Chapter 32 #2
I don’t have to think about it long to say, “Not really, no. I like that we’re equals. You being my employee was a problem for me, actually.”
She pinches her lips, seemingly dissatisfied with my answer. “I don’t know how I fell so in love with the most boring man in the world.”
Bothered by my lack of compliance, she grabs my knees to help herself up. I don’t let her, though, pressing on her shoulder with a firm hand. No one, especially not her, gets to call me boring and not get proved wrong.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I demand.
“To change into normal clothes.”
“No, you’re not. Do you realize how important that paperweight was to me? And you destroyed it with your clumsiness.”
Excitement and arousal fire up behind her surprised eyes. Immediately, she reprises her role. “Sir, I’ll do anything to make up for it.”
“Like what?”
“I could … suck your cock?”
Her slim hand returns to my leg and slithers up my lap before landing on the bulge growing in my shorts. “That’s all you’re willing to do?” I ask, doing my best to sound angry when I’m far from it.
“I mean … you could fuck my pussy, too?” she suggests, uncharacteristically shy.
“It was a family heirloom. A priceless piece of my history.”
She sighs with what I imagine is meant to be despair, but she can barely hold back her delighted grin. “If you’re very gentle, sir, you can put it in my ass.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. I think the incident warrants a spanking, too.”
Her jaw falls open, but she quickly picks it up. “Of course, sir.”
“To make sure it never happens again.”
“Anything you say, sir.”
Eager, she slips her fingers into the waistband of my shorts. Before she can lower them, though, I grab her jaw with one hand and fist her sleek, low bun with the other to bring her face up to mine.
“Since I’m about to fuck you like you’re nothing to me but a clumsy and worthless inconvenience, let me remind you I would go to hell and back for you, woman.”
“Nothing could ever make me forget that, baby.”
Still holding her firmly, I kiss her with all the dominance I can muster, giving her what she’s asking for, what she seems to crave.
Role-playing isn’t for me. It’s awkward and feels unnecessary.
I don’t need her to pretend to be a maid to want her.
But this is what she wants, and in a way, I get why she likes this idea, this little game.
Even though pretending to be different people is out of my comfort zone, it’s alright. She is my comfort zone. Always.
And I’ll be damned if I don’t do everything I can to protect her while she risks everything yet again for us.
One last time, I check myself in the small mirror of the car’s sun visor. Without my curly hair or freckles, I look very … ordinary. Nothing about me is striking, which is perfect. I’ll blend in, not attract attention, and that’s exactly what I need.
“Are you ready?” Lex asks, even more stressed than I am.
“I think so.”
“If you don’t want to do it, we can cancel, Andrea. We’ll find another way.”
“We won’t. This is the perfect opportunity, baby. We saw them leave yesterday, and we know they won’t be back for at least a week. We won’t get another shot like this until God knows how long.”
Resigned, he lets out a long breath through his nose, lips pressed in a straight line. “Remember to pay attention to the lights,” he insists for the seventh time since we woke up.
“I know.”
As we prepared ourselves for today, Lex got the brilliant idea to dig into the penthouse’s electrical system.
The place runs on a centralized smart grid, and since we had access to the network, it wasn’t hard to find the control layer that manages voltage distribution.
If I’m ever in trouble, he’ll briefly dip the power—not enough to trip alarms or alert anyone monitoring the system, but enough to make the lights dim and flicker twice.
A silent signal only I’ll be looking for.
Technically, we won’t need the precaution. But I could tell he needed it to fully agree to this plan. And honestly? I don’t mind having him watching my back.
“I need to go,” I say, eyeing the time on the dashboard.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. I promise I’ll be fine. Especially since I have you to look after me.”
I don’t know how to help him relax other than giving him a kiss. So I do exactly that, leaning over the SUV’s partition. This wasn’t meant to become much more than a peck, but my own fears push me to give and demand more. Lex, who’s stiff at first, melts into the kiss.
A small voice in the back of my head tells me this feels like a last kiss, or the potentiality of it, but I dismiss it. Today will be fine. I’ll fly under the radar, as Paola said, and maybe get us the answers we’re desperate for.
Refusing to be late and bring unnecessary attention to myself, I rip away from Lex’s tantalizing lips. “See you at six,” I say, grabbing the handle.
“Wait,” he calls just as I open the door.
I turn around, expecting him to try one last time to get me to cancel all this and return to the apartment with him.
“I love you,” he says instead, surprising me.
The urge to kiss him one last time and maybe ease that crease between his brows is too strong to resist. So, hurriedly, I lean toward him again and press a quick kiss on his wet lips. “I love you too, baby. See you tonight.”
This time, he doesn’t hold me back as I exit the car. We’re two blocks away from Becker’s building, and I use the walk to hype myself up. I’ll be alright. Nothing will happen to me. What the hell could go wrong anyway? The Beckers are away, and I’m just a maid among many others. I’ll be fine.
Paola arrives at the service door about two minutes after me. She greets me with a brief nod and a smile. “Are you ready for this?” she asks in Spanish.
“I think so. Do you have any advice?”
“Don’t talk too much.”
It’s good advice, for sure, but the way she says it has me asking, “Why?”
“You have an accent.”
“I do?”
“Yes. The housekeeper won’t notice you’re not just Mexican. She doesn’t speak Spanish well enough. But the other maids, they might pick up on it.”
“Oh, okay …”
I’m having some kind of existential crisis as she rings the intercom by the door.
I have a noticeable accent? My mother and abuela never pointed it out.
And it’s not like I could have noticed it on Rafael in comparison.
But I suppose it makes sense. I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood, and the establishments I went to for my education were also very white.
Plus, I haven’t been able to practice Spanish as much as I used to when I lived at my parents’ house.
Still, it hurts a little to think I very much feel Mexican, but I don’t fully sound the part.
When a male voice rises from the interphones, I shake myself out of it. “It’s Paola. And this is my cousin, Perdita,” she explains in Spanish. “She’s starting today. La Senora Reed should have left a note for you.”
The man doesn’t answer, but after about ten seconds, he rings us in.
I do my damnedest to contain my nerves as I follow Paola through the service hallways. She leads me to an elevator, and using a badge, she gets us to the floor before last.
That leads us to yet another security check and a grille door. There’s a booth there, where a man awaits. Jesus, this really was our only way in. Becker’s security is bordering on paranoia at this point.
The man checks who I am with Paola, and then lets us in. Before we can continue, though, he makes me stand in front of a white wall. When he returns with a small electronic camera, I bite the inside of my cheek to contain my panic.
“Why the picture?” I ask in Spanish.
“So we have your face on file and know to let you in.”
“Oh …” Lex and I will have to delete it as soon as my work here is done. No way we’re leaving breadcrumbs.
I only start breathing normally again when Paola leads me into the service quarters. Phew, the hardest part is over. Now, all I have to do is pretend I’m a diligent maid and search the shit out of the office as soon as I’m in there.
“You need to talk to Senora Reed,” Paola explains.
“What?!”
“It’s the normal procedure. She’ll ask a few questions, then she’ll send you back to me, and we’ll start working.”
Fuck. I didn’t realize I’d have to go through an interview. Paola walks me up to a closed door, then she knocks on it three times. When an austere voice invites us in, she opens the door and encourages me to enter first.
Mrs. Reed’s office isn’t small, but it isn’t large either. Shelves contain countless binders, there are little to no personal items, and in the middle of it, a large desk with a chair in the front, and one with Mrs. Reed sitting on it on the other side.
She’s typing something on her computer, which we hacked into as well. Nothing compromising in it, only schedules, notes, and emails. I’ve seen Mrs. Reed countless times in the security feed, and it seems she manages the staff with an iron fist. Which doesn’t help my anxiety.
“Senora Reed, this is my cousin I told you about. Perdita,” Paola explains.
The middle-aged woman looks up from her computer. “Come in, Perdita. Paola, you can go get ready.”
I look back at her, wishing she could stay. She isn’t a friend, not even close, but she’s all I have right now, and I’m two seconds from shitting myself. My mission hasn’t even started yet, and I might fail miserably.
Mrs. Reed points at the chair opposite hers, inviting me to sit down, and I nervously comply. She studies me for what feels like an entire minute, and then says, “Paola told me you’ve worked for The Plaza for the past nine months.”
Right. When we came up with this persona, Lex and I decided a luxurious hotel was the perfect cover. “Sí, senora. They let me go when they realized I’m not … documented. But Paola told me it wouldn’t be a problem here.”
“It won’t be, no. Do you have more experience as a maid?” Her Spanish is good, but she’s definitely not from South America. My light gringa accent should remain unnoticed indeed.
“I worked for a family in Brooklyn for a year before that.”
“Why did they let you go?”
“I left, senora. A cousin found me the position at The Plaza.”
“You people and your endless lists of cousins …” she mumbles in English. I bite the inside of my cheek, holding back from showing any reaction. Crazy how she wears her cuntiness on her face … “Paola told you this is just for the week, right?”
“Yes.”
“We’re always looking for good maids, so if you work well, there might be a more permanent position for you here. Do you understand?”
Oh, I think the fuck not. “I understand. Thank you for the opportunity, Senora Reed.”
She stands from her chair, comes around the desk, and then heads for the door without a word, apparently expecting me to follow her.
“You will shadow Paola during your stay with us. The family isn’t here right now.
But when they come back, be invisible. The Beckers like their privacy, so if you are in a room when one of them walks in, you leave it immediately, regardless of what you’re doing.
If Mr. Becker sees too much of you, he will come to me about it, and I’ll have no other choice but to fire you. Do you understand?”
“Sí, Senora Reed.”
She opens a closet full of maid uniforms. After sizing me up with what resembles disdain, she shuffles through a few of them hanging on a rail and then takes one out.
“This one should be the right size,” she lets out, handing me the dress.
I almost blush taking it from her, remembering all the things Lex did to me the last time I wore one of those. For someone who wasn’t that into it, he sure gave it everything.
I follow Mrs. Reed as she shows me around and explains more of the basics that I’ll need to remember. Once it’s all done, she leads me to the maids’ locker room.
“Everyone,” she calls out in Spanish, immediately gathering the attention of all seventeen women, who are at various stages of changing into their uniforms. “As you know, this is a big week, which is why I hired six extra maids. I expect all of you to double your efforts. On Friday, Mr. Becker will have his monthly reception with close friends. Then, on Saturday, his birthday party with a hundred and sixty guests. I expect the house to be immaculate for both events.”
The women nod, and Mrs. Reed assigns every pair a priority. It’s only when she walks away that I can breathe normally again. Okay, if I don’t make it out of this place alive, it’ll be because I had a heart attack, not because Becker got me killed. But Lex would be so inconsolable.
No, I can’t let myself die of high stress. I’m not a fucking rabbit. I’ll survive this and go back to my man to tell the tale.
I’m just done changing into the gray dress when my burner phone vibrates. Fuck, only Lex has the number for this.
I pick up and press it to my ear. “?Hola?”
“Don’t talk. I just wanted to make sure the electricity warning works.” Just as he finishes his sentence, the lights dim and rise again, twice. “Did you see that?” he asks.
“Si.”
“Perfect. Stay alert, Andrea. I’ll watch over you all day.”
I can’t really say anything, but I hope he realizes just how grateful I am for this. “Gracias. Te amo, mi amor.”
“I love you too, freckles. Stay safe today, okay? Or I’ll come get you myself.”
I chuckle, entirely aware he would find a way to do it, no matter how high the security is here. “Adiós, bebé. Te veo en la noche, sana y salva.”
Not waiting for his answer, I hang up and return the phone to my locker. Paola joins me once it’s locked and asks, “Are you ready?”
I nod. “Let’s do this.”