Chapter 1
Romy
The yellow logo for Happy Home Domestic Services is obnoxiously cheerful. Combine that with a flawless five-star rating and a homepage packed with airbrushed women holding feather dusters, and you have the perfect front.
The city’s elite hire us to scrub their toilets, organise their walk-in wardrobes, and keep their glamorous lives running smoothly. For the most part, the girls on the payroll do exactly that.
But a select few of us are sent to spy. Some are there to lift expensive jewellery, or plant incriminating evidence exactly where the police will find it.
And then there’s my specialty. When the payout is filthy, Happy Home sends me to ensure the homeowner never breathes again.
I rest my black hand bag across my lap as the company car navigates the private, winding road up to Nero Dubrovsky’s estate. Calling it an estate feels a little dishonest. It’s a small kingdom with a gate and a view.
Far below the cliffs, Crystal Sands glitters against the coastline like a sprawling grid of blue water and mirrored skyscrapers. From up here, it looks completely pristine, as if the city isn’t full of ugliness.
The main house is three floors of limestone and dark tinted windows, ivy climbing the side of the terrace.
It looks old enough to be inherited, except someone has clearly spent a fortune making sure all that old-money history comes with new money comfort.
I keep my eyes moving, counting the six cameras sitting under the eaves and the two men with rifles patrolling the garden as the driver parks.
Stepping into the humid air, I immediately yank down the hem of my skirt. The uniform—a black blouse and white pleated skirt—is standard issue, but whoever designed it clearly didn’t plan for a woman with an ass.
A massive security guard intercepts me on the driveway, seizing my luggage for a meticulous search. It doesn’t matter that I’ve already been patted down twice at the outer gates.
He dumps my life onto the ground—makeup, toiletries, and tampons. He lifts a pair of my rosy lace underwear right up to his face, trailing his eyes over my body with a smug smirk.
“Welcome to the Dubrovsky House.”
There’s nothing welcoming about that face.
He zips the bags shut just as the front door swings open, revealing a woman in her early sixties. Her silver-streaked hair is scraped back into a severe bun, and her eyes are entirely dead as she sizes me up.
“Romy Mercer.”
“That’s me,” I grab my smaller kit bag while the guard hauls the rest inside.
She glances at my short skirt, her judgment obvious. “Helena Ward. Head housekeeper.”
I already know her file by heart. Twenty-three years of loyalty to the Dubrovsky syndicate. Responsible for staffing, household inventory, and, according to the dossier my boss, Kacy, gave me, remembering absolutely fucking everything.
“Come.” She turns on her heel, expecting me to keep up.
I follow her through a wide sitting room where rust-coloured sofas face a stone fireplace. An unfinished chess game sits on a side table next to a glass of neat, untouched whisky.
“Happy Home says you’ve worked in private residences for four years.” Helena resets a knight that had fallen on its side and picks up the glass.
“I have. Almost five, ma’am.”
“Helena will do. I heard your last employer relocated.” She’s walking again. Her legs are quicker than they should be at her age.
“Yes. To Geneva.”
She takes me past the main grand staircase. “Mr Dubrovsky’s rooms take up the entire upper floor. You’ll work there most mornings. Bedroom, dressing room, bathroom, lounge. Linen is changed daily. His personal valets handle his wardrobe unless specifically instructed otherwise. You’ll also assist elsewhere when required.”
“And his office?” I ask.
Helena turns on me so fast I swallow the rest of the sentence.
Careless, Romy. Way too eager.
I give her a naive smile. “My old client didn’t like me in her office. I wouldn’t want to walk somewhere I shouldn’t.”
“Mr Dubrovsky’s office and study are strictly off-limits. You do not enter them without explicit permission.”
“Understood,” I purse my lips and look at the cold family photographs on the wall like they are the most interesting thing in the house.
She resumes walking until we enter a much darker corridor. “If a door is locked, assume Mr Dubrovsky does not want you behind it. If you’re unsure about anything, ask me. If the master of the house asks you to enter somewhere himself, then you may.”
Nero is secretive. Secretive men hide things. That brings me closer to why I’m here. The Lazarus Key.
“Nero, ti prego, listen to me. I didn’t do it. Lo giuro, I’d never betray you. Never. You know my family—” A man’s whimper leaks from one of the doors lining the hall.
I’m trying to pinpoint the room it’s coming from when the punches start. Hard. Then harder, then… wet.
Helena stops walking. She doesn’t look worried or shaken by the sound of breaking bones and grunts. It’s obvious she’s been cleaning blood off these floors for decades.
Checking her watch, she realises we probably shouldn’t be here. “We’ll use the other stairs.”
She doesn’t get the chance to turn before a door farther down the hall bursts open and a man in a shredded grey suit stumbles out.
Blood slips from his nose, painting his mouth. His eyes are swollen shut; from experience, I wouldn’t bet much on it.
He clutches his stomach as he drags himself up, and that hand catches my eye. His pinky and index fingers are bent entirely out of shape, broken so badly that I have to look away.
Even I know when a sight isn’t worth staring at.
A mountain of a man dressed in black tactical gear steps out next, pinning the executive against the wall like a broken doll.
The temperature in the hallway seems to plummet the moment Nero Dubrovsky steps into the hall.
I’ve seen him before. Everyone in Crystal Sands has. His photos are stapled to so many articles about organised crime, political rot, port seizures, and unexplained disappearances that you might as well call his face public property.
But those photographs did a cheap job capturing the reality.
Nero isn’t handsome in ways that comforts anyone, not with those razor sharp cheekbones sitting under warm pale skin.
After however many fights he’s walked away from, his nose is still perfectly straight, balanced by a hard, clean-shaven jawline and a full mouth that looks so indecent as I briefly wonder how soft it might be.
His dark, thick hair is swept back, save for a single stray lock that falls across his eyes. Those eyes are a problem.
Striking, metallic grey, bright and cold, like winter sunlight hitting a new knife. I’ve never seen grey look like that.
When they cut toward me and Helena, every nerve in me wakes up.
The injured man’s phone rings. Nero takes it from the man’s jacket and glances at the screen.
“Sofia,” he mutters, his voice a rich, low baritone.
The man goes white. “Not my daughter. Please...”
The guard delivers a brutal knee to his gut, silencing the man into a choked wheeze.
Nero slides the screen, bringing the phone to his ear. His Russian sits under the Crystal Sands accent, warm enough to sound like a kiss, deep enough to make my stomach turn wrongly. “Happy birthday, milaya.”
