A waste of water.
Check.
“The bathrooms are thoroughly cleaned in the morning and tidied at night,” she continued, leading me into the supply closet and gesturing to the rows of cleaner and the mops and scrub brushes that hung on the wall. “Sunday mornings, while the family is at Mass, we deep clean each bedroom and bathroom.”
Keep the staff from worshipping.
Damnation to their souls.
Check.
“The rest of the rooms are tidied and cleaned daily, but the deep cleaning rotation varies depending on the weekly schedule, which Mr. Romano and I prepare in advance.” The cretin blinked up at me through her thick glasses. “Do not, I repeat, donotdeviate from the schedule without prior authorization from either of us.”
I saluted her, like the commanding officer that she was trying so hard to be.
Her lips scrunched in a sneer. “Are you always like this?”
“Just trying to make things pleasant,” I said with a smirk.
“Don’t,” she clipped out.
Robot mode required. Installing data.
No fun for us. No fun for us!
Check.
There had already been a long chat in her office about appearance. And yes, I’d been given not one, not two, butthreedreadful uniforms. The first two were everyday attire, one to wash, one to wear. The third was even more ugly, a formal uniform to be used when serving the Grimaldi family. No makeup. Hair in a tight bun. Only small stud earrings, which meant the helix rings, the industrial bar, the rook, the snugs, the orbital conchs, the daiths, and the tagus plus the upper lobes needed to come out.
I just hoped the holes didn’t heal.
I’ll have to put them in at night and take them out every morning.
Fucking hell.
If I didn’t need this job, this brief transition to get on my feet, I would have left right after she said that. I wouldn’t have stayed for the part where she critically peered at my hands, tutted in Italian about the unsightly ink on my hands and fingers, and then promptly decreed that I must wear gloves when serving to hide them.
The goal was to blend into the background. To move about unseen but always be available.
At five foot eleven, there was no hiding my body. But it was my tongue that was going to need a muzzle during whatever serving situations were required. How the hell was I supposed to hide that? I didn’t have a verbal filter.
But I wouldn’t have to figure that out right now. The first required appearance wouldn’t be until Friday night, when only the immediate family were hosting drinks to celebrate a relative who’d been away for a few years. Only three people lived in this monolithic structure, but they tended to have massive parties with a range of themes and very active social lives. And this made having a grand house that was well-staffed a necessity.
Yippee.
“Your uncle said you knew something about hair and makeup?” Mrs. Sanderson prompted, giving me a scathing once over as we retreated to the kitchen, where a man named Franky was busy kneading dough.
He shot me a look, a smile twitching on his lips. No doubt he was looking at the mess of tight curls falling around my shoulders and silently wishing me good luck.
It was the only friendly face in the house, and my immediate reaction when I met him an hour ago was that of kindred spirit. Franky lived with Uncle Theo in the cottage; the rest of the staff commuted.
“Oh, yeah, I mean, sure,” I said with an airy breeze of my hand. “Mom was a stylist back in the day, so I grew up in a beauty parlor. I picked up a few tricks of the trade.”
Mrs. Sanderson not only visibly gasped, but she put her hand flat over her chest. “Madonnasanta!”
Franky snorted.
I grinned, unable to help myself from pushing the joke further. “I can dye hair, if you get me some boxes of color. As far as styling, I know how to do an ’80 puff or a ‘90s blow out.”
