Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the East Wing
The next three days felt like walking through a minefield. Every time Josie looked at Dante across the dining room when she served breakfast—steaming platters of eggs, pancetta, and fresh brioche—her stomach twisted into knots.
Dante sat at the massive oak dining table, flanked by his wife Elena—a woman whose beauty was as cold and sharp as a stiletto—and his younger brother Marco, a hot-headed lieutenant who spent meals staring at his phone or arguing about dock tariffs.
"The soup was cold yesterday, Josie," Elena noted smoothly, her diamond rings clicking against her coffee cup as she stirred in half a spoonful of raw sugar. "Mother Rosaria complained that the broth tasted like it had been sitting on the stove for hours."
Josie froze, a silver coffee pot hovering over Marco’s cup. "I brought it up at six sharp, Signora. Fresh from the pot."
"She’s losing her mind," Marco muttered without looking up from his screen. "Old age makes everything taste like tin. Just dump it and give her whatever. Who cares? She hasn't left that room since the stroke two years ago."
"She is the matriarch of this family, Marco," Dante said, his voice dropping an octave, instantly silencing his brother. He didn't look at Marco; his gaze remained fixed on his newspaper, though Josie could see the tension in the set of his broad shoulders. "She eats what we eat. She lives how she lived. Make sure the kitchen follows the routine, Josie."
"Yes, Mr. Santangelo," Josie whispered.
That afternoon, while the rest of the household was occupied—Elena at a charity luncheon in Newport and the guards rotating shifts at the front gate—Josie did something she had vowed never to do. She bypassed the kitchen entirely, walked up the grand staircase past the silent oil portraits of dead Santangelo patriarchs, and climbed all the way to the third floor.
She didn't have a tray. Her hands were empty.
When she reached the heavy oak door, she didn't knock. She pressed her ear directly against the thick timber.
Inside, there was no shuffling of slippers. There was no raspy breathing. There was only a rhythmic, metallic tapping—tap, tap, pause, tap—like a trapped beetle trying to break through glass.
Josie pulled a heavy iron skeleton key from her pocket. It was an old house; Marta had left a ring of spares in the pantry for emergencies, claiming they opened every interior door on the estate. Her hand shook as she slid the key into the brass deadbolt.
It turned with a heavy, oiled click.
She pushed the door open. The rush of trapped air that hit her face was foul, thick with the smell of unwashed linen, stale medicine, and absolute, crushing despair.
"Signora Rosaria?" Josie called softly, stepping into the dimness.
The room was vast, draped in heavy velvet curtains that were drawn tight against the afternoon sun, keeping the world permanently locked outside. In the center of a massive four-poster mahogany bed lay a figure so small she looked like a pile of discarded winter coats under the blankets.
A pair of milky, cataract-clouded eyes turned slowly toward the sound of the door.
Rosaria Santangelo was not an old woman winding down her days in peaceful retirement. Her face was bruised—a deep, ugly purple shadow swelling across her left cheekbone and jawline. Her lips were cracked and dry, bleeding slightly at the corner.
"You..." Rosaria croaked, her voice like grinding stones. "You’re not... Marta."
Josie rushed across the room, dropping to her knees beside the mattress. She reached out, her fingers trembling as she touched the old woman’s frail, cold hand.
"Signora... what happened to your face? Who did this to you?"
Rosaria’s milky eyes widened with sudden, animal panic. She gripped Josie’s wrist with surprising strength, her fingernails digging into Josie’s skin.
"Listen to me," Rosaria hissed, pulling Josie’s face down close to her own. Her breath smelled of bitter tea and terror. "Dante... he doesn't visit me to check on my health. He comes to make sure I’m still breathing. Because if I die in my bed, the will opens. And if the will opens, the entire syndicate—every dock, every warehouse, every blood-soaked dollar—goes to the orphanage trust my husband set up forty years ago."
Josie’s breath caught in her throat. "The... the trust?"
"My husband hated what Dante became," Rosaria whispered, tears carving clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "He wrote a contingency clause. If a Santangelo is convicted of racketeering, or if the family falls out of legitimacy before I pass away, everything goes to the city. To the public. To the state."
Rosaria’s grip tightened until it hurt. "They didn't lock me up because I’m sick, child. They locked me up because I’m the only one left alive who can sign the amendment cutting Dante out completely. They’ve been starving me. Slow. Piece by piece. They want everyone to think I faded away naturally."
Josie stared at the broken, battered matriarch of the most powerful family in New England, and the blood ran cold in her veins.
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"They’re killing you," Josie whispered.
"And every night," Rosaria wept, her voice breaking into a dry, jagged sob, "they make you wash the plates to wash away the poison they put in the soup before it ever reaches my lips. Because if I ate it... I’d be dead in an hour."
