He stood up, towering over her once more. Tessa remained on her knees, her face pale, bracing for the inevitable dismissal. In her world, rich men didn’t forgive rules being broken. In her world, the poor were always replaced.
“Get up,” Zo said gently.
She hesitated, then pushed herself to her feet, swaying slightly from lightheadedness and exhaustion. She held her bruised elbows, her eyes fixed on the floor.
“Go to my private study,” Zo ordered.
Tessa’s breath hitched. “Mr. Rossi—”
“Go to my study, sit on the couch, and wait for me,” he repeated, leaving no room for argument. “Do not leave this house.”
He turned on his heel before she could answer and strode down the long corridor toward the estate kitchens. His footsteps were fast, sharp, echoing off the high ceilings like thunder.
When he pushed through the double swinging doors of the kitchen, the warmth and the rich aroma of braised short ribs and garlic hit him like an insult. Chef Marcus, a burly French-trained culinary veteran who had worked for Zo for six years, was wiping down the stainless steel prep island while three line cooks were plating the staff’s evening meal.
Marcus looked up, surprised to see the master of the house in the kitchen at seven in the evening. “Mr. Rossi? Is everything all right, sir? Did you need something from the cellar?”
Zo walked up to the island, his face set in stone, his eyes burning with an intensity that made the entire kitchen staff freeze.
“Marcus,” Zo said, his voice slicing through the hum of the exhaust hoods.
“Yes, sir?”
“Pack three thermal insulated catering bags,” Zo instructed, each word clipped and absolute. “Not tomorrow. Right now. I want three full, hot dinners. The short ribs, the roasted potatoes, the creamed spinach, the fresh sourdough. Pack enough fresh fruit, milk, and protein to stock an entire refrigerator for a week. And put three portions of the chocolate tarts in there.”
Marcus blinked, bewildered. “Of course, sir. For a late client meeting?”
Zo looked through the kitchen window, down the dark, polished corridor where Tessa was slowly walking toward his office, her frame so thin she looked like a gust of wind could shatter her.
“No,” Zo said, his voice dropping into a register of quiet, lethal resolve. “One is for Tessa Cole. And the other two are for her brothers.”
Marcus’s jaw dropped slightly. “Tessa? The maid?”
“And tomorrow morning at six, you call the entire staff into the dining hall,” Zo continued, stepping closer to the chef. “I am changing the rule. Effective immediately, any employee who wishes to take their staff meal home to their family will be provided with professional heat-and-serve containers. No questions asked. No explanations required. If anyone under my roof has children who are hungry, they eat what I eat. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Mr. Rossi,” Marcus stammered, nodding rapidly. “Immediately, sir.”
Zo turned and walked back toward his study, his chest tight with a fury that wasn’t directed at Tessa, but at himself—and at a world that crushed people like her into dust. But as he reached the heavy mahogany doors of his private office, he stopped.
Through the frosted glass, he could see her. She wasn’t sitting on the plush Italian leather sofa. She was standing in the corner, clutching her torn canvas bag to her chest, terrified that if she sat down, she might dirty his furniture.
Zo pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a private number. It rang twice before a low, gravelly voice answered.
“Rossi,” said Carter Vance, Zo’s personal head of private security and former intelligence contractor. “What do you need?”
“I need an immediate background run on Tessa Cole,” Zo said quietly, keeping his back to the study door. “Find out where she lives. Find out about her landlord, her debts, the status of her custody with the state over her brothers, Leo and Toby. I want to know who is breathing down her neck, Carter. Every single name, every single dollar.”
“On it,” Carter replied. “Give me twenty minutes. Is there a problem?”
Zo looked through the glass at the girl shivering in her glue-repaired shoes.
“Yes,” Zo whispered, his jaw clenching with dangerous finality. “There’s a problem. And I’m going to destroy whoever caused it.”
The heavy oak door of the study clicked shut behind Zo Rossi with the muted finality of a bank vault closing.
Inside the cavernous, book-lined room, Tessa stood exactly where he had left her. She had not dared to sit on the deep oxblood leather Chesterfield sofa or touch the crystal decanters resting upon the sideboard. She occupied the smallest possible perimeter of space near the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, clutching her ruined canvas bag to her chest like a shield. She looked as though she expected the security guards to burst through the walls at any second and drag her away in handcuffs.
