10. Cassandra
10
CASSANDRA
T he next time I wake up, the sun is already past its peak.
I blink around my new room, registering all the details now illuminated in the light of day.
Besides the door Rocco entered through last night, there are two others in each corner. The walls are tall, decorated with intricate molding, and the wooden floor is intermittently broken up by thick carpet.
The entire space feels extravagant, and yet its neutral tones are impersonal. A guest room, perhaps?
How often does a Mafia don host polite company?
But my musings are cut short by a rasping on the door.
I have the urge to pull my bedsheets over my chest. “Come in?”
But it’s not Rocco who enters.
A tiny woman gently pushes the door open. There’s a tray of what appears to be breakfast balancing on her ample hip and a determined look on her surprisingly youthful face.
“It’s about time you get up, ma’am.” Her British accent catches me off-guard.
“You must be Donatella.”
“Charmed, I’m sure.” She unceremoniously drops her tray on my bedside table before hurrying to fling the curtains open. “Eat something, please.”
Bemused by her curtness, I examine the veritable feast she’s laid out before me.
“How long has it been since…” Since my so-called boyfriend signed me away to a mafia don. “Since I arrived here?”
Donatella has to climb onto the windowsill in order to reach the window latch. Her efforts are rewarded with a delightful breeze entering the room.
“Couple of days, give or take.”
My stomach rumbles in confirmation.
As if hearing it too, Donatella chastises me, “Eat.”
I don’t wait to be told again as I help myself to the pastries, jams, and fruit before me. I even enjoy the English Breakfast Tea, despite never having been partial to it before.
I focus on all the textures in my mouth, anything to distract myself from formulating a thought beyond satisfying my seemingly insatiable hunger.
When I finally lean back from my meal, it’s to find Donatella examining me.
Feline, I think, is the best way to describe her. I can almost imagine her tail flicking around in discontent. Only, she’s shaped more like a chubby little housecat than a panther or a lion.
“I should have woken you yesterday.”
I’m not entirely sure how to respond to that, so I just shrug instead.
“I’ll run you a bath,” she decides a second later, turning on her heel to approach one of the other doors in the room.
It reveals a large en suite. A free-standing bath sits with pride in the middle of the room, seemingly already stocked with more toiletries than I could use in a lifetime.
I slide off the bed to take a closer look. “What is this place?”
“Mister Moretti’s brownstone.” Donatella raises her voice over the sound of the running water.
“I figured that much out for myself, thanks.” I regret the snark in my tone as soon as Donatella shoots me a glare. “I meant, how big is it? Are all the rooms like this?”
“If you behave, I might give you a tour later.”
I ignore her and leave the bathroom to examine the final unopened door in my room.
I’m not sure why I’m surprised to find a fully stocked walk-in wardrobe. I think my room alone is bigger than Claudio’s entire apartment.
As I explore, my hand reaches out to touch the soft sleeves of the seemingly thousands of coats that hang in the closet.
“Four floors, three bedrooms, five bathrooms, and a gym,” Donatella’s voice chirping voice says behind me. “One of his more modest homes.”
I raise an eyebrow at that. “So this isn’t his only place of residence?”
Perhaps Rocco won’t be staying here after all. I’m not sure why I suddenly feel so disappointed by this. If anything, he would only make things more complicated for me.
“It’s his only home in Brooklyn. His mansion in South Africa is my personal favorite. But the villa in the Canary Islands is also right up there.”
Right. Billionaire Italian don. How could I forget?
“Your bath is ready,” Donatella announces without missing a beat.
With one last longing look at the unexplored wardrobe, I follow the housekeeper back into the en suite.
The refreshing smell of lilac fills the air as bubbles waft romantically from the free-standing tub. But I hesitate before taking another step forward, giving Donatella a pointed look.
“Nothing I haven’t seen before, love,” she mutters but turns around anyway.
Still, I feel my cheeks flush as I quickly strip down and step into the near-scalding water. The instant relief I feel as my shoulders slip under the surface almost makes me groan aloud.
Between being bedridden for several days and the stress of the last week, my shoulders were now incredibly grateful for some TLC. I stretch out my toes, content to just close my eyes and soak for a little while.
Except someone dunks their hands in the water and begins scrubbing at my hair.
“Excuse me?” I splutter out just as another wave of water is dunked on my head.
“You need a thorough clean,” Donatella replies simply as she selects a bottle of the vast array of products around us.
“I can wash my own hair.”
Donatella snorts. “Evidently not if you’ve not been able to get out of bed for two days.”
“This is unnecessary.”
“Mister Moretti disagrees.”
I cross my hands across my chest self-consciously. “Unbelievable. Where does that fucker get off?”
Water splashes into my eyes. “Not another word about the don. He may be demanding, but his heart is in the right place.”
I want to scowl at her petulantly, but I’m too afraid to open my eyes again. “Tell me about him.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How long have you worked here?”
“That’s not a question about him.”
I remain stubbornly silent until she lets out an exasperated sigh. “Over twenty years now.”
“How old were you when you started?” I ask in disbelief.
“Probably about the same age as you.”
I finally find the bravery to crack open an eyelid and turn toward her to examine her youthful face.
At my expression, she cracks a smile. “Unlike some, I actually bathe every day.”
But her smile fades as her eyes drop to the tops of my arms. Something dark crosses her eyes as she looks back up at me. No, at my bruised cheek.
“I have some Arnica cream downstairs. I won’t be a moment.”
Without another word, she slips out of the room, finally leaving me alone.
With nothing but my thoughts.
I desperately try to organize them into some sense of coherency before they completely overwhelm me again. The truths are the easiest to identify.
Number one, Claudio Lazzaro is the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Number two, I made a deal with the devil in order to get away from him.
Number three, there’s a good chance everyone around me is a part of the Italian mafia.
Number four, I have no job and no source of income.
Number five, Rocco Moretti is the most attractive man I’ve ever met.
Despite everything else, all the chaos of the last few days, it’s that final point that snags in my mind the most.
How could a man who didn’t even exist to me a few weeks ago become so instrumental in not only my livelihood, but my every waking thought?
From the moment we met, I’d felt that strange allure, been helpless to his flirtations. I’d even considered what it might have been like to give in to him before any of this had even happened.
But where did that leave us now?
Perhaps I was always a piece of a larger plan to him. Maybe he had been orchestrating getting me to leave Claudio from the start. Perhaps that was his way of drawing a line in the sand and pulling me over it to stand next to him.
Maybe that night at Electrix had meant nothing to him. Maybe it was just a perk of the job to be seduced by someone so willing to give herself over. Maybe he had his fill when he sank his teeth into my neck and felt my desire between my legs.
My own fingers drift beneath the water at the memory.
The memory of his breath on my neck still sends shivers of pure, animalistic lust down my spine. I imagine his lips trailing over my skin as he reaches up to my ear, biting at my lobe. In my mind, his hand rubs across my chest, and my nipple pebbles under his touch.
“Angioletta.”
I touch myself as I imagine his voice whispering in my ear. The warm bathwater is an unnecessary lubricant for my already-soaked core.
His devastating eyes, the way his hair falls across his face. The way his strong, tattooed arms held me in place like they were capable of lifting me entirely off the floor. If he hadn’t stopped, would he have fucked me against that wall?
I imagine it now as I work myself harder, the way he would have teased me with his fingers, bringing me to the brink of orgasm but ultimately denying my pleasure.
How I would have waited, desperate and dripping, for him to pull out his cock, thick with his own desire. I would have begged for it, cried for it as he lined himself up to my core.
How I would have screamed when he thrust into me, oh so fucking hard. Again and again. And again. As my pleasure would have built and built and…
How his lips would have finally, finally met mine…
I tremble as my body finds its feeble release. My fingers are a poor imitation of my own imagination, but at least it does something to relieve the pressure that had been building within me since that night.
In the clarity that follows, I step out of my bath and drain away the water, sweeping my sinful thoughts down the drain as well.. A cold shower soothes my flushed skin, so that by the time I walk back into the bedroom in my towel, my heartbeat has returned to normal.
Donatella enters a moment later with an excessively large first aid kit, blissfully unaware of my transgressions, and levels mea serious look on me.
“Is there anything else, aside from the bruises?” she asks, assessing me head to toe.
I just shake my head as she hands over a tube of cream.
“Apply this as often as you nee.; It will speed up the healing process.”
“Thank you,” I say as I glance at the large first aid kit as she packs it up. “You know how to use all that?”
“I trained as a nurse before I stepped into housekeeping.”
Right. “I guess that’s normal for mafia housekeepers.”
“It comes in handy from time to time,” her clipped tone tells me I shouldn’t push it. “Mister Moretti isn’t prone to injury, however.”
“Just his enemies, right?” I reply bitterly.
Outside the soothing bathwater, the crushing reality of Rocco’s true identity is harder to ignore. He might have saved me from Claudio, but he’s still a mafia don.
How many people has he killed? How many lives has he ruined? Behind his flirtations lies someone deadly, lethal, and emotionless, capable of an unknown number of atrocities.
He isn’t a good person, and I am completely and utterly out of my depth.
“You act as if he could escape this life,” Donatella says as if reading every thought in my mind. “As if he wasn’t reared from birth to fulfill this exact purpose. You could no sooner ask a tiger to change his stripes.”
“Is that supposed to make it all okay, then?”
She looks at me through narrowed eyes. “The underworld will always march on. It’s better Mister Moretti is at the helm than anyone else.”
I want to laugh at her. “So he’s a good employer, huh? Does he steal from the rich and give to the poor? Does he send flowers to the wives and children of the men he murders?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that he’s a criminal. I know that he trades in human lives,” I snap back.
“He saved you from a far worse fate.”
“To further his own means.”
She gives me a long look that I can’t quite decipher. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
“What are you talking about?”
But Donatella merely shakes her head. “Get dressed. If you want a tour, I’ll only wait outside for five minutes.”
With that, she marches away, her first aid kit in tow.
For a moment, I just stand there contemplating whether it would be worth getting back into bed. But annoying Donatella won’t win me any favors, and if I’m honest with myself, I’m more than a little curious about what the rest of the house looks like.
After a too-short browse of the walk-in closet, I manage to find a matching pair of dark and far too lacy underwear, a comfortable pair of jeans, and a pale blouse that does little to disguise the color of my bra beneath.
As I exit, Donatella’s eyebrow quirks up at my appearance.
“Next time, give me a little longer to change,” I snap at her.
“Compared to that little dress you arrived in, I was actually thinking you look rather composed.” She gestures down the hall. “Shall we?”
Natural light pours in from the windows as we walk the corridor, and I catch a glance of myself in a large ornate mirror hanging from the wall.
Despite my hair still drying down my back, I’m surprised to see that Donatella is at least a little bit right. The dark circles I’d become so used to seeing beneath my eyes have subsided, and my outfit seems surprisingly coordinated against my olive skin.
I follow behind Donatella with a small smile as she shows me through the doors that flank us on both sides.
Everything about this house feels regal, though it rarely breaches gaudy or impractical. The gym is perhaps the most impressive room in the house. I haven’t been able to afford a membership since I moved here, so I take in the expensive equipment with interest.
“When I arrived,” I say after Donatella finishes showing me around the extensive kitchen, “I had a leather jacket. My phone was in my pocket.”
Donatella pushes through another door. “Your jacket is hanging in the closet in your room. I believe Mister Moretti has your phone.”
We find ourselves standing on the second level, at the top of a set of princess staircases that lead down to the main foyer.
I turn back to her. “Will I ever get it back?”
“Mr. Moretti will be back soon,” she replies, not really answering the question.
My shoulders slump. “Let me guess, he wants to control how and when I use my phone. Like he’s done with everything else.”
Donatella opens her mouth to speak but seems to freeze up suddenly.
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t use that tone with my staff, Miss Cassandra.”
I whirl around in alarm to find Rocco standing below us by the front door.
That crooked smile flashes despite the fact that his shirt is covered in blood.