Billionaire Fiancée Cut the Poor Maid’s Hair to Destroy Her Dignity—Until the East Coast’s Most Feared Mafia King Broke Down the Gates and Demanded Blood

The staff quarters were located in the drafty attic wing above the old carriage house.

Within ten minutes, Clarissa, Theodore, Oswald, and two private security guards marched up the narrow wooden stairs into Nadia’s small, bare room.

Dragan Kovac followed at a deliberate distance, his hands buried in his trouser pockets, watching the spectacle with unreadable eyes.

Nadia stood near the door, her hands clutched together, her nails digging into her palms until she drew blood.

“Tear it apart,” Clarissa ordered the security guards.

The guards overturned Nadia’s single wooden chair. They ripped the thin cotton blanket from the cot, dumped her small drawer of worn clothes onto the dusty floorboards, and scattered her few personal possessions.

Among them was a small wooden box containing Mila’s childhood drawings and a faded photograph of Nadia’s mother.

A guard kicked the box aside, splintering the thin wood.

“Stop... please,” Nadia whispered, tears finally escaping her eyes. “There is nothing here.”

“Check the mattress!” Clarissa demanded, her eyes glittering with triumph.

The guard sliced open the bottom seam of the thin mattress with a pocketknife. He reached inside, his fingers digging through the coarse wool stuffing.

A moment later, he pulled out a heavy velvet pouch.

He untied the gold drawstring and dumped the contents into his hand.

The five massive Colombian emeralds flashed beneath the bare ceiling bulb.

The room fell into an absolute, suffocating silence.

“There!” Clarissa cried, turning to Theodore with theatrical horror. “Do you see? She is a common thief! She took family heirlooms under your own roof! After everything you did for her crippled sister!”

Theodore looked devastated. He looked at the necklace, then at Nadia, his eyes filled with disbelief and sorrow. “Nadia... how could you? I paid for Mila’s surgery. I treated you like family.”

“Mr. Hawthorne, I swear on my mother’s grave, I did not put that there!” Nadia’s voice cracked in desperation. “I have never stolen anything in my life! Someone planted it!”

“Who would plant a two-million-dollar necklace in a maid’s mattress?” Clarissa scoffed coldly. “She was going to fence it to pay for her sister’s life! Throw her out into the storm! Lock her outside the gates until the police arrive to take her to prison!”

“Clarissa, it’s freezing outside,” Theodore protested weakly. “Let’s wait for the sheriff in the library.”

“No!” Clarissa snapped, stamping her heel on the floor. “I will not have a criminal breathing the same air as me in this house! Put her out on the drive! Let her freeze until the handcuffs are on her wrists!”

The guards grabbed Nadia by her arms, dragging her toward the stairs.

Nadia did not fight them. She looked at Theodore, but the billionaire looked away, unable to meet her gaze.

As she was dragged past the doorway, she met the eyes of Dragan Kovac.

Dragan stood motionless in the shadow of the doorway. He looked at the shattered wooden box on the floor, at the faded photograph of Nadia’s mother lying in the dust, and then at the raw bruises forming on Nadia’s wrists where the guards gripped her.

He said nothing.