dante? If Julian so much as glances toward the west wing, you have my permission to break both of his legs."
