Chapter 1 - The Silver Lighter
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Eleven pieces of crystal. Wren Calloway counted them in her head as she scrubbed grease from a silver platter in the damp darkness of the cellar pantry. Her knees were raw through her soaked stockings, and the cold champagne that had drenched her apron hours ago had dried into a stiff, sticky crust.
Beneath her skin, the old burn along her left ribs throbbed with a slow, dull rhythm. It was a phantom ache, born in a burning villa on the coast of Sicily five years ago.
Above her head, the heavy oak floorboards of Wexley Hall groaned under the weight of three hundred powerful guests. Up there, the truce held. Up there, men in five-thousand-dollar suits made treaties over scotch while their wives wore diamonds worth more than a servant’s entire life.
Down here, Wren was supposed to be invisible. A ghost in a gray uniform.
She closed her eyes and saw the image that had frozen her heart on the grand staircase landing an hour ago: Damian Ricci standing alone in the firelight, staring down at a scratched silver lighter in his palm.
It was dark along one edge where the metal had been scorched by an explosion.
Five years ago, in a rain-drenched alley behind a Palermo warehouse, a twenty-seven-year-old Damian Ricci had been ambushed by five Donati assassins. He had fought like a demon, but he had been bleeding out, pinned against a brick wall with two blades at his throat.
Wren had been nineteen then. She was the hidden blade of the Calloway family, trained in secret to move without sound and strike without mercy. She had dropped three of the attackers in twenty seconds flat, using a ancient, forbidden martial art that destroyed joints and stopped hearts with minimal force.
She hadn't stayed for his gratitude. She had thrown his own scorched lighter onto his bleeding chest, murmured a warning into the dark rain, and vanished into the night.
Now, the man who had swallowed every mob family on the East Coast was standing in the hall above her. And he was still carrying the lighter.
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"Calloway!" Mrs. Crane’s harsh voice shattered the memory. The housekeeper stood in the pantry doorway, her arms crossed tight over her chest. "Stop staring at the wall like a half-wit. Grab the silver tea service for the VIP study upstairs. Lord knows why Mr. Ricci wants tea at midnight, but if you drop a single saucer, I’ll personally throw you into the snow."
Wren lowered her head, hiding the lethal focus in her eyes behind a lock of brown hair. "Yes, Mrs. Crane."
