Chapter 1 - ONE HUNDRED SEVEN NIGHTS
## “I Can’t Do This Anymore,” The Drunken Mafia Boss Knocked on My Door Saying He Needed Me
He came to my door drunk.
I hid him beneath the servants’ stairs.
Then he whispered, “One hundred seven nights.”
Raphael Orsini knocked on my bedroom door at 2:07 in the morning.
He did not call the staff telephone.
He did not send Freddy Kovac, the head cook who had managed the east wing longer than most of the family had been alive. He did not ask Sabine, his younger sister, to wake me.
He stood in the narrow corridor outside my room and struck the wood with the side of his fist.
Three times.
Hard enough to pull me from sleep.
Soft enough not to wake the six other employees whose rooms lined the same hallway.
Rain battered the old mansion’s windows. Heat clicked through iron pipes behind the plaster. A security vehicle moved slowly across the courtyard below, its tires whispering over wet stone.
I opened the door three inches.
The man outside barely resembled my employer.
Raphael Orsini’s black wool coat was soaked through. Water ran from his disordered hair onto the white collar of a shirt he had buttoned incorrectly. His tie had been shoved into one pocket. A shallow cut marked his lower lip.
He smelled of rain, cedar cologne, and whiskey.
Raphael did not drink.
In two years of working inside his Lake Forest estate, I had never seen him touch anything stronger than espresso. I had never seen him raise his voice, miss a meeting, wear a crooked cuff, or take longer than a breath to answer a question.
Every morning, twelve men stood outside his study at seven.
Some wore tailored suits.
Some wore guns.
All waited for Raphael to tell them what happened next.
That night, he was leaning against my doorframe as though the house itself had become responsible for keeping him upright.
“Sir?”
His gray eyes lifted.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
No explanation.
No command.
Four words from the most controlled man in Chicago.
Behind me, my alarm clock glowed red on the nightstand. My nursing textbook lay open beside it, a yellow highlighter across the section on pediatric respiratory failure. A photograph of my twelve-year-old brother sat on the dresser. Micah was grinning over a chessboard while an IV pole stood behind him.
I should have closed the door.
Instead, I looked toward the neighboring rooms.
No movement.
Then I caught Raphael by the wet sleeve and pulled him inside.
“Quiet.”
He stumbled.
I shut the door softly enough to hear the latch settle.
My room could not hide him. A narrow bed filled most of the space. Two work uniforms hung behind the door. My textbooks occupied the only chair.
“Come with me.”
Raphael followed me down the staff corridor.
We passed the linen closet, the laundry room, and the back stairs before reaching the secondary kitchen at the far end of the east wing. No one used it after midnight except me.
I studied there because the main kitchen cameras recorded motion, and I did not like the idea of security guards watching me memorize drug calculations at two in the morning.
I switched on the single light above the sink.
Warm yellow light fell over white tile, a scarred oak table, and the copper kettle Freddy refused to replace because, according to her, new kettles had no moral discipline.
Raphael stood in the middle of the room.
Water dripped from his coat.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“Sit down.”
He braced one hand against the table instead.
The gold signet ring on his right little finger touched the wood.
“Sir.”
“You asked what I couldn’t do anymore.”
“I didn’t ask.”
His mouth almost moved.
“You were thinking it loudly.”
“I was thinking you should sit before you fall.”
He lowered himself into a chair.
I filled a glass with water and placed it before him. He stared at it as though the contents required translation.
“Being that man,” he said.
“What man?”
“The one everyone needs.”
His voice had lost the exact rhythm I knew. Words arrived too slowly, then crowded one another.
“This city needs me to be that man. This house needs it. Every morning, twelve men wait outside my office. Not one asks whether I slept. Not one asks whether I want to make the decisions they bring me.”
He looked toward the black window above the sink.
“They only wait.”
I remained near the counter.
My cotton nightgown felt indecently thin beneath my robe. My bare feet were cold against the tile. Every sensible instinct warned me to keep distance between us.
Then Raphael turned toward me.
“Only you.”
I stopped.
“In two years, you have never asked me for anything. No raise. No favor. No time off. You do your work and disappear before anyone can owe you gratitude.”
“I receive a salary.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“I know.”
“You’re the only person in this house who doesn’t need me.”
The sentence should have sounded flattering.
It did not.
It sounded like the confession of a man who had mistaken my silence for freedom.
My mind began calculating before my heart could interfere.
If anyone discovered him there, I could lose my job.
Losing the job meant losing my insurance.
Losing insurance meant Micah could lose his place at the specialty treatment center. The waiting list had taken eleven months. His infusions cost more each month than I had once earned in a year.
I could survive humiliation.
Micah could not survive my unemployment.
“How much did you drink?”
“Enough to say what I haven’t said sober.”
“Then you’ll regret it tomorrow.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
He looked at me.
For the first time in two years, I stopped speaking like an employee.
“You’ll wake up and remember what you said and who heard it. You won’t know how to look at me. Then one morning, you’ll call me upstairs, say several polite things about boundaries, and I’ll need to find another job.”
“You think too far ahead.”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“There is no one else to do it for me.”
Rain struck the window harder.
Raphael’s fingers closed around the water glass, but he still did not drink.
“Let me stay down here tonight.”
“You can’t sleep in the kitchen.”
“Somewhere no one will find me.”
“Why me?”
The question escaped before I could discipline it.
His thumb moved against the signet ring.
Once.
Twice.
“I need you.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
His eyebrows rose.
Not many people told Raphael Orsini no.
Certainly not maids wearing slippers.
“You don’t need me,” I said. “You need somewhere you aren’t Raphael Orsini for six hours.”
His expression changed.
“And you can give me that?”
“No.”
I took the untouched water and pushed it closer.
“But I know where you can disappear.”
Beneath the servants’ staircase was an old pantry Freddy called the coal room, although coal had not been stored there since Eisenhower was president. It contained blankets, emergency water, folding chairs, and an antique couch no one had bothered throwing away.
No cameras.
No staff traffic.
I made Raphael drink two glasses of water before moving him.
Then I checked his pupils.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure you’re drunk and not dying.”
“I’m not dying.”
“Excellent diagnosis, Doctor Orsini.”
His mouth twitched.
I hated that I noticed.
I got him beneath the stairs at 2:41.
He sat on the old couch while I found blankets.
When I turned back, he had removed his signet ring.
He held it between two fingers.
“Do you know what this means?”
“Your family has poor taste in jewelry?”
He laughed.
Actually laughed.
It lasted barely two seconds.
Then his face broke.
Not dramatically.
Something simply went out behind his eyes.
“One hundred seven nights.”
I stopped unfolding the blanket.
“What?”
“That’s how long it’s been.”
“Since what?”
Raphael looked at the ring.
“Since I slept more than two hours.”
My irritation vanished.
“Why?”
“Because every night at 3:13, someone enters my bedroom.”
The room seemed to become colder.
“What?”
“They never open the door.”
I stared at him.
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“The windows?”
“Locked.”
“Balcony?”
“Alarmed.”
“Closet?”
“Solid wall.”
“Then nobody enters.”
Raphael looked up.
“I said the same thing after night twelve.”
My skin prickled.
“And after night thirty?”
“I stopped believing the room.”
He reached into his wet coat and removed a folded photograph.
He handed it to me.
It showed Raphael asleep.
Taken from directly above his bed.
A date was printed in the corner.
Last night.
On the back, three words had been written:
107 NIGHTS LEFT.
I looked at him.
“You said it’s been one hundred seven nights.”
“Yes.”
“But this says one hundred seven nights left.”
His face hardened.
“That is why I drank.”
May you like
The mystery was not counting upward.
It was counting down.
