Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
CHASTITY
MONTHS LATER
“ M atteo, I have to get up.”
The gravity of my statement was only slightly undercut by my giggle filling the room a second later when Matteo wrapped his arms around my waist. I’d been trying to slip out from underneath our bed sheets for the last hour, but that plan wasn’t working out too well.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.” Despite my repeated assertions, I barely wriggled in his grasp as he pulled me back by his side. “I have class, and the professor hates it when we arrive late.”
“Does he?” Matteo didn’t sound all that concerned. “That’s fine. I’ll send you with a note.”
I narrowed my eyes playfully at him. “I really don’t think that’s going to work.”
As powerful and persuasive as Matteo and the rest of his family were in the New York Underworld, they didn’t hold that same kind of sway over the pre-law track at NYU.
“All right then,” he said with a wicked smile. “Then I’ll send you with a bribe as well.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to— oh !”
Whatever I was about to say was forgotten the instant his hand slipped back down between my legs.
“Oh, it’ll work,” he assured me, his low, rumbling voice filled with all kinds of sensual promise. “It always works.”
I licked my lips as my head fell back. I was losing track of the conversation. Were we still talking about school or how his touch never failed to light my body and soul on fire?
Either way, I was left panting and hungry for more when, a few minutes later, Matteo tired of letting his fingers have all the fun and rolled us over, so I was sitting on top of him.
Staring down at the brand expanse of his bare chest, I felt the liquid heat inside me begin to boil over.
Damn . Would I ever get used to the sight of him? I hoped not. Clawing my fingers down his hard pecs and the rigid plane of his belly was one of the greatest pleasures in life. Second only to?—
Reaching up, Matteo curled his fingers in my hair and brought me down for a blistering kiss.
“Skip the damn class,” he growled.
Class ? Oh…right.
Yeah, I couldn’t do that.
“I can’t,” I said, even though, this time, I didn’t even try to roll off of him. Instead, I stayed exactly where I was, with my legs straddling his hips…the temptation of his heavy cock just inches away. “I’m already behind since you distracted me from my homework last night. If I miss the lecture today?—”
“You can retake the class next semester.”
I groaned. Why was he making this so hard?
Who was I kidding? I knew exactly why.
“No, I can’t,” I said, doing my best to sound firm. “If I skip class every time you want to fool around, I won’t graduate until I’m eighty years old.”
His smile only grew. “You think I’m going to stop touching you when you’re eighty? Hell, no. I’ll still be chasing you when we’re in heaven.”
His words sent a rush of heat to my cheeks.
“Is that a promise?” I asked.
“Abso- fucking -lutely.”
He pulled me down for another kiss.
Then another.
And another.
“Matteo, I’m telling you I have to go to class.”
“Stay,” he whispered against my ear as the ridge of his cock slid into the sweet spot in between us. “Just this once—stay.”
“I…can’t,” I panted even as I continued to kiss him back. “I…”
I couldn’t.
I really couldn’t.
.
..
…
Then again…maybe just this one time, I could.
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The Price of Power
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THE WAGES OF SIN
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“Jane said you’ve done this before, so I assume you know the rules.”
The woman at my side waited until the elevator doors in front of us had completely shut before she spoke. We’d met in the lobby of this gorgeous Art Deco residential building on the west side of New York’s Central Park only minutes ago, and I could already tell from her crossed arms and deep frown that she didn’t like me.
That was fine.
I wasn’t here to make friends. I was here to do a job, get paid, and go home.
Nothing else.
“No talking,” she continued as the elevator car rose. “No eye contact. No opening drawers or cabinets. You keep your head down and your hands to yourself. Clean only what’s in front of you. And if you happen to come across anything you shouldn’t—no, you didn’t.”
I nodded without looking up.
Like she said, I’d done this before.
That’s why I wasn’t surprised when the rest of the ride up to the eighteenth floor was silent. The no-talking rule didn’t just apply to interactions with the client. In general, the less contact cleaners like us had with anyone during work hours, the better.
And the safer.
When the elevator doors opened, my partner for the day stepped out into a pristine cream-colored hallway with dark wood fixtures. I followed her past half a dozen doors before we reached the one at the end of the hall—Apartment 18J.
Knowing the drill, I kept my face up as the woman pressed the bell beneath the security camera at the door, but as soon as I heard the locks turning on the other side, I dipped it down again.
“Rose,” a deep voice greeted my partner from the other side of the door. A voice so rich and low that, for a second, I was tempted to glance up and take in the face of the man it belonged to. Fortunately, I caught myself before I could make that mistake.
No eye contact.
There was a damn good reason for that rule, after all.
“Sir,” Rose greeted him, her tone far more cheerful than when she’d greeted me.
“Where’s Helen?”
“She’s sick, sir,” Rose said. “So the service sent a replacement today.”
“I see.”
After a full year of working for the service, I’d grown used to these long moments of silent scrutiny, but for some reason, this one felt different.
Even though I was careful to keep my gaze fixed on the ground and couldn’t see anything above the client’s dark trousers and expensive-looking black loafers, I swear I could feel the weight of his stare bearing down on me.
The sensation was unsettling but not entirely unpleasant.
After far too long, the man finally broke the silence. “What’s your name?”
“Mary,” I answered.
“Mary,” he echoed, that rumbly voice washing over me. Again, I found myself fighting the urge to look up and satisfy my curiosity.
I wasn’t sure why I was reacting this way.
Mary wasn’t even my real name. Just like I was sure Rose wasn’t the other woman’s.
After all, women like us only took this job because we had no other choice...because we’d been forced to leave our old names and lives behind.
“I told Jane you only trust me and Helen,” Rose said. “But she wanted me to tell you she personally vouches for Mary. Still, if you want to reschedule, I’m happy to come back once Helen is better.”
“Wait,” the client said. His tone wasn’t sharp exactly, just definite. That had been a long explanation for someone whose first rule was supposed to be “no talking.”
I lifted my gaze just far enough to see the client’s hand dip into his pocket and pull out his phone. There was a long pause as we all waited for the person on the other end of the call to pick up.
I wasn’t nervous.
I knew he was calling my boss, Jane, to verify what Rose had said. Our clients weren’t big on taking someone’s word second-hand. Hell, they weren’t big on the concept of trust in general.
Sure enough, a few moments later, the client spoke into the phone, his voice curt and hard. “Jane, I take it you know why I’m calling.”
Another pause.
“I see,” he said, followed by, “Fine.”
Apparently, that was all that needed to be said because, after that, he slipped the phone back into his pocket and took a step back, allowing us into his home.
Over the last year, I’d found myself in too many of these high-end Manhattan apartments to count. Most days, the tasks were fairly routine—scrub the bathrooms, sweep the floors, wash the windows, dust the shelves. There was nothing extraordinary about the job itself.
The only unusual factor was the clients.
See, the service I worked for didn’t cater to the typical Manhattan elite. We didn’t clean the homes of executives and socialites. Our clients had dark secrets, the kind they couldn’t risk a regular housekeeper stumbling across.
And I’m not talking about the white-collar crimes that have always been rampant in New York society. These weren’t corporate types trying to hide their insider trading or Ponzi schemes. These guys had real secrets.
Violent secrets.
The kind kept by crime bosses, capos, and hitmen. Men who demanded assurance that the people coming into their homes every week wouldn’t dare turn around and tell those secrets to the authorities.
That’s where the service came in. So far as I could tell, every cleaner who worked for Jane had a reason to stay away from cops.
I knew better than to ask anyone for their story, though. God knew I would never tell mine.
The only thing I knew for certain was that none of us would ever go to the police. Not for any reason.
Some clients believed this more than others. There were those who liked to hover over my shoulder while I dusted their shelves—as if I needed a constant reminder of the threat dangling over my head.
Fortunately, the current client didn’t appear to be that type.
The moment Rose and I stepped inside, he left us alone to do our jobs, disappearing into one of the many rooms inside the apartment.
And it was one hell of an apartment.
The main room was open and airy, with a high ceiling and hardwood floor. The furnishings were spare—a long L-shaped couch, coffee table, an elegant bar in the corner, and bookcases lining the walls—but you could tell at a glance what was there was of the highest quality. Leather, dark wood, glass, stainless steel—the whole place was stylish and modern.
But what really made it stand out were the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park.
I must have used up all my willpower resisting the urge to sneak a peek at the client with the butter-rich voice because, for a moment, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from that magnificent view.
Sure, Jane had sent me to some pretty impressive addresses in the past year, but none with a view this stunning.
It had to be an eight-figure view…which said a lot about the position of the deep-voiced client who owned it. A man had to get his hands pretty dirty in the criminal world to make enough to afford an apartment like this.
A shiver raced down my spine as I tried to push the thought out of my head.
The details of the client’s life were none of my business, I reminded myself as I finally managed to pull my gaze away from the windows and followed Rose into the kitchen. But once there, she quickly shooed me away.
“Bedrooms and bathrooms,” she barked like a captain handing out orders on the battlefield, making it clear that I was the subordinate on this job.
I silently nodded, even though, just like everyone else, scrubbing toilets was my least favorite job. There was no use arguing, and since conversation was off-limits, complaining wasn’t even an option.
According to Jane’s text this morning, this was a four-bedroom, four-bath apartment, which meant I’d have my hands full scouring tile for a while. So, tightening my grip on my cleaning caddy, I headed off in search of the nearest bathroom.
I found the first one right across the hall from the kitchen. Thankfully, just like everything else I’d seen so far, this guest bathroom was already spotless.
The white marble countertops gleamed. There wasn’t a stain to be found. Given that I couldn’t find a single fingerprint smudge on any of the fixtures, I doubted anyone had even stepped foot inside since last week’s cleaning.
I still went through the whole routine—scrubbing, wiping, polishing. Cutting corners wasn’t wise with clients like this.
Follow the rules.
Do the job.
Live to see tomorrow.
That’s what Jane told me the first day I came to her, and her words had served me well for the last year, two months, and thirteen days. I saw no reason to deviate from them now.
It sounded like Rose had moved on from the kitchen and was now working in the main room when, an hour later, I stepped out of the guest room that housed the third bathroom. So, I moved on to where I figured the last bathroom had to be—the client’s bedroom.
I rapped softly on the door. There was no reply, so I quietly entered and glanced around.
Even though the room seemed just as spotless as every other one I’d been in so far—not to mention just as modern and stylish—it had a slightly more lived-in feel than the clearly untouched guest rooms.
It was the tiny things that gave it away, I realized as I walked around the perimeter of the room, dusting the few surfaces I could find.
The slight indent in the center of the left pillow was the only indication that the bed was ever used. The slight wear on the top two drawers of the dresser showed that they were the only ones ever opened. The thick paperback novel on the bedside table with a pristine spine even though the bookmark was buried deep within its pages.
These details might be small, but they came together to paint a vivid picture of someone whose mind was as uncluttered as their apartment. Someone brutally efficient. Someone who’d perfected, not leaving evidence of his presence behind.
I didn’t want to imagine what a criminal with those attributes might have done to own a place like this.
A couple of years ago, realizing I was in the home of a cold-blooded killer would have chilled me to the bone. But that was a lifetime ago.
Now, I simply pushed the terrible implication of what I was seeing to the side, compartmentalizing it as quickly as I had the client’s deep, sexy voice.
If you come across anything you shouldn’t—no, you didn’t.
That rule applied to feelings, too.
There was no room for powerful emotions like horror or lust in this new life of mine. Not if I wanted to keep myself from being the client’s next victim.
No, the best thing I could do was quickly finish the job and get the hell out of here.
Fortunately, in a room as clean as this one, dusting didn’t take more than a couple of minutes. The second I was done, I grabbed my caddy and headed for the bathroom door.
It swung open with the tiniest push.
I should have realized what was happening the moment a wave of steam poured out, hitting me in the face. At the very least, I should have known to duck my head.
But I didn’t.
Not even when the steam began to clear, and the figure of a man started to take shape.
A tall man, lean with perfectly defined muscles down his arms and torso. A man with close-cropped hair that was currently dripping water down his neck and shoulders.
A man that had clearly stepped out of the shower and toweled off only minutes ago...and was now standing in his bathroom totally naked.
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THE PRICE OF POWER
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Any other time, any other situation, and I would have died to stay in a hotel room like this one.
Stylish and sophisticated, the Ritz was the definition of elegance with its pristine white bedding and floor-to-ceiling draperies. A dozen stories up, looking out over the lush, green oasis of Central Park in the middle of Manhattan, a night in a place like this should have been a dream come true.
Instead, it was turning out to be a nightmare.
I had no idea how much the room cost per night, but even being the most modest the hotel offered, I still knew I couldn’t afford it. Even worse, now I knew my family—the ones who had promised to pay the bill if I’d agree to fly out to New York and save their butts this one last time—couldn’t afford it either.
I might not be rich, but after spending the entire flight pouring over their ledgers, I was aware of just how badly off they were. Not just broke but so deep in debt that it was hard to see a clear path out.
No wonder they needed my help.
And maybe if they had asked me for it a year ago, I could have done something. But now…
Well, now all I could do was stare out the window and sigh in frustration as I tried to figure out how the hell I was going to pull a miracle out of my hat.
I wasn’t likely to get any help. That much was clear.
My mother stopped picking up the phone the minute she sent me the financial files to download this morning. My brother, too. Everyone in the family had.
No surprise there.
My family’s reaction to bad news had always been to bury their heads in the sand, so chances were good that everyone from my parents to my cousins had their phones turned off. Still, I couldn’t help trying.
Grabbing my phone off the window sill, I dialed my brother.
He was the one my parents had chosen to take over the family business, after all. You would think he’d be the most responsible of all of us. Sadly, that wasn’t the case, and my call went directly to voicemail without a single ring.
This is Theo Collins. You know what to do.
Not exactly the most professional message for the man who now ran the liquor distribution company that our great-grandfather had founded right after prohibition ended. The business might’ve been small compared to the major conglomerates that ran the industry, but my family had managed to keep it alive for four generations.
Of course, all that changed once the company landed in Theo’s hands.
I wish I could say I was surprised, but the truth was I’d seen this coming a mile away.
Theo managed to take our family’s aversion to responsibility to new heights. Always looking for the easy way out, no matter what he did, he only put in enough effort to coast to the finish line.
Anyone else would have been a better choice to take over the reins of the company…like maybe the daughter who had graduated at the top of her class with a degree in economics.
But in the end, Theo had the only two qualifications my parents cared about: first, he was a man, and second, he was my parents’ favorite.
While I’d had three years to process the disappointment of being passed over, apparently I was still holding on to a good chunk of resentment—especially when they still expected me to drop everything to swoop in and clean up their messes.
When the beep sounded, I had a hard time holding back my true feelings.
“Theo, it’s Olivia.”
Olivia, not Liv.
Only the people I liked got to call me Liv. My full name, on the other hand, was for professional purposes and people who pissed me off. Right now, my brother checked both of those boxes.
“I know everyone is worried that I’m calling with bad news.” Because I was. “But I need you—or anyone—to call me back.”
Honestly, I didn’t even know if they were listening to my voicemails at all. If past behavior was any indication, they weren’t. And even if they were, what I was about to say next would only make them pull the covers even higher over their heads.
“I looked over the financials on the flight, Theo, and it’s not good.”
Not that he needed me to tell him.
“What were you thinking taking out a loan that big?” Even if he was talking to me, I doubted that he’d be able to give me a satisfactory answer. “There are giant red flags all over the books.”
Which no doubt explained why Theo hadn’t gone to a bank to apply for that massive loan. One look at the company ledgers, and they would have laughed him out of the office.
So, instead, he’d turned to private sources.
Friends, no doubt. Probably, some connection Theo had made during his fraternity days. Chances were good that at least a couple of those rich assholes were embedded in the New York financial world right now.
But if Theo thought his old college friends would simply forgive him for defaulting on a seven-figure loan, then he was delusional.
“I know everyone is avoiding my calls because they don’t want to hear bad news, but you’re the one who wanted to sit at the head of the table, so it’s your job to deal with this.” I’d never been this direct with him before. But then again, he’d never been in this much trouble. “After looking at the numbers, the best case scenario is that the company will have to file for bankruptcy.”
And I did mean the best-case scenario.
The news only got worse from there.
“Of course, that will only protect the company from some of our creditors,” I continued. “Theo, if the person you took this loan out with decides to pursue fraud charges against you, they will have a very strong case. And I’m not just talking civil damages, Theo. I’m talking about felony charges. The kind that carries real prison time.”
This was a big deal.
The kind of thing you’d think a person would want to pick up the damn phone over.
No wonder our mother had called me in tears, begging me to take time off work and fly to New York to negotiate with the creditor. I’d thought she was being her usual overly dramatic self when she’d described it as a “life or death situation,” but as it turned out, she wasn’t far off this time.
“Now I promise I’ll do what I can to calm things down with the creditor tomorrow,” I said. “I can’t promise anything. I’m not a miracle worker. Still, it’s probably a good sign that they’re willing to meet with us.”
On the other hand, it might not be. There was a very real possibility that they’d only wanted someone to serve a court summons to. There was no way to know until tomorrow.
“Of course, it would help if I knew who I was meeting with,” I said. “I tried looking up the Angel Enterprises you took the loan out with but couldn’t find anything.”
Well, nothing besides a string of offshore shell companies that led to a dead end.
Seriously, Theo had really outdone himself this time. Leave it to my brother to sell our family legacy to the shadiest businessmen on the planet. At his point it would have been better if he’d lost our family’s legacy in a backroom poker game. At least then I wouldn’t have to hear my mother crying about having to visit her “baby boy” in Joliet prison.
“Please, I really need you to call me back either tonight or first thing tomorrow morning so I don’t go into this meeting blind.”
Please?
I caught myself and shook my head. Why was I the one begging for his help? I was doing him a favor, after all. I hadn’t been a part of the family business in years. Not since it became apparent that my blood relations only cared about me when I was useful to them.
The first chance I got, I left them behind in Chicago, moving just over the border to Milwaukee, where I landed an accounting job with a startup company. The pay was…okay. Not enough to afford the Ritz, but enough to start a modest life of my own, far away from the constant drama of my family.
Right now, I would have done anything to get back to that life.
And since I was relatively sure no one was listening, I had no problem telling my brother exactly that.
“But whatever happens tomorrow, I want you and everyone else to know that this is the last time I’m helping you. Not even if Mom falls on her knees and begs me. I’m not falling for it ever again. Do you hear me? Not again.”
Never again .
That was a promise to myself.
A promise I’d made a thousand times before if I was being honest. One I kept making and breaking.
But his time, I meant it.
And just to prove it to myself, I allowed a little more of my anger to slip out.
“Oh, and a little free advice—the next time you find yourself on the brink of bankruptcy and fraud charges, don’t book a room at the Ritz of all places. I’m pretty sure this kind of stuff doesn’t sit well with juries.”
Then, without saying goodbye, I ended the call.
I was angry enough to toss the phone across the room, but even though it would have been temporarily cathartic to watch it shatter into pieces against the wall, I held back.
Unlike my idiot brother, I wasn’t totally ruled by impulse.
Instead, I went over to the dresser and tucked the phone into my purse. Then, slinging the bag over my forearm, I headed for the door, ready to deal with all my frustration and anger like a real adult.
With a goddamn gin and tonic.
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