Chapter 4 - The Reckoning in the Hallway
Matteo cleared his throat, keeping his voice extremely low.
“Mrs. Sloan held a staff meeting yesterday morning,” Matteo revealed, looking around to ensure no servants were within earshot. “She warned the female staff against ‘inappropriate conduct’ with management. Since then, the staff has been... excluding Miss Holloway. Calling her an opportunist behind her back. Saying she used her size and fake clumsiness to manipulate your attention.”
The air in the grand hallway seemed to drop twenty degrees in an instant.
Dominic didn't roar. He didn't smash anything.
He simply stood there, his slate-grey eyes turning into two pieces of razor-sharp glacier ice. The raw, terrifying pressure radiating off his body made even Matteo take a half-step back in self-preservation.
“An opportunist,” Dominic repeated, the words tasting like copper and ash on his tongue. “They dared to say that about her in my house?”
“Mrs. Sloan implied it directly to her face, boss,” Matteo added quietly.
Dominic turned on his heel and walked straight toward the central staff wing, his long black coat billowing behind him like the wings of a hunting falcon.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon—the hour when the entire household staff gathered in the lower reception gallery to receive their weekly duty assignments. Over thirty employees, including cooks, footmen, drivers, and maids, stood in neat rows while Victoria Sloan stood at the podium with her ledger.
BANG.
The heavy double doors of the gallery were kicked open so hard the brass handles slammed violently into the wood-paneled walls.
Every head snapped around. Gasping erupted through the crowd as Dominic Castellano walked into the room.
He never came to the staff quarters. Never.
Victoria Sloan instantly adjusted her posture, putting on a sweet, respectful smile as she stepped away from the podium. “Mr. Castellano! Is there an issue with the west wing? I can personally—”
Dominic ignored her completely.
His eyes swept over the thirty frozen employees until he located Marin, standing in the very back row, trying her best to blend into the shadows near the linen closet.
Dominic walked directly through the center of the crowd. The servants scrambled backward to clear a wide path for him, their faces pale with sudden, blinding panic.
He stopped directly in front of Marin.
The sheer physical contrast between them was striking—his massive, imposing frame tailored in dark cashmere and leather, towering over her soft, round, plush figure dressed in a plain grey apron.
Dominic reached out. In front of thirty stunned, silent employees, he took her right hand into his massive, warm palm, lifting it gently.
"Dominic...?" Marin whispered, her dark eyes wide with shock, her voice trembling.
Dominic didn't look at anyone else. He pulled a thick, platinum ring from his own pinky finger—a heavy, signet ring bearing the crest of the ancient Castellano family—and slid it firmly onto Marin’s ring finger. It was slightly too large, resting heavy and cold against her soft skin.
A collective, sharp gasp echoed through the room.
Dominic looked up, his slate-grey eyes scanning the frozen faces of every employee in the gallery, finally locking onto the horrified, pale face of Victoria Sloan.
“Listen to me very carefully,” Dominic announced, his voice reverberating through the hall with the absolute, terrifying force of a decree.
“Marin Holloway is no longer a maid in this house.”
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He wrapped his fingers tightly around hers, pulling her gently to his side, his arm coming around her waist in a public, fiercely possessive grip.
“She is my fiancée. She is the future Donna of this city. And if any person in this house—or in this entire city—ever speaks a word of disrespect to her again, I will personally throw them into the river.”
