Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Barrington
The front gates of the Russo estate in Barrington opened like the jaws of an iron vault.
As the black Lincoln town car carried me up the winding, tree-lined drive, the sheer scale of the property pressed down on my chest. Set amidst forty acres of dense oak forest, the main house was a sprawling limestone manor that looked like a European chateau transplanted onto the shores of a private lake. Armed security cameras tracked the vehicle’s approach from every angle, their small red lenses blinking like mechanical eyes in the gray morning mist.
I was wearing my best thrift-store blazer—navy blue, slightly tight across the shoulders—and carrying a single duffel bag containing two weeks of clothes, a well-worn notebook, and my nursing license framed in cheap plastic.
The car stopped beneath a grand porte-cochère.
A tall woman in her late fifties with iron-gray hair pulled back into a severe bun stepped out from the heavy oak double doors. Her name was Mrs. Higgins, the head housekeeper, and her face was carved from the same uncompromising granite as the estate's exterior walls.
"Miss Bennett," she said, her voice dry as autumn leaves. "Mr. Russo briefed me on your arrival. Follow me."
She didn't offer to take my bag. I didn't expect her to.
I followed her through a labyrinth of marble-floored hallways, past priceless oil paintings of men who looked remarkably like Dominic, and up a grand spiral staircase that made my apartment building look like a matchbox.
We stopped outside a heavy mahogany door on the second floor of the east wing.
"Your quarters are adjacent to Madam Russo's suite," Mrs. Higgins explained, her hand resting on the brass knob. "Your duties begin immediately. Breakfast is at seven sharp. You do not enter Mr. Russo's private study on the third floor unless you are explicitly summoned. Do you understand?"
"I understand," I said.
She pushed the door open.
The room was larger than my entire apartment in Chicago. A plush queen-size bed sat against the far wall, draped in heavy cream-colored linens, with a window overlooking the frost-covered gardens below. It was clean, quiet, and profoundly lonely.
"Change into your uniform," Mrs. Higgins instructed, handing me a freshly pressed gray tunic hanging on a hanger. "Madam Russo is awake. She is currently refusing her morning medication, and I am not paid to be sworn at in Italian."
Ten minutes later, wearing the stiff gray cotton tunic, I walked down the short corridor and pushed open the door to Elena Russo’s suite.
The room was dim, the heavy velvet drapes drawn against the morning light. The air smelled of stale lavender, medicine, and deep, ancient bitterness.
In a motorized leather wheelchair by the window sat an elderly woman wrapped in a cashmere shawl. Her silver hair was wild around a face lined with deep, expressive wrinkles. Her right hand lay paralyzed and curled in her lap, but her right eye—dark, piercing, and terrifyingly sharp—fastened onto me the instant I crossed the threshold.
"Chi sei tu?" she barked, her voice raspy and sharp. Who are you?
I stopped five feet from her wheelchair, keeping my hands clasped in front of me just as I had been taught during my clinical rotations.
"My name is Claire Bennett, Mrs. Russo," I said clearly. "I’m your new health advocate."
The old woman let out a harsh, barking laugh, her chin trembling with fury.
"Another one," she spat in heavily accented English. "Another spy sent by my son to watch me rattle my bones. Did he pay you well, girl? Does he give you extra money to endure an old woman who cannot even feed herself?"
"Mr. Russo didn't pay me anything," I answered, walking closer despite her glare. "In fact, I work here because he owns a very large piece of my family's future."
Elena froze. Her dark eyes narrowed, studying my face with an intensity that felt uncomfortably like her son's.
"What does that mean?" she demanded.
"It means," I said, reaching down to pick up the plastic cup of crushed pills and water sitting untouched on her bedside table, "that your son is a terrifying man who uses debt like a scalpel, and I am stuck cleaning up the mess."
Silence stretched across the room.
I held my breath, waiting for her to scream, to throw the glass, to ring the brass bell for Mrs. Higgins and have me thrown off the property before my first hour was up.
May you like
Instead, a slow, crooked smile broke across Elena Russo’s weathered face.
"Sit down, girl," she muttered, pointing a trembling right finger toward the chair by the window. "Tell me how my son threatened you. I collect stories about his cruelty the way other women collect stamps."
