Chapter 1 - The Woman Beneath the Snow
By the time Roman DeLuca found Claire Bennett beneath the snow, her eyelashes had frozen together.
Forty guests were still drinking champagne inside his mansion.
Music floated through the ballroom beneath crystal chandeliers. A twenty-foot Christmas tree glowed beside the staircase. Politicians, bankers, attorneys, and men whose names rarely appeared on paper laughed beneath garlands wrapped in red ribbon.
Outside, less than two hundred yards from all that warmth, Claire was disappearing beneath the storm.
Roman almost missed her.
He had stepped onto the rear terrace because something about the house felt wrong.
He couldn't have explained it.
Maybe it was the open service door.
Maybe it was Mrs. Patel standing beside it with a face that had gone pale.
Maybe it was the realization that the young woman who had spent the evening moving quietly through his house hadn't been seen for nearly half an hour.
“Where is Claire?”
Mrs. Patel hesitated.
“Miss Mercer sent her to the carriage house.”
Roman looked toward the windows.
The snow was falling so hard the carriage house had vanished.
“For what?”
“Wine.”
Roman's expression changed.
“What wine?”
“The Bellamy Reserve.”
He stared at Mrs. Patel for two seconds.
Then he was moving.
Because Roman knew something Mrs. Patel apparently didn't.
The Bellamy Reserve hadn't been stored in the carriage house for months.
He had personally ordered the collection moved into the temperature-controlled cellar beneath the east wing.
“Roman!”
Someone called from behind him.
He ignored them.
By the time he crossed the terrace, the wind was already tearing at his coat.
The first thirty yards were difficult.
The next fifty were almost impossible.
Snow reached his shins, then his knees. Wind erased his footprints almost as quickly as he made them. The warm mansion lights became a blurred golden shape behind him.
He shouted Claire's name.
Nothing answered except the storm.
He reached the south lawn.
Then he saw something pale near the old carriage path.
At first, Roman thought it was fabric caught beneath the snow.
Then the wind shifted.
Long brown hair moved.
Roman ran.
“Claire!”
He dropped beside her so hard his knees disappeared into the snow.
Her lavender maid's dress was barely visible beneath the white covering. One arm lay strangely still beside her body. Her lips had lost most of their color.
For one horrifying second Roman thought she was dead.
He swept snow away from her face.
“Claire.”
No reaction.
He placed two fingers beneath her jaw.
Nothing.
Then—
A faint pulse.
Weak.
But there.
Roman bent closer.
“Claire. Stay with me.”
Her eyelids didn't move.
He took off his scarf, wrapped it around her, then slid one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees.
When he lifted her, something inside Roman changed.
Men had threatened him before.
Families had betrayed him.
Enemies had tried to take territory, money, influence.
Roman understood those kinds of attacks.
But Claire?
Claire had no army.
No organization.
No powerful surname.
She carried trays through his dining room, visited her younger sister whenever she had a free afternoon, and apologized when people bumped into her.
Someone had sent her into a deadly storm deliberately.
Roman turned toward the mansion.
The place looked beautiful from there.
Golden windows.
Christmas lights.
Warmth.
Forty people inside pretending to celebrate.
“Whoever did this,” he said quietly, “is going to wish I never found you.”
Forty minutes earlier, Claire had been balancing a silver dessert tray through the service corridor.
Christmas Eve at DeLuca House wasn't really Christmas.
It was theater.
Powerful families drank expensive wine while discussing charity donations they could deduct from their taxes.
Men who hated one another shook hands beside the fireplace.
Women compared diamonds while quietly calculating which marriage, divorce, or business partnership might change the balance of power before spring.
Claire preferred the kitchen.
Nobody there pretended.
Mrs. Patel complained openly.
The cooks swore openly.
The servers ate broken pastries behind the pantry door.
It was honest.
Claire was carrying miniature chocolate tortes when Vivian Mercer stepped into her path.
Roman's fiancée.
Vivian was tall, blonde, and impossibly polished.
Her red silk gown looked like it had been designed for that exact room. Diamonds rested at her throat. Her hair fell in perfect waves over one shoulder.
She looked like Christmas if Christmas had inherited several billion dollars and learned how to destroy people politely.
“You're late,” Vivian said.
Claire stopped.
“For dessert?”
“For everything.”
Vivian's eyes moved down Claire's lavender uniform.
“Your apron is pulling again.”
Claire felt heat rise into her cheeks.
“It fits.”
“Technically.”
A nearby server suddenly became very interested in arranging spoons.
That made the humiliation worse.
Claire straightened.
“Is there something you need, Ms. Mercer?”
Vivian lifted an empty glass.
“My father wants the 1990 Bellamy Reserve.”
Claire glanced toward the wine pantry.
“I'll ask Mr. Leone to bring it.”
“It isn't there.”
“Where is it?”
“The carriage house.”
Claire looked toward the nearest window.
Snow was flying horizontally past the glass.
“The south carriage house?”
Vivian smiled.
“I wasn't aware we had another one.”
Mrs. Patel appeared from the kitchen.
“Miss Mercer, security can retrieve it after the path is cleared.”
“I asked Claire.”
“The weather service issued an emergency warning.”
Vivian's smile disappeared.
“I don't remember asking for a committee.”
Silence filled the corridor.
Claire set down the tray.
She didn't want to go.
Every instinct told her not to.
Then Vivian stepped closer.
Her voice dropped.
“Perhaps you need help remembering why cooperation matters.”
Claire froze.
Two weeks earlier, Vivian had cornered her inside the conservatory.
She had spoken one number.
$184,000.
Claire's father's debt.
The debt he'd taken on when Claire's younger sister Lily suddenly became sick.
At nineteen, Lily had developed a spinal infection that nearly killed her and permanently damaged her mobility. Emergency surgery, rehabilitation, private specialists—the bills had swallowed everything their father had saved.
Then he'd found a lender.
Not a bank.
Not anyone Claire would have chosen.
By the time he died, the original debt had become something larger.
Something impossible.
Claire had been paying for years.
Yet the balance barely changed.
Vivian somehow knew everything.
Where Lily lived.
Her room number.
Her therapy schedule.
The names of her doctors.
Now Vivian leaned closer.
“You don't want tonight to become expensive for your family, do you?”
Claire's blood went cold.
That wasn't about wine.
It was a threat.
Mrs. Patel reached for her.
“Claire, don't.”
But Claire pictured Lily.
Twenty-one years old.
Stubborn.
Funny.
Still learning how to rebuild a life that illness had changed in one terrible month.
Claire couldn't risk her.
“I'll be five minutes.”
She opened the service door.
Cold struck her like a physical blow.
Within seconds, snow collected in her hair.
Claire lowered her head and started across the lawn.
The mansion disappeared slowly behind her.
Fifty yards.
Seventy.
One hundred.
She could barely see.
Then the carriage house appeared through the storm.
And beside it—
Someone was standing there.
Claire stopped.
A man.
Dark coat.
Motionless.
Waiting.
He turned toward her.
Then he began walking.
Claire's stomach dropped.
Vivian hadn't sent her into the storm because Victor Mercer wanted wine.
She had sent Claire outside because someone was waiting.
Claire stepped backward.
The man kept coming.
She turned to run.
Her shoe slipped.
She caught herself, stumbled forward, and heard footsteps behind her.
“Claire!”
Not Roman.
A stranger.
She tried to run faster.
Wind tore the breath from her lungs.
Her feet felt numb.
She reached the carriage path before falling again.
This time she couldn't immediately stand.
The world tilted.
The last thing Claire remembered was the silhouette approaching through the snow.
Then darkness.
Back inside DeLuca House, Christmas dinner continued.
Nobody noticed the first ten minutes.
Nobody except Mrs. Patel.
And when Roman eventually looked across his ballroom and realized Claire was missing, the evening stopped being a Christmas celebration.
It became an investigation.
Because while Roman carried Claire toward the mansion, he saw footprints beside hers.
Large ones.
A man's.
And they weren't coming from the house.
They were coming from the carriage house.
Someone really had been waiting for her.
May you like
And Roman intended to find out who.
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