SHE WAS HIRED TO COMFORT A DYING MAFIA BOSS—THEN A STRAY CAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

Chapter 2: The House of Cade

Dorothy led her down a marble hallway lined with oil paintings and heavy oak doors, moving with a straight back and sharp eyes that missed nothing despite her seventy-eight years. Near the end of the corridor, she stopped Celeste with a raised hand. Through a half-open door, three men in black suits stood before a bed where a gaunt figure lay on his side, his voice cutting the air like a blade despite the frailty of his body.

“Tell Volkov that if his men cross Halstead again, I’ll send them back in body bags. Now get out.”

The men filed past Celeste with cold, assessing eyes, and for the first time since signing the contract, she understood exactly where she’d come. This wasn’t a hospital. This was the seat of the most dangerous family in Chicago, and the dying man in that bed could still make a room freeze with a few hoarse sentences.

Over tea in the sitting room, Dorothy laid out the household: Priscilla, Elias’s stepmother, cold as ice and always resentful that Elias stood between her own son and power. Finn, Elias’s younger half-brother, twenty-five, gentle and fiercely loyal. Bianca, Finn’s wife, twenty-four, beautiful, and endlessly, perfectly sweet. “Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, Miss Harlow,” Dorothy said. “That’s the only advice I’ll give you for free.”

When Celeste asked why she’d been chosen — a nurse no hospital in the city would touch — Dorothy smiled, sharp as a blade. She’d gone to the clinic herself a week earlier, faked chest pains, and Celeste had told her within three minutes that she was lying. “You weren’t afraid to tell a stranger she was lying to her face,” Dorothy said. “My grandson needs exactly that. Not another nurse who nods and runs the moment he raises his voice.”