Chapter 1 - THE MAN WHO CALLED ME NOBODY
The fifth bullet drove me to my knees.
Rain hammered the stone driveway as I folded over Marco DeLuca’s mother, using my body to cover hers while gunfire cracked across the estate.
Isabella screamed my name.
I heard tires squeal beyond the iron gates. Men shouted from the mansion steps. Somewhere behind me, glass exploded.
But all I could see was the red dot that had been trembling across Isabella’s white coat seconds earlier.
My name is Lena Carter.
For eleven months, two weeks, and four days, I had perfected the art of being invisible inside the DeLuca penthouse.
Every morning at 5:30, I woke in my narrow room near the service entrance, tied back my hair, and dressed in a plain black caregiver’s uniform.
No perfume.
No jewelry except the small silver necklace my younger brother had given me before his accident.
No unnecessary conversation.
Powerful people rarely harmed what they never noticed.
My job was caring for Marco’s seventy-one-year-old mother.
Isabella DeLuca’s heart was failing. Fluid gathered in her lungs, and some mornings her hands trembled so badly she could not lift a coffee cup.
“Don’t hover,” she snapped during my first week.
“I’m not hovering.”
“You’re standing three feet away and watching me breathe.”
“I’m making sure you continue.”
She stared at me.
Then she laughed.
That was how I earned her trust.
On bad days, I checked her blood pressure, helped her walk, and placed pills into hands that hated needing them. On good days, I stepped back and let her pretend she needed no one.
I understood pride better than she knew.
Every paycheck I earned went toward my younger brother Danny’s rehabilitation. A construction accident had damaged his spine two years earlier. Insurance covered the hospital stay, but not the long months of therapy that determined whether he would walk without braces.
I could not afford mistakes.
Marco barely acknowledged me.
At thirty-eight, he controlled the DeLuca organization with a calm more frightening than shouting. Armed men lowered their voices when he entered. Politicians returned his calls. Business owners who hated him still stood when he approached their tables.
I preferred being beneath his notice.
Then, three days before the shooting, he humiliated me in front of the entire household.
I was carrying Isabella’s medication through the marble foyer when a folder slapped against the floor.
“Who authorized this?” Marco demanded.
Vincent Caruso, his security chief, stood near the staircase.
“She passed the background check.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I kept moving.
Marco caught the back of my collar and pulled me around so abruptly that the medication tray rattled.
Every guard, housekeeper, and assistant froze.
His dark eyes locked on mine.
“You have debt. A brother in rehabilitation. No husband. No influential family. Yet you have lived under my roof for almost a year with access to my mother’s medication.”
Anger surged through me, but I swallowed it.
“I take care of Mrs. DeLuca.”
“You’re staff.”
His voice was cold and clear enough for everyone to hear.
“Do not confuse usefulness with importance.”
The words landed harder than I wanted them to.
I bent down, gathered my file, and checked the time.
“Your mother’s medication is due in four minutes. May I go now?”
His jaw tightened.
He released me.
Isabella witnessed the entire scene from the balcony.
That night, she found me packing.
“You’re leaving?”
“After your cardiology appointment Friday.”
“Because my son is an idiot?”
“Because your son made it clear what I am.”
Isabella lowered herself into the chair beside my bed.
“Marco thinks cruelty is the same as caution.”
“That’s his problem.”
“It became yours when you walked into this house.”
I folded another shirt.
“I need this job, Mrs. DeLuca. I do not need to be publicly searched like a thief.”
She watched me for a long moment.
“Stay through the weekend.”
“Why?”
“Because something is wrong.”
Her voice had changed.
“Vincent replaced three members of the security team this month. Marco thinks it is routine. I do not.”
“Have you told him?”
“He trusts Vincent more than he trusts blood.”
“Then tell Marco yourself.”
“He will say I am sick, frightened, and imagining things.”
I looked at her.
“Are you?”
“No.”
She reached into her robe and handed me a small black keycard.
“This opens the old security archive beneath the east garage.”
“Why are you giving it to me?”
“Because people notice my son. They notice Vincent. They do not notice you.”
I should have refused.
Instead, after midnight, I entered the archive and copied access records onto the card.
Someone had disabled the estate’s outer cameras five times in two weeks.
Each interruption occurred during Caruso’s shift.
Before I could study more, footsteps approached.
I slipped the card into the lining of my uniform and left through the service stairwell.
Two days later, rain began hammering the estate as I escorted Isabella toward the waiting convoy.
The black SUVs idled beside the steps.
Guards scanned the grounds.
Caruso stood near the mansion doors.
Then I saw the red dot.
It moved across Isabella’s coat and stopped over her heart.
“Get down!”
I shoved her behind a concrete pillar.
The first bullet tore through my shoulder.
The second struck my side.
The third spun me halfway around.
I stayed standing.
Isabella screamed as I covered her with everything I had left.
A fourth shot hit.
Then the fifth.
My knees struck the flooded pavement.
Marco reached me seconds later.
He dropped into the water in a suit worth more than everything I owned and pulled me across his lap.
His hands pressed desperately against my soaked uniform.
“Stay with me.”
Even terrified, Marco DeLuca gave orders.
My vision blurred.
“I’m just staff.”
His face broke.
“No. Lena, look at me.”
I looked over his shoulder.
Caruso stood beneath the mansion lanterns.
He had drawn his gun.
But he was not aiming toward the attackers.
He was aiming directly at Marco’s back.
May you like
I grabbed Marco’s wet lapel.
“Behind you.”
