"Hey, Bella?" I ask as I'm chopping thin slices of radish for garnishes. "What's the family name?"
"Corleone," she says, arranging dishes as the cooks finish making dinner.
I blink. "Like...in the Godfather movies?"
Another maid, Nandini, snorts. "Yeah, but don't ever bring that up. It bothers them."
Nandini is the only non-white maid. I've noticed two things: a third of the men avoid her for it, likely thinking a brown woman is beneath their European-American selves, and another third treat her like some exotic quest. The last third acts human and doesn't treat her any differently.
I respect the last third and am disgusted by the first two. I mean, I think Nandini's drop-dead gorgeous, but that doesn't matter. She's human, and she deserves to be treated as such. We all do.
"Dinner time!" the head chef barks.
I take only two plates, it's all I can balance. I file out behind the other maids into the grand dining room. Everyone seated at the table are men, except for Marcine, the matriarch. I place my dishes -- one salmon and asparagus, the other a rare steak and mashed potatoes -- down in front of the people I'm assigned to.
The steak man looks me up and down, gaze lingering on my chest for longer than is comfortable. His mouth stretches into a little smirk, and I walk away, face heated.
The maids all wait attentively against the wall as dinner commences. It's livelier than the quiet, somber atmosphere I expected. The men laugh and argue and talk politics and sex and business. Many ogle me, the new girl.
But only one's gaze doesn't make me look away.
I lock eyes with the man at the head of the table. His dark irises bore into mine, his handsome face completely expressionless. He doesn't touch the food in front of him and simply stares at me, and I stare back, breath stuck in my throat.
I see a hand wave. I go to attend to the steak man.
"More wine, please," he says.
His words are slurred and I think he's had enough, but I go back into the kitchen to fetch him a bottle. When I'm walking back to him, I lock eyes with the man at the head of the table again.
Distracted, I trip over my own feet, and the wine spills all over the lap of the steak man.
He jumps to his feet, cursing. "You dumb fucking bitch," he mutters, grabbing a napkin from the table and dabbing himself.
"I...I'm sorry," I stutter.
The dining room erupts in grumbles, laughter. More people call me a dumb bitch. The man at the end of the table chuckles, eyes lighting up with a small, mischievous smile.
"You must be the new maid," he muses, but his commentary ends there, and the dinner continues.
YOU ARE READING
Mafia Darling
RomanceElla's mother sells her to the Italian-American mafia, and now she's a maid for a feared and ruthless family. Made to clean up messes and endure insults, she catches the eye of the boss, Marco. An inexperienced woman, she has no idea what she's in f...
