Chapter 5 - The Glass Cage
The transformation was swift, thorough, and terrifyingly expensive.
Within forty-eight hours, Ava Monroe was no longer wearing a stained polyester waitress vest. She was moved out of the drafty Dorchester apartment—which was simultaneously undergoing a complete, anonymous structural renovation—and into a secure guest suite inside Dante Salvatore’s waterfront fortress.
Her new "job" turned out to be far more complex than serving coffee.
Dante didn’t want a maid. He wanted a ghost in the machine.
Seated in his private study behind dual computer monitors, Ava was trained by syndicate accountants and security analysts to audit the shell corporations funneling money through Boston’s commercial real estate market—the very real estate empire Celeste Vance’s family used to fund their high-society lifestyle.
“Why me?” Ava asked one evening, as Dante stood behind her chair, reviewing a spreadsheet tracking offshore accounts linked to the corrupt city councilmen who had tried to bankrupt her foster mother’s neighborhood years ago.
“Because you are invisible to them,” Dante said, his breath warm against the back of her neck. “To Boston’s elite, waitresses and working-class women don't exist. They leave doors unlocked around you. They talk freely when you pour their wine.”
Ava turned her head, looking up at him. They were standing dangerously close now. The cold, impenetrable mafia boss who terrified the entire East Coast had spent the last two weeks ensuring Mila’s braces were adjusted by the best surgeon in the country and making sure nobody ever looked down on Ava again.
“And what about you, Dante?” Ava whispered softly. “Why are you keeping me here? Is this about the kiss?”
May you like
Dante’s dark eyes softened for a fraction of a second, a rare, vulnerable crack in his iron armor.
“I spent thirty years building walls to keep the world out, Ava,” he murmured, his hand resting gently on the back of her chair. “And then a waitress walked across a ballroom, kissed me like she had nothing left to lose, and reminded me what a real heartbeat feels like.”
