Chapter 2 - The Interrogation
Ivy’s stomach dropped into a cold abyss. The kitchen doors were never locked. There was never a reason to lock them in a house guarded by thirty armed men.
Carmine walked smoothly toward the central granite island, placing his crystal glass onto the hard surface without making a sound. He moved with a slow, predatory precision—a man completely comfortable in his own authority. He was not a overly massive man, but he possessed a lean, wiry density, forged by decades of street survival and absolute discipline. That quiet, contained efficiency made him far more terrifying than a brute twice his size.
He closed the distance between them until he was standing barely two feet away. At this proximity, the scent of expensive sandalwood soap, rich tobacco, and the faint, unmistakable smell of gun oil enveloped her.
Carmine reached out his hand past her body. Ivy flinched violently, pulling her head back and squeezing her eyes shut, bracing for a blow.
Instead, she heard a soft metallic click. Carmine had reached past her shoulder simply to turn off the dripping faucet.
The sudden absence of running water left the kitchen in an suffocating silence.
"Look at me."
His voice was a low, velvet baritone. It carried no anger, but it held the absolute weight of a command that had never once been disobeyed.
Ivy kept her head pressed firmly against her chest, her dark hair falling forward to cover her neck. "Sir, please... I am almost done with the dishes. I am so sorry for disturbing your night."
"Ivy."
The sound of her own name falling from his lips sent a shiver straight down her spine. The boss was not supposed to know the names of the basement staff. They were meant to be invisible entities who made beds and cleared plates.
"Look up."
Slowly, her muscles trembling, Ivy forced her head up. She kept her gaze fixed strictly on the silver buttons of his dress shirt, terrified to make direct eye contact.
Carmine raised his right hand. Before she could recoil a second time, his calloused knuckles lightly brushed her uninjured right cheek. His fingers slid down to the edge of her jawbone, applying just enough firm, steady pressure to tilt her head directly upward into the bright overhead fluorescent light.
His touch was surprisingly warm, almost delicate, yet his grip was an immovable vice.
Carmine’s grey eyes narrowed as he systematically examined the damage. He noted the dark, purplish-black swelling surrounding her left eye, the dried blood caked in the corner of her split lip, and the deep, angry red finger marks pressed into the soft tissue of her throat.
For ten excruciating seconds, he said nothing. His face remained a terrifying, unreadable mask of stone. But Ivy could feel the air in the room dropping degrees by the second. The atmospheric pressure around Carmine had shifted; the quiet businessman had vanished, replaced by the lethal ruler of the city's underworld.
"Who did this?" he asked softly.
The question was quiet, but it carried the chilling resonance of an execution order.
Ivy tried to swallow, but her throat muscles burned in pain. Every survival instinct she possessed screamed at her to lie. In Carmine’s brutal hierarchy, small people who made trouble were discarded. The men who guarded this estate were dangerous, violent sociopaths. If she accused one of them, her body would likely end up at the bottom of the river long before any justice was served.
"Nobody," she choked out, her voice barely a breath. "I... I was careless, sir. I fell down the service stairs near the back entrance. I am very clumsy."
Carmine’s thumb shifted slightly, resting just beneath the dark bruise on her jawline.
"You fell?" he asked softly.
"Yes, sir."
"You fell down a flight of concrete stairs... and the stairs reached up, wrapped ten fingers around your neck, and attempted to strangle you?"
His tone remained completely conversational, free of sarcasm or mockery. That matter-of-fact delivery made the dynamic infinitely more terrifying.
"I caught my neck against the wooden handrail as I dropped," she lied desperately, a single tear cutting a clear path through the dirt and dried blood on her face. "Please, Mr. Moretti. It is nothing. It was my own fault. I will clean the floor, I will finish my work, and I will stay out of sight."
Carmine stared down at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, he released her jaw and stepped back, placing both hands into the pockets of his dark trousers.
"Do you truly believe I am an idiot, Ivy?"
"No, sir! Never," she whispered frantically.
"Then why are you standing in my kitchen, dripping blood on my floor, and blatantly insulting my intelligence?"
The quiet rebuke hit her harder than a physical blow. Ivy wrapped her arms tightly around her middle, instinctively trying to shield her cracked ribs from the cold air.
"Because I need this job!" The confession tore out of her throat before she could filter it. "I need the money, Mr. Moretti! If I cause trouble, if I am seen as a liability, you will fire me. I owe over fifty thousand dollars to the hospital for my mother’s cancer treatments. The debt collectors threatened to seize my small apartment by the end of the year if I miss a single payment. If I lose this employment, I have nowhere to go. I lose everything."
She stopped abruptly, breathless and horrified by her own outburst. She had just poured out her private, pathetic misery to the most feared criminal boss in the state.
Carmine did not react with anger. He pulled a slim silver cigarette case from his trouser pocket, clicked it open, and selected a single white cigarette. The golden flame of a Zippo lighter flashed in the dim light, momentarily illuminating the hard, ruthless angles of his face.
He took a slow draw, blowing a thin ribbon of grey smoke toward the industrial ventilation hood above the stove.
"Do you believe the animal who did this to you will stop simply because you were quiet?" Carmine asked, his voice steady.
Ivy looked down at her waterlogged shoes. "He was drunk... he made a mistake."
"Men like that do not make mistakes," Carmine corrected her coldly. "They make choices. And they continue to make those choices until someone larger comes along and breaks their hands."
He took another drag, his piercing eyes locked onto her trembling form.
"You work inside my house," Carmine continued, his voice taking on an unmistakable edge of absolute ownership. "You eat my bread, you walk my halls, and you wear my uniform. That places you directly under my protection. Whether you clean my floors or manage my offshore accounts is entirely irrelevant to me."
He stepped closer once more, his shadow completely swallowing her.
"Someone breached my perimeter, laid hands on an individual under my roof, and operated under the delusion that there would be no consequences. That is not just an assault on you, Ivy. That is an insult to my authority."
"It didn't happen inside the main house!" Ivy pleaded, panic fluttering in her chest. "It was outside, by the dumpsters in the back alley while I was taking out the heavy trash bags. Please, sir... just let it go. I will buy makeup tomorrow. No one will ever see it."
Carmine reached out, his hand grasping her shoulder with firm, unyielding strength, forcing her to look directly into his eyes.
"I am not asking for your permission, and I am not giving you a choice," he said, every word dripping with absolute finality. "Give me the name right now, and you can go back to your dishes. You will go home, and you will never have to worry about this person again."
His dark eyes held hers with terrifying intensity.
"Or you can refuse. If you refuse, my security team will pull every frame of surveillance footage from the alley cameras within five minutes. I will have his identity before the sun rises. But if you force me to hunt down the truth myself, I will fire you before dawn for lying to my face. Choose."
Ivy gasped, her mind spinning. The trap was absolute. Carmine wasn't bluffing; she could see the cold, ruthless calculation behind his eyes. He was a man who meant every word he spoke.
"If I tell you..." Ivy whispered, her voice shaking violently. "He will kill me."
"He will not," Carmine stated simply.
"You don't understand... he carries a gun! He is one of your—" She bit her lip hard, catching herself a second too late.
Carmine’s eyes narrowed into dangerous, icy slits. The air in the room became instantly suffocating.
"One of my men."
It was not a question.
May you like
Ivy closed her eyes, defeated, exhausted, and bruised beyond repair. The silence stretched out between them, heavy and absolute, until she finally surrendered to the terrifying protection of the monster standing before her.
"Rocco," she whispered. "It was Rocco."
