Chapter 2 - The Parlor of Broken Vows
The family parlor on the second floor smelled of beeswax, dried lavender, and the bitter tang of medicinal alcohol. It was a room that few outsiders ever saw; while the ground floor was built to intimidate politicians and syndicate rivals with imported marble and Renaissance oil paintings, this room was furnished with heavy, worn velvet armchairs, faded oriental rugs, and silver-framed photographs of Bellandis who were either dead or imprisoned.
Norah sat on the edge of a deep emerald wingback chair, Roman’s wool coat still clutched tightly across her chest. She felt absurdly out of place. Her worn work shoes were spotted with champagne, and her hair, pinned into a neat, practical bun hours ago, had half-unraveled during the scuffle, sending thick, chestnut waves tumbling down around her neck.
Across from her, Mia Bellandi knelt on the carpet. The eighteen-year-old girl, dressed in a simple cashmere lounge set, was staring at Norah with an intensity that bordered on reverence.
“I remember the smell,” Mia said softly. Her voice barely rose above the crackle of the birch logs burning in the stone fireplace. “Everyone told me I was five, that I was too young, that I only remembered what the therapists suggested. But I remember the smell of vanilla.”
Norah looked down at the girl. Despite herself, a faint, melancholic smile touched the corners of her mouth. “It was the cheap hand lotion from the pharmacy. Ten cents a bottle. I used to slather it on after washing dishes at the diner because my skin would crack in the winter.”
Mia let out a small, half-sob and buried her face against Norah’s knee.
Norah froze, unsure of what to do with her hands. She was a maid. She had spent the last seven years working through agencies that drilled a single, uncompromising rule into their staff: *You are furniture with a heartbeat. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not touch. Do not exist.*
Yet here was the daughter of the Bellandi family—a girl whose name made aldermen sweat—weeping against her apron.
“You left,” Teresa said from where she stood near the mantelpiece. She was holding a cup of untouched black tea, her posture rigid, though the dark circles under her eyes seemed to have deepened by years in the span of an hour. “The paramedics brought Mia to Cook County Hospital. They said an unidentified woman had carried her out through the alley, handed her to an ambulance crew, and then collapsed on the pavement. By the time our people arrived to secure the wing, you were gone. Why did you run?”
Norah pulled Roman’s coat closer, breathing in the cedar and smoke that clung to the fabric. She looked toward the tall, arched window where Roman stood, his back to the room, his phone pressed to his ear as he spoke in low, clipped monosyllables to his captains downstairs.
“I was nineteen,” Norah said simply. “I lived in a tenement on 22nd Street. My father owed five thousand dollars to men who broke kneecaps for sport. When I was in the triage tent, two detectives with expensive suits and no badges came looking for the person who had pulled the Bellandi child out of the fire. They weren't police. They had guns tucked into shoulder holsters, and they were talking about 'cleaning up witnesses.'”
Roman paused in his conversation. His shoulders, broad and rigid beneath his silk shirt, tightened. He lowered the phone from his ear and turned around.
“Who were the men?” Roman asked. His tone was neutral, but his hazel-flecked eyes were dangerously sharp.
“I didn't ask for their business cards, Mr. Bellandi,” Norah said, a touch of the weary irony that had kept her alive all these years slipping into her voice. “I heard them tell the paramedic that whoever pulled the kid out had to be brought in for questioning before the old man found out. I panicked. I thought whoever set the fire was looking to finish the job. I slipped out the back of the ambulance bay while they were distracted by a trauma case.”
“And the burns?” Teresa asked, her voice cracking. “A third-degree burn over that much surface area... how did you survive without a hospital?”
Norah looked at the Persian rug beneath her feet. “There was an old veterinarian who lived in the basement apartment next to mine. Dr. Halloway. He was eighty and blind in one eye, but he had burn salves and penicillin. I traded him my mother’s silver tea set and six months of house cleaning to keep him quiet and sew me up.”
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the parlor.
Roman walked over to the tea cart. He poured two fingers of amber whiskey into a cut-crystal tumbler, but instead of drinking it himself, he walked over to Norah and extended the glass.
“Drink it,” he said.
Norah looked at the glass, then at him. “I’m on duty, Mr. Bellandi.”
“You are not on duty,” Roman replied. His voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. “Drink.”
Norah took the glass. Her fingers brushed his; his skin was warm, calloused, and shockingly steady. She swallowed a mouthful of the liquor. The high-proof rye burned all the way down to her stomach, chasing away the cold numbness that had gripped her since Vanessa had laid hands on her collar.
“Lorenzo Caruso set that fire,” Teresa said suddenly. Her voice was flat, devoid of the theatricality usually found in syndicate drama. It was the cold statement of a ledger being balanced.
Roman did not seem surprised. “We suspected it then. We couldn't prove it. The arson squad reported an electrical fault in the breaker box.”
“Because Lorenzo paid the fire marshal fifty grand to lose the gas-can evidence,” Teresa spat. She set her teacup down with a sharp clatter. “He wanted Mia dead. He wanted to break your father’s spine before the 2012 sit-down. And for thirteen years, that bastard has sat at our table, smiling, drinking our wine, offering his poison-tongued daughter as an olive branch to unite our territories!”
“Mama,” Roman warned quietly. “Not now.”
“Not now?” Teresa stepped forward, her eyes blazing with the ferocious maternal rage that had kept the Bellandi empire intact after her husband’s death. “Vanessa stood in my ballroom tonight and called this woman a peasant. She ripped the clothes off the woman who gave up her youth, her body, and her safety so that Mia could grow up to blow out candles on her eighteenth birthday!”
Teresa turned to Norah, her eyes softening into something so fierce and tender that it made Norah’s breath catch. “For thirteen years, I prayed to Saint Rita every night. I asked her to give me the name of the girl who saved my daughter. I had five million dollars set aside in an offshore trust, waiting for someone to come forward. And you were scrubbing floors in my own house for eighteen dollars an hour.”
Norah lowered her head. “I didn’t know it was your house when I took the agency contract six months ago. The agency just said it was a private estate in Lake Forest. By the time I realized whose crest was on the silver, I... I needed the health insurance, Mrs. Bellandi. I couldn't afford to walk away.”
“Health insurance,” Roman repeated. He closed his eyes for a second, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if fighting a migraine born of pure fury. He opened them and looked at Norah, taking in the full, soft curve of her jaw, the defensive hunch of her shoulders, and the quiet, immovable dignity that radiated from her despite her torn clothing.
“The Carusos are already mobilizing,” Roman said, looking at his mother. “Lorenzo will go straight to the Commission. He’ll claim I broke an alliance without cause, that I humiliated his family in front of the capos.”
“Let him,” Teresa said coldly. “Let him tell them why the alliance was broken. Let him tell them about the gas cans on West Addison.”
“He will strike first,” Roman said. “Lorenzo isn't stupid. He knows that once the truth comes out, the other families won't protect him. Arson against women and children violates the old charter. He’ll try to eliminate the witness before the Commission convenes.”
Norah’s heart gave a sickening lurch. She looked up at Roman, the whiskey tumbler shaking slightly in her hand. “Witness? Mr. Bellandi, I don't know anything about the Carusos. I never saw who set the fire. I just saw smoke!”
Roman looked down at her, his expression unreadable, though a muscle ticked in his clenched jaw.
“It doesn't matter what you saw, Norah,” Roman said softly. “It matters what you survived. To Lorenzo, your scar is an indictment written in flesh. As long as you are alive and under my roof, his neck is in a noose.”
He reached down, taking the empty tumbler from her fingers and setting it on the side table. Then, before Norah could pull away, his large, warm hand closed gently over her wrist.
“You spent thirteen years hiding from monsters, Norah,” Roman said, his hazel eyes locking onto hers with terrifying certainty. “You are done running. From this moment on, you do not take orders from the housekeepers. You do not touch another silver tray. You stay in the main wing, under my protection.”
“Mr. Bellandi, I have an apartment in Pilsen,” Norah protested, panic creeping into her chest. “My cat—my things—”
“Sal has already been dispatched to clear your apartment,” Roman replied calmly. “Your things will be here before midnight. Your cat will be fed.”
“I am an employee!”
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“You were an employee,” Roman corrected. He leaned down slightly, his voice dropping into that deep, velvet register that made her pulse jump against his fingers. “Tonight, you are the Bellandi family’s creditor. And we pay our debts in full.”
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