Instead, I had to watch her tight ass sway as she made her way to the door and exited without looking back. But she was here, somewhere in my city. I rubbed my chin, considering how exactly I would track her down. It was probably stalker level to follow her to the bus and see which one she took. But that was as good a lead as any.
I flicked a glance at my watch to mark the time and give her a head start, only to jerk back with a start. My Panerai, the luxury watch my grandparents had sent me last Christmas, was gone.
I stared at the door, mentally forcing my jaw not to drop. The little huntress had taken the kill, and I couldn’t even be mad at her.
“I will find you,” I promised, rubbing the bare spot. “It’s on, little huntress.”
Chapter 4 – Rae
Ayawn ripped from my soul. Every bone in my body was exhausted. The shift from night owl to early bird was brutal. Packed onto that was the fact that the days were long. Unreasonably long. We began work at five in the morning, which meant rolling out of bed at four-thirty. Because my hair was stretched back, waxed to make it stay in the awful bun, and face free of makeup, it took me ten minutes to get ready, dressed, and sprint to the big house. But then the days didn’t end until seven at the earliest. There were three of us maids. Maddie arrived at eight in the morning and stayed until eleven at night to clean the dining room after dinner. But two nights this week, I had been instructed to help her so that I knew the ropes.
Which meant, if the math was calculated correctly, I got about four hours of sleep those nights.
My days off were supposed to be Mondays, but because I’d only worked Sunday this past week, I was required to work through Monday to learn. One wouldn’t think there was this much to learn about cleaning.
Boy, was that a false assumption.
The grand mansion had Victorian roots, but it had been expanded over the decades and was huge. Too big for three people to live in. They didn’t even use whole parts of the house!
But did that mean we didn’t clean those rooms? Hell no. They were scrubbed, dusted, polished….
Disgusting rich people.
Signor Grimaldi often had guests staying. This week alone, he’d had a half dozen friends crash at his place. They were all the same to me. Sly, cunning, and sharp. Business associates.
A laughable term. We, the staff, did not talk about it.
Grimaldi ran a powerful crime syndicate. The mob was far from dead. It adapted to meet the challenges of the modern era. And this one was one of the top tiers.
Uncle Theo sat me down the first night, after my bus trip to the city proper, when I was ready to sleep instead of chat. He laid the situation out in no uncertain terms. I was not to speak about the family business. If a shred of unloyalty was seen, he couldn’t protect me from the consequences.
I told him I knew they were mobsters, which seemed to both relieve him and make him uneasy. There was one time, when I was twelve, that my mom brought me north for a visit. Gangly and curious, I figured out pretty quickly that Francesco Grimaldi wasn’t anormalbusinessman. It wasn’t until I pried the information out of his oldest grandson that I learned the proper term. Over the years, I didn’t really care that my uncle worked for a crime lord. It was kind of cool, actually. Plus, with the shit I dealt with on a daily basis back in Georgia, I didn’t have extra time to dwell on the ramifications.
Now that I was here, I kept my eyes and ears open. It was astounding how much information I picked up on just by cleaning the toilets and doing the laundry for these rich assholes. If I had any desire to go to the cops, it would be all too easy. But the cops wouldn’t pay me, and my uncle’s unspoken warning was that snitches got stitches—or worse.
I frankly didn’t care. This was a temporary job. And if I could make a little cash on the side to set myself up by relieving the family of some of their unused trinkets or cash, then it didn’t matter to me how they earned a living in the first place.
“Rae! What are you doing down here?” Cathy, the other maid, looked up from the shirt she was ironing.
I blinked. “I finished polishing the silver. Theo approved it,” I added.
Cathy pointed to the wall where an honest-to-goodness bell system was modernized. “The signorina summoned you. Fifteen minutes ago!”
That was why my pager had buzzed when I’d been working a spot out of the oblong service tray, as Theo measured—yes, measured!—the distance between the forks around the dining table.
“Run!” Cathy said, voice hushed and laced with panic.
Maddie was tight-lipped and well on her way to being ancient before her time like Mrs. Sanderson. But Cathy was nice enough. She didn’t gossip or chit-chat,which made working with her blissful. She also didn’t tattle that I wore a discreet earbud to listen to podcasts or music while we toiled away.
Sucking down a deep breath, I changed trajectory and climbed the staircase that led from the servants’ workrooms. I rubbed my ear, missing the feel of metal. If these holes closed, I was going to pitch a fit! It was bad enough I had to wear the ugly ass clothes when I preferred black to hide grease stains and flannels because they were cozy. But to cover the art that was my body? To hide my identity for the whims of the rich? Fuck that. Emerging on the second floor, I took measured steps to the little princess’s room. I wasn’t running—that was unseemly.
But so was leaving a member of the house unattended.
The contradictions in this place were mind boggling.
I raised my fist and lightly rapped on the door.
“Come in,” a sweet voice called.
