Chapter 3 - The Coldest Room
At two in the morning, the estate didn't sleep; it merely prowled.
Bea lay awake in the four-poster bed in the guest wing. The room was three times the size of her entire former apartment in Syracuse, decorated in muted creams and heavy velvets, but it smelled of cold dust and disuse.
She turned on her side, the mattress groaning softly under her weight, staring at the ceiling. Her heart still hammered when she remembered Dominic Bellmore standing at that table—the lethal darkness that rolled off him like smoke before an explosion. He was an apex predator, a man who dealt in blood and leverage, yet she had told him to sit down like an errant schoolboy.
*You’re playing with fire, Beatrice,* she warned herself. *He could have you thrown into the Hudson before breakfast.*
A sharp, terrified scream shattered the silence.
Bea sat straight up.
It wasn't a tantrum scream. It was the high, thin, suffocating shriek of a child trapped in a nightmare.
Without pausing to grab a robe, Bea threw off the duvet and hurried out into the dimly lit hallway, her bare feet silent on the cold runners. She knew the layout; Harold had given her a brief tour, warning her explicitly that the girls’ bedrooms were off-limits after eight in the evening.
Bea didn't give a damn about estate rules.
She followed the sound down the east corridor toward the corner suite. The double doors were slightly ajar.
Inside, Frankie was thrashing wildly in the center of a massive bed, her sheets twisted around her legs like vines. Her face was drenched in sweat, her small hands clawing at the air.
“*No! Don't let the water in! Mommy, get out! Get out!*” Frankie shrieked, her voice hoarse, her eyes wide open but completely unseeing.
In the adjacent twin bed, Gia was curled into a tight, shivering ball, her hands clamped over her ears, tears streaming down her cheeks as she whispered over and over, “Stop it, Frankie, stop it, stop it...”
Bea didn't hesitate. She crossed the room in three strides, bypassed the decorative chairs, and sat directly onto the edge of Frankie’s mattress. The frame dipped under her weight.
“Frankie,” Bea said, keeping her voice low, steady, and rhythmic. She didn't grab the girl’s thrashing limbs—she knew better than to physically restrain a child in the throes of a night terror. Instead, she placed one warm, firm palm flat against Frankie’s chest, directly over her racing heart. “Frankie, you are in your bedroom. You are at Bellmore Ridge. The water isn't here. You are safe.”
Frankie’s small hand snapped out, her sharp nails digging into the soft flesh of Bea’s forearm, drawing blood.
Bea didn't pull away. She leaned closer, using her body to block out the shadowy corners of the vast room, radiating the steady, grounded heat that only a woman of her size and strength could provide.
“Look at me, Frankie,” Bea hummed, beginning to sway slightly. “*The river is wide, the water is clear... you are on the shore, and you’re standing right here.* Breathe with me. In for four. Hold for four.”
Frankie’s unfocused eyes darted across the ceiling, then locked onto Bea’s face. The hysterical gasping slowed. Her fingers relaxed slightly against Bea’s bleeding arm.
“Bea?” Frankie whimpered, her voice tiny, cracked, and infinitely young.
“I’m here, little bird,” Bea whispered, smoothing back the damp, dark curls from Frankie’s forehead. “I’ve got you. The dream is over.”
From the other bed, Gia watched, her hands slowly falling away from her ears. Her face was pale as milk, her eyes wide with an emotion she clearly couldn't categorize: shock that Bea hadn't run away from the screaming, shock that Bea was bleeding and hadn't cursed.
The bedroom door clicked open.
Dominic stood on the threshold. He wore black silk trousers and a charcoal henley unbuttoned at the throat, revealing the heavy corded muscle of his chest and the faded silver line of an old knife scar near his collarbone. In his right hand, held casually down by his thigh, was a semi-automatic handgun.
His eyes swept the room—from Gia’s tear-stained face, to Frankie clinging to Bea’s forearm, to the crimson drops beading against Bea’s pale skin.
His grip on the weapon tightened until his knuckles went white.
“What happened?” Dominic’s voice was a low growl, vibrant with a protective rage that made the air feel thin.
“A night terror,” Bea said without looking back at him. She kept her focus entirely on Frankie, who had buried her face directly into the soft warmth of Bea’s side, shuddering with residual sobs. “Lower the gun, Mr. Bellmore. You’re scaring them more than the shadows are.”
Dominic paused. Slowly, he engaged the safety with a practiced click of his thumb and slipped the weapon into the waistband of his trousers. He walked into the room, his heavy tread muted by the carpet, stopping just behind Bea.
His presence was overwhelming. He smelled of cedarwood, bitter espresso, and clean, cold night air. Bea could feel the heat radiating off his massive chest against her back.
“Frankie,” Dominic murmured, his voice softening into something raw and clumsy, the tone of a man trying to handle spun glass with armored gauntlets. “Francesca. Look at your father.”
Frankie didn't move. She burrowed deeper into Bea’s navy nightgown, clutching the soft cotton in two tight fists.
Dominic’s jaw twitched. A flash of utter, agonizing helplessness crossed his austere face—a look that showed the hollowed-out soul of a father who ruled an underworld empire but could not comfort his own nine-year-old child.
Bea felt the silent ache between them. She reached out with her free hand and patted the edge of the bed.
“Sit down, Dominic,” she said softly.
This time, it wasn't an order; it was an invitation.
Dominic hesitated, then sank his heavy frame onto the opposite edge of the mattress. The bed settled beneath their combined weight.
“She said something about water,” Bea said quietly, keeping her hand rhythmically stroking Frankie’s hair. “She said, ‘Don't let the water in.’ Has she had this specific dream before?”
Dominic’s expression closed down instantly, turning into a mask of cold slate. “They have nightmares. Harold gives them chamomile tea.”
“Tea doesn't fix trauma, Mr. Bellmore,” Bea said, turning her head to look him straight in the eyes. In the dim light of the bedside lamp, the sharp angles of his face looked carved from iron. “Their mother didn't die of an illness, did she?”
Dominic leaned forward, his face inches from Bea’s. The raw power of him was suffocating, but Bea didn't back down an inch.
“My wife’s death is not part of your curriculum, Miss Hale,” he whispered, his tone a lethal warning.
“It is when it lives in this bedroom every night,” Bea countered fiercely, refusing to drop her voice. “You hired me because six educated women ran away. They didn't run because your daughters are bad; they ran because this house is an open wound, and you’re acting like a drill sergeant instead of a father who’s bleeding out alongside them.”
Dominic stared at her. His eyes dropped to her lips, then to the defiant, fiery intelligence in her gaze, and finally to the red scratches on her arm where his daughter was still clinging to her for dear life.
“She drowned,” Dominic said. The words sounded like they were torn through broken glass. “Three years ago. A bridge outside Montreal. Her car went through the barrier into the river during a storm.”
From the other bed, Gia made a small, choked sound.
Bea looked over. “Gia?”
The little girl didn't look at her father. She pulled her knees up to her chest, her dark hair shielding her face. “Mom was the best driver in the world,” Gia whispered into the darkness. “She drove the sports cars on the track. She knew how to turn into a skid. She told me she could outrun anything.”
Gia lifted her head, looking straight at Bea with a terrifying, ancient fury in her nine-year-old eyes.
“She didn't skid. Someone cut the lines. And she left a box in the music room, but Daddy locked the door and took the keys away!”
Dominic stood up abruptly, his chair legs scraping violently against the floorboards. “Gia! *Basta!*”
The Italian command cracked through the room like thunder.
Gia shrank back, but her eyes remained defiantly locked on Bea.
Bea slowly turned her head toward the imposing man standing over them. “The locked room in the west corridor. The one with the brass crest on the door.”
“That room is sealed,” Dominic said coldly, his shoulders hunched like a gargoyle’s. “Permanently. By my order. Anyone who enters that wing is terminated immediately. Do I make myself clear, Miss Hale?”
Bea looked down at Frankie, whose breathing had finally evened out into deep, exhausted sleep. Then she looked back up at Dominic Bellmore, the ruthless boss who thought he could lock his grief behind mahogany doors and iron deadbolts.
“Perfectly clear, Mr. Bellmore,” Bea said calmly, though her mind was already racing. “Now go back to bed. I’m staying here until morning.”
Dominic stood frozen for several heartbeats, his eyes burning into hers with a mixture of rage, fascination, and an unbearable, electric tension that seemed to shrink the space between them to nothing.
May you like
Without another word, he turned on his heel and disappeared into the shadows of the corridor.
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