The Wages of Sin: A Dark Mafia Romance

Chapter 1

“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.