🎄🖤 PART 2: THE MAFIA BOSS DISCOVERED WHY HIS MAID WAS SENT INTO THE SNOW… BUT THE SECRET SHE WHISPERED CHANGED EVERYTHING.

Dominic Vale had ordered men out of his house for less.

But as he carried Elena Brooks through the mansion, her freezing hands resting against his chest, he felt something unfamiliar twist inside him.

Fear.

Not fear for his empire. Not fear of an enemy waiting in the darkness.

Fear that the woman in his arms might never open her eyes again.

“Get the doctor here!” he roared.

Within seconds, the grand staircase cleared. Guests pressed themselves against the walls as Dominic carried Elena into his private bedroom and laid her gently beneath the covers.

His personal physician arrived minutes later.

“Everyone out,” the doctor ordered. “I need room to work.”

Dominic didn’t move.

“Sir.”

“I said everyone out.”

The doctor looked directly at him. “Including you, Mr. Vale.”

For a moment, the two men stared at each other.

Then Dominic stepped into the hallway.

The door closed.

And the most feared man in Colorado stood outside it, unable to do anything but wait.

Victor approached quietly.

“We found the terrace door locked from the inside. The kitchen staff say Vanessa ordered Elena outside.”

Dominic’s jaw тιԍнтened.

“Bring her to my office.”

“Vanessa?”

“Now.”

Victor hesitated. “There’s something else. We checked the security cameras.”

He handed Dominic a tablet.

The footage showed Elena searching the terrace in the snow. Then it showed Vanessa approaching the glᴀss doors, turning the lock, and walking away.

She had known Elena was outside.

She had watched her pound on the glᴀss.

And she had left her there.

Dominic replayed the footage once.

Then he handed the tablet back.

“Make a copy. Every second of it.”

“Understood.”

“Victor?”

“Yes, boss?”

“If Elena dies tonight, I want to know who helped make it happen.”

Victor’s expression darkened.

“I’ll find out.”

An hour later, the doctor finally emerged.

Dominic stood immediately.

“Will she survive?”

“She is responding to treatment. Her condition is serious, but she’s stable for now. The next several hours will be important.”

Dominic exhaled slowly.

“Can I see her?”

“Yes. But keep her calm. She’s exhausted.”

Dominic entered the bedroom alone.

Elena lay beneath thick blankets, an IV attached to her arm. Without her usual determination and carefully controlled expression, she looked painfully young.

He sat beside her.

For three months, he had barely noticed her beyond the work she performed. He had seen her carrying laundry, serving meals, and quietly accepting insults from guests.

He had never asked why a former teacher had taken a housekeeping job so far from home.

He had never asked why she sometimes looked at the snow with such sadness.

Now he noticed a small notebook on the bedside table.

Its pages were filled with children’s names, lesson plans, and handwritten messages.

On the final page, one sentence had been underlined several times.

If I can just pay off Dad’s debt, maybe I can go back to teaching.

Dominic closed the notebook.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” he whispered.

Elena stirred.

Her eyelids fluttered.

“Mr. Vale?”

“I’m here.”

She tried to sit up, but he gently stopped her.

“Don’t move. The doctor says you need rest.”

Her gaze traveled around the room.

Then she remembered.

“The door…”

Dominic’s face hardened.

“I know.”

“Please don’t fire everyone.”

He stared at her.

“You nearly died.”

Elena swallowed painfully.

“They have families. They need their jobs.”

Even now, after being abandoned in a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly storm, she was worried about everyone else.

Something inside Dominic shifted.

“Not everyone deserves your kindness, Elena.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“I just wanted to find the earring.”

He took a breath.

“There was no earring, was there?”

She looked away.

That was all the answer he needed.

Dominic stood, but before he reached the door, Elena caught his sleeve.

“Mr. Vale?”

He turned.

“Why are you being kind to me?”

The question struck harder than an accusation.

Dominic had no answer.

He had spent years believing kindness made people vulnerable. Yet this woman had endured humiliation after humiliation without becoming cruel herself.

“I should have noticed what was happening in my own house,” he finally said.

Elena watched him carefully.

Then, in a voice barely louder than a whisper, she said something that made him stop breathing.

“Your fiancée wasn’t the only person who wanted me outside tonight.”

Dominic slowly turned back.

“What do you mean?”

Elena’s fingers тιԍнтened around the blanket.

“Before the party, I found an envelope in the laundry room. It had my name on it. Inside was a pH๏τograph of my father.”

Dominic’s expression changed.

“What was written on it?”

She looked at him with frightened eyes.

“Leave the Vale estate before Christmas, or your father will pay for your disobedience.”

The room fell silent.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because the envelope had your family’s crest on it.”

Dominic went completely still.

Only a handful of people had access to that crest.

He had personally authorized every one of them.

Before he could ask another question, Elena reached beneath her pillow and pulled out a small brᴀss key.

“I took this from the envelope. I thought it might be important.”

Dominic recognized it immediately.

It belonged to a locked cabinet in his father’s old study—a room that had remained untouched since his father died eight years earlier.

“How did you get this?”

“There was a note.”

She handed him a folded piece of paper.

Dominic opened it.

The message was short.

“Ask Dominic Vale what really happened to his mother.”

For several seconds, he could not speak.

His mother had died when he was sixteen. His father had told him she suffered a sudden illness, and the family had never discussed it again.

But Dominic remembered one detail.

The night she died, she had begged him to lock his bedroom door.

He had obeyed.

The next morning, she was gone.

He looked at Elena.

“Who gave you this?”

“I don’t know. But there was another message on the back.”

She turned the paper over.

Three words had been written in red ink.

VANESSA KNOWS EVERYTHING.

Dominic’s phone vibrated.

Victor was calling.

“Boss, we found something in Vanessa’s suite.”

“What?”

“A second phone. We recovered messages sent tonight. One of them says the maid must not be allowed to reach you.”

Dominic’s eyes narrowed.

“Who sent it?”

“That’s the problem. The number belongs to someone listed in your father’s old estate records.”

A pause followed.

“Boss, there’s something else.”

“Speak.”

“The message was sent from inside this mansion.”

Dominic looked toward the bedroom door.

Outside, footsteps approached.

Vanessa appeared in the doorway, her face pale but her voice carefully composed.

“Dominic, darling, we need to talk.”

He slipped the brᴀss key into his pocket.

“Indeed, we do.”

She glanced at Elena, then at the paper in his hand.

For the first time since their engagement, Vanessa looked genuinely afraid.

“Where did you get that?”

Dominic stepped toward her.

“That’s an interesting question.”

She backed away.

Then she said something that changed the entire investigation.

“Dominic, please. Your father made me promise never to tell you what happened that night.”

Dominic froze.

“My father has been ᴅᴇᴀᴅ for eight years.”

Vanessa’s eyes filled with tears.

“I know.”

She looked toward Elena.

“That’s why I never understood how he could still be sending me instructions.”

Before Dominic could respond, a loud crash echoed from the old study downstairs.

Victor’s voice erupted through the radio.

“BOSS! GET DOWN HERE! YOU NEED TO SEE THIS!”

Dominic rushed into the hallway.

The cabinet in his father’s study stood open.

Inside lay dozens of sealed letters, a stack of medical records, and a pH๏τograph of a woman Dominic recognized instantly.

His mother.

She was standing beside a man he had never seen before.

On the back of the pH๏τograph, someone had written a date—Christmas Eve, twenty years earlier—and a name.

ELENA BROOKS.

Dominic stared at the words.

Elena had been only a child when the pH๏τograph was taken.

So why was her name on a picture hidden inside his father’s locked cabinet?

Then Victor lifted a final document from the bottom of the drawer.

It was a birth certificate.

And the name printed beneath the mother’s information made Dominic’s entire world collapse.

Elena Brooks was not the stranger his fiancée had tried to destroy.

She was the person his father had spent twenty years trying to keep out of the Vale family.

And somewhere in the mansion, a phone began ringing with a number that had been disconnected for eight years.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3… 🎄🔥🖤

Who was Elena really? What had Dominic’s father hidden about his mother—and why had someone waited twenty years to bring Elena into the Vale mansion?