It was a stormy Tuesday night, the rain lashing violently against the floor-to-ceiling windows of my study, when Luke, my second-in-command and the only man who still looked me in the eye, dropped a heavy metal clipboard onto my mahogany desk. The sharp clatter echoed through the cavernous room.
“The physical therapist quit,” Luke said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble devoid of any surprise. “Third one this month, Danny. You threw a solid glass paperweight at his head.”
I didn’t look up from the ledger I was pretending to read. “He talked to me like a child, Luke. He used that high-pitched, patronizing tone people reserve for toddlers and golden retrievers. Next time, I’ll aim for the bridge of the nose instead of the wall.”
Luke didn’t flinch. He leaned his heavy palms on the edge of the desk, leaning in until he forced me to meet his gaze. “This place isn’t a fortress anymore, boss. It’s a grave. And you are burying yourself inside it, brick by miserable brick. You can’t keep running this syndicate on pure spite.”
I growled a colorful threat, but Luke just turned and walked out, leaving the door ajar. He knew I wouldn’t follow.
That same night, the atmosphere of my decaying empire shifted imperceptibly. Emma Carter arrived.
She was twenty-six years old, visibly exhausted, carrying a plastic bucket of cleaning supplies as if it weighed a hundred pounds. My security team had hired her through a third-rate agency. I later learned she was working a brutal ten-hour diner shift, smelling of stale grease and cheap coffee, before taking two consecutive buses in the pouring rain just to scrub my floors for thirty dollars an hour.
I first encountered her at one in the morning. I was wheeling myself down the dimly lit private hallway of the east wing—a restricted area my staff knew better than to enter. Yet, there she was, on her hands and knees, scrubbing the oak baseboards with a rag and a toothbrush. Her uniform was slightly too large, her dark hair tied up in a messy, careless knot, and the sharp scent of bleach hung heavily in the air around her.
