Maid For The Mafia by Alice T. Boone

Chapter Ten

Since Dad passed, things hadn’t quite been the same. There was something completely destabilizing about losing the only home you’d ever really known— especially when you hadn’t taken the time to appreciate it in the first place. In Toronto, I had been able to find holes within the city, places I could hide when things became too much, but a getaway was far from what I needed. I hadn’t truly felt at home in years. Not until now. Not like this.

Jemma and I had been curled on the couch for hours. Once she caught me getting off my shift, the teenager insisted I stay with her to watch a movie. Fifteen minutes to change out of my uniform, to tease her into eating half a bowl of popcorn, and some terrible teen flick was really all it took for that warm feeling to take over my chest. Though, the thought of her father upstairs certainly didn’t help. Thoughts of Terry seemed to haunt me all day, and while I was trying to be grateful that the cat was out of the bag, I knew better than to count my chickens before they hatched.

Terry hadn’t come out of his study all day.

The man who was so excited to have me under him, who insisted that he wanted to make things official between us, hadn’t come out of his study at all. His afternoon trip to the city was cancelled, and even though my chest begged me to check on him, fear kept me pinned downstairs. This place was supposed to be my home now, nestled on this couch next to the young girl who’d become family to me, and all I could think about was that whisper of danger.

Maybe us getting caught was a bad thing.

Maybe he wasn’t as ready as he pretended to be.

Maybe he blamed me for this entire mess.

“You know,” Jemma started, snapping my head to the side as she shoved another handful of popcorn into her mouth. “Last time Dad stayed in his office all day, the staff had to take shelter in the bunker.”

A smile hid the way my chest tightened. “He’s not that bad.”

The daughter’s face screwed with doubt, sending me a final side-eyed glance before turning back to the TV. If Jemma had picked up on my nerves, then I could only imagine how much of a mess I must have looked. Logically, I knew that Terry hiding away for an afternoon wasn’t necessarily a sign of the apocalypse. Over the past few months, he’d spent entire days locked away in there, dealing with a handful of issues he promised he’d never share with me. Terry wasn’t the one who drew my hackles up my back— that was Travis’ doing. The two men had only remained in the study for a few minutes after I’d left, and while I normally tried to stay out of the man’s way, Travis was getting impossible to avoid. When he’d finally come downstairs, he shifted from not being able to keep his eyes off me to not being able to notice me. As he left the house, Travis’ eyes were glued to Jemma, and the shiver it brought was too powerful to ignore.

Sheer force of will was the only thing to draw me back into the couch. I was desperate to make this time last, clinging onto those precious moments of paradise. Losing my dad had taught me that you never really know what you have until it’s gone, and while I’d never been very good at listening to him while he was here, I was a devoted learned with his loss. Every moment with Jemma was a moment I fought to keep. I didn’t let worries of Terry prey on my inner peace, but the sound of a door finally opening made anxieties impossible to ignore.

Though, as Terry finally made his way down the stairs, I remembered the one thing I’d always hated about my father. Eternal optimism had a way of dulling your senses, of making you weak to those quiet signs of danger. When Terry finally entered the room, his eyes glued only to his daughter, my stomach turned. Jemma’s freezing muscles turned mine to ice, and I wondered if she could smell the change in the air too.

Something was wrong.

“Everything okay?”

“Room,” Terry ground, teeth threatening to chip. “Now, Jemma.”

“Why?” A shiver ran over my skin at Jemma’s reluctance, at the way her fingers laced with mine in solidarity. “You can’t just hide out in your office all day and then come down here and—”

“You’re gonna try to tell me what I can and can’t do?”

If the room had been left with any more oxygen, I might have been able to gasp. Jemma’s grip on my hand tightened on reflex, her eyes locked with her father’s as she tried to decide where to toe the line. When Terry pushed, all Jemma wanted to do was pushed back, but with my hand in her own, I watched her try the approach I’d been begging her to take. The young woman softened a little, relaxing back in her seat before she tried to reason with the beast desperate to tear at our throats.

“Dad, she didn’t—”

“I’m not asking.”

The quiet only sent another shiver through us— the only thing that could awaken a maternal instinct I thought I lacked. I gave Jemma’s hand a gentle squeeze, shooting her a reassuring wink when she looked over at me. If Terry was upset about work, upset about us, upset about anything, the last thing he needed was for his daughter to see him fall apart. If I could get Jemma out of the room without a fit, I owed him that much.

“You go. We’ll finish it later, kid.”

I knew she wanted to fight me, but as Jemma’s eyes danced between me and her father, she bit her tongue. One last squeeze of my hand and she was out of her seat, shooting her father a challenging look. I’d spent weeks convincing Jemma that her father was really not the monster he pretended to be, not the animal the world made him out to be. Terry was a soldier at worst, a selfless father at his core. Hours spent assuring her that he was getting his anger under control, that all he cared about was giving his daughter the home she deserved, and my work was undone with a single look.

Our routine was set in stone by now— even if the atmosphere had shifted. Our eyes locked as we waited for the sound of Jemma’s footsteps to reach the top stair, our tongues held until we caught the sound of her door slamming shut. Usually, that god damn door was like a starting gun for him, the last sound I hear before I felt the familiar warmth of his hands on my body. Now, there was a new shift to the sand. I was used to Terry being angry at the world. I wasn’t used to him being angry at me, and when I found us drifting through unfamiliar waters, I resorted to the thing I was best at.

“Terry, it’s not right to snap at her like that,” I reminded him, my arms crossing over my chest. “The last thing she needs right now is to be—”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me about the photos?”

When my system froze, the first thing I wanted to do was lie. I’d convinced myself for months that I’d have more time, that I could run just a little further before the past caught up to ruin my present. Part of me was just hoping the entire goddamn thing would disappear, like a plane ticket could erase my mistakes.

Though, I knew better.

Happiness was fleeting, but with his eyes still on me, I wasn’t sure I was ready to let it go. When I should have just spit out the truth, should have thrown myself to his feet, I tried once more to hold onto the reality that was never mine.

“What photos?”

“What do you think?” His hiss tightened my jaw, and my eyes jumped to the television in front of me. “These photos. These fucking photos.”

I didn’t have to look when he slid the phone in front of me. I was certain that my eyelids had already memorized the light pattern anyway. I’d had the damn things thrown in my face so often that it was impossible not to. His hand recoiled at my touch, yanking the phone away with it and offering me the only sense of peace I found in this house again. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to glance at him. Guilt, regret twisted too hard for that.

“Where the fuck do you get off lying to me?”

“I didn’t lie to you,” I spat, anger prickling my skin.

“Well, you sure as shit didn’t tell me.”

“What does that matter?” I snarled out, my eyes finally snapping over to meet his foaming mouth. “It was a year ago, Terry. This was way before you and I ever met.”

“What does that matter?”

“My life before you isn’t really any of your business.”

His laughter only twisted my stomach further. Anger melted into another incredulous look, another reminder of how sick this entire thing had gotten.

“I don’t deserve to know? It’s my business that the woman I’m fucking has already shown her tits to everyone on the god damn eastern seaboard!”

“Don’t make this out to be something it’s not,” I hissed, betrayal the only thing to keep the redness from my cheeks. “You know I’m not the type of person to—”

“I don’t know who the fuck you are!”

I wanted to be angry. I wanted to be pissed, but when I caught the look of hurt washing over Terry’s face, I couldn’t really feel anything other than regret. As my shoulders slid down my back, my eyes falling back to the ground, Terry finally hissed out the question I was certain had kept him pinned to his study.

“Did you fuck him, Selina?”

Disgust flooded my system, forced my hand to my stomach. Still, Terry’s eye on me whispered he wouldn’t move without a response.

“What the hell do you want me to say?”

“The truth would be great.”

I should have been used to the world spinning out of control by now. The only constant in my life was that there were no constants, lack of routine the only routine I knew. I should have been better at it by now, but when the sand beneath me shifted again, all I could feel was my lung collapse. There was no time to stabilize myself anymore. I’d run out of opportunity to balance, lacked the concentration I’d need to breathe through this storm.

“What the hell does that even mean, Terry? Whose truth do you want?”

His silence whispered the truth I’d been avoiding for months. I should have known better than to tie myself so closely to a man who couldn’t understand, who was incapable of letting go, who could not believe in me. I should have known better than to love him.

“I took those pictures four years ago, alright? I forgot about them,” I choked, the truth coming out too fast to contain it. “Two months into working with him, Jackie stopped understanding the word ‘no’. Then my phone goes missing and when it finally pops back up, Jackie’s got all of my photos.” This time, when the guilt reared its head, I wouldn’t look away from him. “He said he was going to pass them around if I didn’t sleep with him.”

No matter how many times I tried to remind myself I didn’t have to be embarrassed, that I had done the right thing, I couldn’t tourniquet the hurt. Terry’s anger twisted the both of us, and as he finally let his body fall into the couch, his head in his hands as he tried to process the mess I’d created, I’d never been so embarrassed in my life.

“I got ahead of it,” I choked, as if that made it any better. “If I did what he wanted, he would have held those pictures over my head for the rest of my life. I published the stupid things and I’m sorry that that’s so inconvenient for you, Terry, but it wasn’t a picnic for me either.”

Another hiss wired my jaw shut. When he couldn’t even glance at me, couldn’t stomach to see me for who I really was, my chest threatened to collapse. Breathe wouldn’t come now— not in anything but a wheeze. Why was it that the ones who shouldn’t have judged you were the ones who tore you down the most?

“It’s not about inconvenience, Selina. What the hell are people going to think once they—”

The sickness in my chest could only come as a laugh. Anger flashed within him, but as his head snapped to the side, as he took me in, his shoulders softened. Now, he just looked guilty.

“You should have told me earlier.”

“So it’s my fault now?”

“No one said that,” he hissed. “I just saw those photos and I went blank, alright?”

When a new kind of anxiety tore through my chest, aching muscles pulled me upright. It was that awful feeling in my bones that forced me to move, that left me feeling like a feral cat in a cage. Nervous hands straightened my clothes, the outfit I picked for him just an hour before, and shaking legs carried me forward before pulling me back. Not that it mattered. Those motions meant to soothe me only seemed to knit Terry’s brow together, seemed to give him a look of worry I never thought I’d see.

“Just sit down, Selina.”

“What the hell am I even doing here, Terry?” I bite, choking back the sob building. “If all you want is someone to fit into an image, then I can’t give that to you. I need more than this.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I deserve someone who actually wants me,” I bit. “Loving someone requires being vulnerable, and we both know that’s not going to happen. How the hell am I supposed to fit into a life like that?”

For the first time in his life, I watched Terry struggle for words. Seated on the couch, Terry’s legs tensed when they couldn’t contain their shake, his fists clenching in a new pain. The pathetic little girl inside of me wanted some outcry of love. I wanted some soothing tone, some acknowledgement of this mess we’d created. I’d never been more humiliated as when his lips remained shut, anger the only emotion Terry seemed capable of anymore.

What the hell else was I hoping for?

Terry’s ice didn’t thaw until he caught sight of me rushing for the stairs, rage snapping him forward and his fingers around my wrist.

“I’m not fucking around here, Selina,” he snarled. “Just sit down.”

“I can’t be near you,” I bit, a pathetic attempt to snap out of his grip. “I can’t be fucking near you!”

Tugging my hand free would never mean I was free of Terry— a quality I had always thought was his worst. His eyes kept me pinned in place, the stiffening of his jaw making me pray for an easier time. Whatever sight of the guilt, of the sorry man I had seen just moments before was gone in a flash, replaced with the cold mafiosa he insisted I see him as.

“We’re done if you walk out that door,” he snarled. “I’m not gonna sit here and beg for you.”

I wouldn’t bow for him. The moment those words left his throat, I knew I wouldn’t bend for him, wouldn’t break for him, wouldn’t kneel for another man. If I couldn’t be forced to stay with Jackie, I sure as hell wasn’t going to be frightened into the embrace of Terrance O’Brian. The threat wouldn’t phase me— not until I was already climbing the stairs. If he didn’t trust me, if he hadn’t made a place for me, then there wasn’t a relationship to sacrifice in the first place. I was just a broken girl trying to force myself into the life of a stupid boy. That’s all this was and would ever be.

So then, why did this hole in my chest grow with this strangled cry?

If it didn’t mean anything, then why couldn’t I stop my sobs?

If leaving was the right choice, why the hell did it feel so wrong?