No Maid Lasted Until Lunch With the Mafia Boss's Son… Until the Curvy Girl Who Feared Nothing Did

The kitchen of the Caruso estate had been built in 1912 for an automobile tycoon who believed that granite was the only material fit to touch food. The countertops were four inches of green-veined Vermont stone, cold as an iron stove in December, and the ceiling soared eighteen feet above a central island that could have accommodated three butchered deer without crowding the butcher blocks.

Rosa was peeling parsnips with an old carbon-steel knife, her knuckles swollen with arthritis, her mouth moving in a soundless rhythm that looked like either a prayer or a curse.

"He didn't scream," Rosa said, not looking up as Juliet dropped the bucket into the industrial copper sink with a hollow bang.

"He threw the plate," Juliet said, turning the brass taps. Scalding water hissed out, sending a plume of steam up into her face, curling her dark bangs into tighter rings against her forehead. "Then he threatened me with his father."

"They always threaten you with Matteo," Rosa muttered. She dropped a white parsnip root into a bowl of cold water. "The father doesn't do anything, that's the trouble. He stays in the library until two in the morning signing papers Victor brings him, then he drinks half a bottle of rye and walks around the perimeter fence with a shotgun until the sun comes up. He's like a ghost who hasn't realized he's dead yet."

"And the mother?" Juliet asked, soaping a coarse brush with lye soap.

Rosa’s knife stopped. The blade remained embedded in the root, three inches from her gnarled thumb. She didn't look at Juliet; she looked at the service bell mounted above the range, its brass wheel tarnished to a dull bronze.

"Elena was... soft," Rosa whispered. "Not for this house. She was a schoolteacher's daughter from Grosse Pointe. Matteo saw her at an opera benefit and lost his senses. He thought he could build an iron cage around her and keep her like a canary. But you can't keep a canary in a place where men come through the cellar doors with blood on their shirts at three in the morning."

"The accident," Juliet said, scrubbing a plate with enough force to scour the glaze. "Victor said she drowned."

"The car went into the Huron River off the old bridge," Rosa said, her voice dropping until it was barely louder than the hum of the walk-in cooler. "November. Ice on the road. The police said the brakes locked up. Matteo had the mechanic who worked on that car buried under a parking garage in Toledo forty-eight hours later, but it didn't change anything. The boy was in the back seat. Elena kicked the window out with her heels and shoved him through the frame before the current took her down."

Juliet paused, her brush resting on the wet porcelain. She felt the weight of the folded carbon slip against her hip, through the rough canvas of her apron.

Ask about the brake lines.

"The boy remembers?" Juliet asked.

"He remembers the cold," Rosa said simply. "That's why he won't sleep with the radiators on. He turns them off, even in December, until his lips turn blue. If you try to turn them back on, he bites. He bit through the sweater of the girl from Grand Rapids. Left teeth marks in her forearm like a stray terrier."

The service door swung open with a dry wooden groan.

Matteo Caruso stood in the frame. He had taken off his suit jacket; he wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing forearms corded with dark hair and pale, thin scars that ran parallel across the tendons—the marks of broken glass, or knives that had slipped in close quarters years ago. His jaw was dark with three days of stubble, his collar unbuttoned, showing the hollow at the base of his neck where an old silver medal of Saint Michael hung from a tarnished chain.

He didn't look at Rosa. His dark eyes, flat and hooded like a hawk's, fixed directly on Juliet.

"You're still here," he said.

"I have five hours left on my shift, Mr. Caruso," Juliet replied, not dropping the scrub brush. "I don't leave early. It's bad for the reference."

Matteo walked into the kitchen, his leather soles clicking against the red quarry tile. He moved with the slow, deliberate balance of a boxer who had spent too many rounds learning that sudden movements got you hit. He stopped by the island, resting one large, square hand on the edge of the maple block. His fingernails were scrubbed clean, but the cuticle on his left index finger was torn, red and irritated.

"Nico is sitting on the floor of his wardrobe," Matteo said. His voice was raspy, dry as dried hay. "He has an empty bowl. He told Rosa's girl that you refused to feed him."

"I told him I wouldn't fry him another egg," Juliet corrected, meeting his stare without blinking. "The sourdough was fifty cents a slice, and the butter came from the creamery in Chelsea. I don't waste food on principle, Mr. Caruso. If he wants breakfast, he can eat the apple I left on his dresser."

Rosa made a tiny, strangled sound in the back of her throat and began furiously peeling a parsnip that had already been stripped of its skin.

Matteo didn't move. He tilted his head slightly, his eyes traveling down Juliet's frame—from the defiant set of her jaw, past the heavy curve of her breasts beneath the stiff cotton uniform, down to her feet planted firmly on the wet floorboards. There was no lust in the look; it was the cold, measuring assessment of an engineer checking the structural integrity of a load-bearing wall.

"The last girl was six feet tall and had three brothers in the state police," Matteo said. "Nico told her there was a man under the bed with a skinning knife, and she had her cousin pick her up before noon."

"I don't have brothers," Juliet said. "Just an aunt in Kalamazoo who thinks the government puts tracking devices in flu shots. I'm used to crazy people, Mr. Caruso. An eight-year-old with a bad temper doesn't even make my top ten."

Something shifted in Matteo's face. The corner of his mouth twitched, just once, before the granite settled back over his features.

"He won't eat the apple," Matteo said.

"Then he'll be hungry at lunch," she replied.

"And what are you making for lunch?"

"Sandwiches. Ham, sharp cheddar, and dark mustard on rye. If he doesn't want the mustard, he can scrape it off himself with the back of a spoon."

Matteo stared at her for three seconds longer, the silence in the kitchen growing so dense that the ticking of the grandfather clock in the dining room sounded like a hammer hitting lead.

"If he isn't out of the wardrobe by one o'clock," Matteo said, turning back toward the service door, "I'm calling the agency to send a replacement."

"You do that," Juliet said to his retreating back. "Tell them to send someone who knows how to make mayonnaise from scratch, because the jarred stuff in your pantry expired during the Obama administration."

Matteo stopped at the door. He didn't turn around, but his shoulders lifted in a slow, deep breath that held the barest hint of something that had been absent from the house for twelve months.