Shadows In The Rain

Michele’s POV

The house finally fell quiet again.

Not peaceful but quiet. The kind of silence that comes only after chaos has been forced into submission. My men had swept the grounds twice, the perimeter locked down tighter than before, yet something still felt wrong. The air itself carried a tension I couldn’t shake.

I stood by the window in my office, watching the stretch of lawn lit by floodlights. Beyond the gates, the world looked calm, too calm. The intruder hadn’t made it far; they never do. The body had already been removed by the time I came down, but the image of it lingered anyway. A man in dark clothes, face half-covered, gun still warm in his hand. One of mine had taken him down before he could clear the wall.

But he wasn’t alone.

The cameras caught three more shadows slipping into the trees, vanishing before my men could reach them. That bothered me. No one got that close to my house without help. Someone had mapped our blind spots, learned our patterns, known the exact moment to strike.

Inside my office, the monitors glowed faintly in the dark. Ten feeds, each showing a different part of the mansion. I scanned them one by one, out of habit more than need, front gate, south yard, west hall, kitchen, stairwell, and then, finally, the small square in the corner of the screen.

Erin’s room.

The light there was soft, almost silver. He sat beside the bed, shoulders slumped against the wall, watching the boy sleep. He looked exhausted, half-awake, but still alert. Every few minutes he turned toward the door, listening. Even from behind a camera, I could read the tension in his posture.

He had stayed exactly where I told him.

A part of me should’ve been satisfied, protocol followed, child unharmed but the sight of him stirred something else entirely. He didn’t look like one of my men. He looked… human. Too human for this house.

I poured whiskey into a glass, the movement automatic. The burn steadied me, but my mind refused to quiet.

Rizzo. The Croatians. The timing of this breach wasn’t random. They had been circling for weeks, testing, waiting. And now, tonight they had come this close to my home. Not my warehouses, not my businesses. Here.

That made it personal.

I picked up the phone on the desk and pressed the intercom. “Bring Vico to me.”

A few minutes later, the door opened. Vico stepped in, still in his vest, gun holstered at his side. His eyes were sharp, tired but focused. “We cleared the grounds, boss. The dead one’s being dealt with. Nothing inside’s been touched.”

“Show me the ID.”

He handed me a small plastic card sealed in evidence plastic. The face staring up at me was unfamiliar—no record in our system. I flipped it over. Blank. Not even a fingerprint worth scanning.

“Clean,” I muttered. “Too clean.”

“Professional?”

“Maybe. Or someone wants us to think so.”

Vico shifted his weight. “Could be Croatians. The gear’s foreign. Markings on the rifle, not local.”

I nodded slowly. “And the others?”

“Gone before the lockdown finished. We’re checking the woods now.”

I stared at the photo again. “They knew where to go.”

Vico hesitated. “You think someone inside—”

“I don’t think.” I cut him off. “I know.”

The silence that followed was thick. He didn’t argue. He’d been with me long enough to trust my instincts.

“Start with the staff,” I said. “Discreetly. Anyone who’s been here less than six months. Anyone who’s asked questions about schedules or power systems. You know the drill.”

He nodded once. “What about the kid?”

I looked back at the monitor. Erin hadn’t moved. Luca’s small hand rested against his arm, even in sleep. “He’s fine.”

“Should I move them to the safe room until morning?”

“No. He stays where he is. It’s easier to see who comes near him that way.”

Vico hesitated again, then asked quietly, “You trust him?”

I didn’t answer immediately. The word trust meant nothing here. It was a luxury, not a strategy. But the truth hovered somewhere between silence and admission.

“I trust what I’ve seen,” I said finally. “He doesn’t lie.”

Vico gave a slight nod and left the room.

When the door closed, I turned back to the monitor.

He was still there, unmoving, hand resting near the boy’s shoulder. He looked smaller in that space than I remembered, like the walls were pressing down on him. Something twisted in my chest again. I took another drink and told myself it was just exhaustion.

But exhaustion didn’t make me want to keep watching.

I forced my eyes away and turned to the reports on the desk. The paper smelled faintly of smoke from the candle burning nearby. I scanned through the list of my men on duty during the breach, twenty-three names. Two missing. One accounted for by radio failure, the other unresponsive.

Luca’s guard rotation.

I picked up the radio. “Marco.”

Static cracked, then a voice answered, “Boss?”

“Where’s Matteo?”

“Still checking the east wall.”

“Tell him he’s got five minutes to report in. If I don’t hear from him, you know what to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

I set the radio down, but my jaw stayed clenched. Matteo was new, three months. Recommended by an old contact I no longer trusted.

I stared out the window again. The floodlights painted the trees in pale white, but beyond that, the darkness was endless. Somewhere out there, men were watching back.

I’d lived long enough to know wars didn’t start with bullets. They started with trespass. Someone testing boundaries.

The knock came soft, measured. I didn’t have to look up to know who it was.

“Come in,” I said.

Enzo, my right-hand man, stepped inside. He closed the door behind him, face unreadable. “The body’s being processed. Nothing unusual, no tattoos, no tags, no papers.”

“Then find out who he is the old way. Teeth, scars, gun serial, whatever it takes.”

He nodded, but his eyes lingered on the monitor. “He’s still awake?”

I followed his gaze. Erin had shifted a little, leaning his head back against the wall. The boy was still asleep beside him.

“He’s not used to this life,” Enzo said quietly.

“No one is.”

Enzo tilted his head. “Except you.”

I didn’t reply.

He studied me for another second before clearing his throat. “You think Rizzo’s involved?”

I set the glass down with a soft thud. “He’s always involved.”

Enzo nodded once, taking that as the end of the discussion. He turned to leave, but I stopped him.

“Find out who leaked the nanny posting,” I said. “I want to know how it reached the public. Every phone, every contact, every staff line—check them.”

He paused, one brow lifting. “You still think that’s connected?”

“It’s too much of a coincidence.”

He didn’t argue. “I’ll handle it.”

When he was gone, the silence returned, heavier now. I loosened my tie, sitting back in the chair.

The truth was, I didn’t know why I’d kept Erin here. Logic said I should’ve sent him away the moment he showed up at my gate. But something in his eyes that first day—the kind of honesty that came only from someone already broken—had made me hesitate.

I told myself it was because of Luca. The boy had taken to him faster than to anyone before. But that wasn’t the full truth, and I knew it.

There was something about Erin that crawled under my skin. Something unguarded. He didn’t play the part everyone else did around me. He didn’t flatter. He didn’t hide his fear. He felt too much, and in a house like this, that was dangerous.

I switched off the monitor, but the image of him stayed behind my eyes.

I could still see him in the dim red light, sitting against the wall, holding my son like he was the only thing keeping the world steady. I’d seen soldiers break under less. But he hadn’t moved, hadn’t run, hadn’t begged. He’d simply stayed.

And that… unsettled me.

I pushed back from the desk and walked to the window again. The night outside had begun to fade into gray, the first hint of dawn brushing the horizon. The air smelled faintly of rain.

My phone buzzed once on the desk. A message from Vico: Matteo found dead. East wall. Throat cut.

I read it twice before replying: Burn everything he touched. Find the others. No survivors.

The war had begun, whether I wanted it or not.

I looked toward the door, half expecting someone to burst in with more bad news, but the hallway remained silent. The house slept again, unaware that the ground beneath it was shifting.

I poured another drink, let the whiskey settle at the back of my throat, and forced my thoughts back to business. Yet even as I laid out the mental map of what needed to be done—who to contact, who to threaten, who to kill—Erin’s face kept intruding, uninvited.

The way he’d whispered to Luca, the way his voice had steadied even when he was shaking.

He wasn’t part of this world. But the world had already started to pull him in.

A knock broke the thought. This time softer, hesitant. I turned, expecting Vico again. Instead, the small figure in the doorway made me freeze.

Luca.

He stood barefoot, hair mussed, clutching his rabbit. His voice came small, sleepy. “Papa?”

I went to him at once, crouching so we were level. “You should be in bed.”

“I woke up. Erin wasn’t there.”

That startled me. “He left?”

“He went to get water, I think.”

I exhaled slowly. “Did he come back?”

Luca nodded. “He said everything’s okay now.”

I smoothed a hand over his hair. “He’s right.”

He looked up at me, eyes wide. “Are the bad people gone?”

“For now,” I said, the same words I’d given Erin. “Go back to your room. I’ll come check on you soon.”

He hesitated, then whispered, “Erin said you make everything safe.”

Something in my chest tightened. “He shouldn’t tell you things like that.”

“But it’s true.”

I couldn’t argue with him. Instead, I rose and guided him gently toward the hallway, handing him off to one of the guards to escort him back.

When the boy was gone, I returned to my desk, but I didn’t sit. I stared at the door to Erin’s room through the live feed again. He was awake now, sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face.

I watched for a long time before turning off the screen for good.

This thing between us, whatever it was would need to end before it started. The house was already under attack from the outside; I couldn’t afford weakness inside too.

But as I stood there in the half-light of dawn, the echo of his voice still in my head, I knew it wasn’t that simple.

I’d told Enzo once that men like me don’t get choices. We survive; we don’t live. Yet when I looked at Erin, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years—a reminder that I was still human, whether I liked it or not.

And humanity, in my world, was the most dangerous weakness of all.

I poured one last drink and finished it in silence, letting the burn remind me of what I had to become again—cold, precise, untouchable.

But as the sun began to rise over the walls of the mansion, one thought refused to leave.

If the Croatians were smart enough to find my house, they might already know about the stranger living inside it.

And if they knew who Erin Cole really was, if he wasn’t the coincidence he claimed to be then tonight’s breach wasn’t the beginning.

It was the warning.