Every Woman Rejected The Infertile Mafia Boss—Until A New Maid Arrived At His Mansion Spotlight8
CHAPTER 1
Josie knelt on the stone floor and began picking up the broken pieces one by one, gathering them into the fold of her apron. She worked slowly and carefully because as long as she was still cleaning up, no one had told her to walk out that door.
In her mind, a voice had already finished the calculation. Tomorrow was the day her son had to receive another blood transfusion. Tomorrow was the day someone would once again hand her a sheet of paper covered with numbers she couldn’t read through in a single breath.
She thought of the refrigerator door in their rented apartment in Brighton Park, where papers like that were stacked beneath an orange-shaped magnet so thick that the door no longer closed properly.
She heard footsteps behind her. Her whole body stiffened. But no one shouted.
An elderly woman merely set a small broom and a tin dustpan beside her. Bernadette Quillin was sixty-eight years old, slightly stooped, and wore a cardigan buttoned all the way up as though an honored guest might arrive at any moment. Even though there was no one left in the house then but the two of them.
“Those trays break all the time,” she said. “Thin silver. They’re made to look pretty, not to carry things. Leave it there. I’ll get another one from the storeroom later.”
Josie looked up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was in the room.”
“I know you didn’t.”
She said it so calmly that Josie couldn’t understand why it sent a deeper chill down her spine than any reprimand could have. Mrs. Quillin pulled a small chair from the corner of the hallway and sat down, resting both hands on her knees.
“Sit. I’ll tell you a few things. And after that, whether you stay or leave is up to you. No one is keeping you here.”
Josie sat on the step with her knees pressed together, the fold of her apron still heavy with shards of silver.
“There are three forbidden things in this house,” Mrs. Quillin said. “First, don’t look directly at the master of the house and then quickly turn your face away. Not because he forbids it. He’s never forbidden anyone from doing anything like that. But people look at him, then they hurry to look away. And that turning away is far worse. If you think you’re going to do that, then it’s better not to look at all.”
She raised one finger.
“Second, no one goes up to the third floor after nine at night. It doesn’t matter who tells you to go up there or why. You come down here and ask me first.”
A third finger rose.
“Third, no one in this house mentions the Kesler building. Not because it’s a secret. The whole city has been talking about it for nine years. So what could possibly be secret about it? It’s simply something no one speaks of within these four walls.”
Josie nodded. She had worked in enough houses and heard enough rules to know that the way to survive was to nod first and understand later.
“You have a young child,” Mrs. Quillin said. It wasn’t a question.
“One. He’s seven.”
The older woman nodded slowly, her gaze drifting toward the dark end of the hallway. “It’s been a very long time since there was the sound of a child in this house.”
Then she stood and brushed off her knees. “Wash your face. Then come down to the kitchen. I have some papers for you to sign.”
The contract lay on the wooden table beneath a low-hanging lamp. Josie read it very slowly, one line at a time, tracing the edge of the paper with her finger. Then she stopped at the figure showing her weekly wages. She read it again to make certain she hadn’t looked at the wrong line.
Three times what the restaurant had paid her before letting her go the month before. Three times what she had earned anywhere since the day Toby was born.
She took the pen Mrs. Quillin offered and signed in the blank space. Quickly. Like someone afraid that what lay before her would be taken away if she hesitated for even one more heartbeat.
The next morning, on the fourth floor of St. Bridget Hospital, Toby sat in a chair with an infusion line connected to the port beneath his collarbone. He was folding a paper airplane from the discharge sheet he had received after his last visit. He sharpened the crease with his thumbnail, then wrote “Flight 38” across one wing.
“Paper airplanes fly farther than real ones, Mom,” he said. “That’s because they don’t have to carry anyone.”
Josie stood in the doorway and watched her son for a moment, long enough to remember his face exactly as it was then. The face of a child preoccupied with whether he should write the number on the left wing or the right. Worried about nothing. Knowing nothing at all.
Then she looked at the clock on the wall and walked to the far end of the hallway, to a pale wooden door bearing a sign that read “Family Support Services.”
Three people sat on the other side of the table. One held a thin folder. Another typed on a tablet. All three smiled when she entered. The person holding the folder poured her a cup of water and pushed it toward her.
No one raised their voice. No one frowned. And that was precisely what made Josie’s palms grow damp beneath the table. Because she had sat before people like them enough times to understand that when they were this polite, it meant everything was being recorded.
They asked where she was living, what hours she worked, and who watched the boy in the evenings. They reminded her very gently that two transfusions had been rescheduled the previous month. They asked whether she considered her current arrangement stable.
Not one of the three said anything that could be called a threat. Yet in Josie’s mind, every question opened the door to another question they hadn’t asked. The one she lay awake imagining. The one that, if it were ever spoken aloud, would bring everything to an end.
She sat with her back straight. She answered each question clearly, without one unnecessary word. She said she had just found a new job—full-time and steady. She said her new wages would allow her to rearrange the schedule.
The person with the tablet typed a few more words and nodded. The person holding the folder said that was wonderful. The entire meeting ended in less than twenty minutes.
In the hallway, Josie walked straight to the cashier’s desk. She stood in line behind a man arguing about an insurance code. When her turn came, she accepted the sheet of paper, still warm from the printer, stepped aside, leaned her back against the wall, and read it.
She read from the top down. Passed the service codes. Passed the deductible. Passed the equipment fee. Until she reached the number inside the bold outlined box in the upper right corner.
She read that number once more. Then in her mind, she placed it beside the figure printed on the contract she had signed in the Ror house kitchen the night before. The figure three times larger than anything she had known. The one that had made her hand tremble as she put pen to paper.
She subtracted one from the other.
She stood motionless for a while with the result of that calculation in her mind. Her face didn’t change. She folded the paper in half, then into quarters, pressing every edge until it was perfectly straight. The way people fold something they know they’ll have to open many more times.
Then she slipped it into the inside pocket of her wool coat, whose elbows had been patched with thread of a different color. She drew a breath. She ran two fingers beneath the corners of her eyes, though there was nothing there to wipe away.
May you like
Then she turned back toward the room. And before she could even see her son, laughter escaped her from outside the doorway. Toby looked up from the paper airplane, lifted it high with both hands, his face glowing, and began explaining all over again why Flight 38 would fly farther than every flight that had come before it.
