I stopped my chair three feet away, the silent hum of the motor the only warning of my approach. “Who the hell are you, and who gave you clearance to be in this corridor?” my voice cracked like a whip in the silent hall.
Normally, my staff would scramble to their feet, stammer apologies, and practically trip over themselves to retreat. Emma merely paused her scrubbing. She didn’t gasp. She didn’t flinch. She slowly turned her head, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow with the back of a raw, red hand.
“I’m Emma. The new night maid,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of any inflection of fear. “I was told to clean the baseboards on this floor. I didn’t realize the dust in this specific hallway was classified.”
A muscle feathered in my jaw. I wheeled an inch closer, casting a long, imposing shadow over her kneeling form. “I didn’t tell you to keep working. When I speak to you, you stop, you stand up, and you address me properly.”
Instead of complying, Emma simply sat back on her heels, resting her bleach-stained hands on her thighs. She looked directly into my eyes, her gaze so tired it bordered on apathetic. “Do you want me to stop? Because if I stop, I don’t get paid for the hour. And if I don’t get paid, I can’t afford to be here. So, Mr. Russo, do you want a clean hallway, or do you want me to stand up and bow?”
For the first time in two agonizing years, my volatile anger failed to ignite. I sat there, stunned by the sheer audacity of this fragile, exhausted girl. She wasn’t being brave; she was being pragmatic. She was driven by an absolute, unyielding desperation that eclipsed any fear she might have had of the crippled mafia boss glaring down at her.
I stared at her cracked, chemical-burned hands, then up to the dark, bruised circles beneath her eyes. I swallowed the venom that was permanently lodged in my throat.
“Finish the hallway,” I muttered curtly, turning my chair around. I rolled away into the shadows, entirely unaware that the phantom pain currently tearing through my dead legs was about to force me into a position of humiliating vulnerability in front of the only person in this godforsaken house who didn’t fear me.
Weeks bled into one another, and Emma simply cleaned around my fury like it was just another stubborn stain on the hardwood floor. She never went out of her way to speak to me, never offered the pitying smiles I despised, and never cowered when I shouted at my lieutenants over the phone. She was a phantom of domesticity, a quiet, relentless force of survival operating on the periphery of my violent world.
Then came the night the fire returned.
