Chapter 5 - The Unseen Watchers
By three o'clock that afternoon, the house had returned to an uneasy quiet, but it was a different kind of quiet than before.
In the nursery on the second floor, the high arched windows were covered with heavy linen drapes to block the harsh western sun. A small, silent air circulator—brought up from the basement by Rachel—hummed softly in the corner, moving the cool air in gentle currents across the room.
Nicholas was sleeping in his crib, his face back to its normal pale, cream color, his breathing deep, even, and long.
Roman sat in the high-backed rocking chair six feet away. He had removed his shoes and his linen jacket, sitting only in his trousers and white shirt, his hands resting flat on his knees. He hadn't moved for nearly forty minutes.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Rachel was sitting at the long stainless-steel prep counter, drinking a glass of cold water while Sophie drew green monsters on the back of a discarded grocery receipt with a blue crayon.
The side door near the pantry opened, and Marco walked in.
He was thirty-eight years old, with broad shoulders, a dark haircut shaved close on the sides, and a long, faint scar that ran from the corner of his left eye down into his collar. He looked like a man who spent ten hours a day in a gym and the other fourteen hours looking for things that didn't belong in his sightline.
He didn't look at Rachel immediately. He walked to the stainless-steel sink, poured himself a glass of tap water, drank it in three long swallows, and set the glass down with a quiet clink.
"The lawyer left," Marco said.
Rachel looked up from her water. "Mr. Vane?"
"Yeah," Marco said, leaning his hip against the counter, his dark eyes shifting to Sophie, who was currently giving one of her monsters four ears. "He tried to talk to Roman about the filing again. Roman told him to throw Evelyn’s papers in the incinerator near the garage."
"Is she... is Mrs. Whitmore going to bring the police?" Rachel asked, her heart giving a small, nervous twitch.
Marco let out a short, dry sound that might have been a laugh if there had been any humor in it. "The local sheriff owes Roman three favor credits from the last election cycle. Nobody’s coming through those gates with a warrant unless it comes out of the Federal District Court in Atlanta, and that takes three weeks of grand jury testimony."
He turned his head fully toward Rachel now, his expression flattening into something sharp and professional.
"You've been here three weeks, right?" he asked.
"Four," Rachel corrected him gently.
"You like the work?"
"It pays eight dollars an hour more than the hotel in Mount Pleasant," she said honestly. "And the hours mean I can pick Sophie up from daycare—when the daycare isn't closed."
Marco nodded once. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a small black leather notebook, and opened it.
"Your ex-husband," Marco said flatly. "Terry Miller. Works at a boat repair yard in West Ashley. He owes forty-two thousand dollars to a sports gambling operator who runs out of a pool hall on Rivers Avenue."
Rachel’s hand froze around her glass of water. Her face drained of color so quickly that even Sophie noticed, looking up from her crayon drawing with a sudden, anxious frown.
"How... why do you know that?" Rachel whispered, her voice dropping into a terrified breath.
"Because everybody who works inside this house gets looked at," Marco said smoothly, as if he were discussing the weather forecast for Sunday afternoon. "When you brought the kid in today, my team pulled your file again to make sure your ex didn't follow you to the gate."
He leaned a fraction closer, his broad shadow falling over the stainless-steel counter.
"Terry tried to sell your address to two guys from Wilmington three weeks ago," Marco continued. "He thought he could get ten grand by telling them where Roman Bellini’s new housekeeper lived, in case somebody wanted to know who went in and out of the side door."
Rachel felt as though the floor beneath her stool had suddenly given way. "Oh God... Terry... he wouldn't—"
"He didn't," Marco cut her off. "Because Lev went to his boat yard on a Tuesday afternoon and had a very short conversation with him near the timber saw. Terry doesn't talk about you anymore. He doesn't look for you. And he definitely doesn't come north of the Ashley River."
Rachel sat perfectly still, her chest rising and falling in shallow, frantic breaths. She stared at the scar on Marco’s cheek, trying to process the fact that while she had been scrubbing toilets and polishing silver spoons, men she had never spoken to had been quietly neutralizing threats to her life three miles away.
"Why are you telling me this?" Rachel asked, her knuckles white around her glass.
Marco glanced down at Sophie, who had abandoned her drawing and was now staring at his dark leather shoes with intense curiosity.
"Because Roman doesn't forget people who keep his son alive," Marco said simply. "And because from today, your daughter isn't hidden in the laundry room anymore."
He reached into his pocket again, pulled out a small silver access card on a dark lanyard, and laid it on the counter beside Rachel's glass.
"This opens the nursery service stairs and the kitchen gate," Marco said. "You work eight to five. If the daycare closes again, she comes here. She stays on the first floor or in the rear garden. Nobody asks questions. Nobody calls the gate."
He turned and walked toward the side door, stopping with his hand on the brass handle.
"And Rachel?"
"Yes?"
May you like
"If your ex ever calls your phone again," Marco said without turning around, "tell Lev. Don't tell the police. Lev is faster."
The door closed with a quiet, heavy click, leaving Rachel sitting at the counter in the cool, silent kitchen, holding the silver access card between her cold, trembling fingers.
