Chapter 2 - THE WOLF IN THE STUDY HALLDominic Mercer stood towering above her in the dim morning light of the hallway, his black coat still damp from the coastal rain, his ice-blue eyes completely devoid of warmth. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't shouting. He just looked at her the way an apex predator looks at a wounded rabbit stumbling into its den.
Brooke’s mind raced, desperate for a lifeline, a lie, a tearful excuse. She forced her lips to tremble, letting her eyes well up with instant, practiced moisture.
“Dominic!” she gasped, spinning around and throwing her arms around his chest, pressing her face against the wool of his coat. “You’re back! Oh, thank God, you’re back early! I was so worried about the security alerts on the estate network—someone tried to breach the main firewall from an external IP address this morning, and I came up here to check the study to make sure your files were safe!”
It was a brilliant lie, constructed in milliseconds. It turned her suspicious presence at the study door into an act of loyal, protective devotion.
She waited for his arms to wrap around her, for his deep voice to soothe her and tell her everything was fine.
Instead, Dominic didn't move an inch. He stood like a granite statue, letting her cling to him for five agonizing seconds before he reached down, caught her wrists, and gently—but with absolute, inescapable force—peeled her hands away from his chest.
“The estate network firewall hasn't logged a single external ping in forty-eight hours, Brooke,” Dominic said softly, his voice cutting through the silence like a scalpel.
Brooke’s breath caught in her throat. “What? How could you know that?”
“Because I check the server logs before my feet hit the floor every morning,” Dominic replied, stepping back so there was a clear two-foot barrier of cold air between them. He looked down at the master keycard still clutched in her trembling fingers. “And more importantly, the system log shows that the administrative override on this study door was just triggered by a copied master keycard. The exact card issued to estate management—which somehow ended up in your pocket.”
The blood drained entirely from Brooke’s face. She looked down at the card in her hand as if it had suddenly turned into a live snake.
“I—I found it!” she stammered, her voice cracking for real this time, the terror leaking through her immaculate facade. “On the floor near the kitchen! I was just bringing it to security, I swear to God, Dominic! You have to believe me!”
Dominic didn't answer right away. He reached out, his long fingers plucking the keycard from her numb grip. He slipped it into his breast pocket, his eyes never leaving her face.
“You’ve been very busy this week, haven't you?” Dominic asked quietly, sliding his hands into his trouser pockets.
“What are you talking about?” Brooke forced a shaky, defensive laugh, trying to regain some fraction of her footing. “I’ve been planning our wedding! Flowers, caterers, seating charts for three hundred elite guests! While you’ve been flying back and forth across the Atlantic playing corporate warlord, I’ve been holding this entire household together!”
“Is that why you were threatening my sister at five in the morning?”
The words dropped into the hallway like a lead weight.
Brooke staggered back half a step, her back hitting the paneled wall. “Natalie? What did she—what did that ungrateful woman tell you? She’s unstable, Dominic! She’s been grieving, she’s paranoid, she thinks everyone is trying to take her husband’s place! I went down there to check on her, and she started screaming at me about the east cottage!”
“She didn't tell me anything, Brooke,” Dominic said calmly.
Brooke blinked, confused. “Then how—?”
“I heard you,” Dominic said.
Silence descended upon the hallway so absolute that the distant sound of waves crashing against the Rhode Island cliffs far below could be heard echoing through the windows.
“You... you heard me?” Brooke whispered, her voice barely audible.
“Every word,” Dominic said. “I heard you break Emma’s coffee cup. I heard you tell Natalie she and my nine-year-old nephew had to be off this property by breakfast tomorrow. And most importantly, Brooke... I heard you claim that my late mother’s trust property belongs to you.”
Brooke’s chest heaved. The mask was gone. The sweet, cultured, high-society bride-to-range had vanished, leaving only a cornered animal staring into the jaws of a trap.
“You’re letting a maid and a hysterical sister dictate how you treat your future wife?!” Brooke suddenly snapped, her voice rising in shrill panic as anger flared to mask her terror. “After everything I’ve sacrificed for you? After all the social circles I’ve navigated on your behalf? If you cancel this wedding, Dominic, do you have any idea what the press will do to you? The scandal will wipe out half your board partnerships before the quarter ends!”
Dominic looked at her—really looked at her—as if seeing a stranger wearing someone else’s skin.
“Let’s clear something up right now, Brooke,” Dominic said, stepping so close she could feel the heat radiating off his coat. “My board partnerships exist because I control the liquidity, the transport routes, and the political leverage in three states. No newspaper in America prints a negative word about me unless I give them permission.”
He leaned down, his lips inches from her ear.
“And as for the wedding?” Dominic whispered coldly. “Consider it postponed indefinitely. Until we figure out what happened to my mother’s trust fund... and why your brother Julian’s offshore accounts suddenly received three million dollars from a corporate routing number bearing my mother’s signature.”
Brooke went entirely limp.
Julian’s accounts. He knew about Julian too.
Before she could speak another word, Dominic turned his back on her, unlocked the study door with his thumbprint scanner, stepped inside, and closed the heavy mahogany door in her face with a soft, final click.
May you like
Brooke stood alone in the hallway, her fingernails digging deep into the palms of her hands until skin broke and hot blood welled up against her skin.
She wasn't going down without a fight. If Dominic wanted war, she and Julian would give him a war that would burn the entire Mercer empire to the ground.
