Natalia

 

I stood outside of the double French doors, balancing a tea tray on my knee. I raised one hand and knocked twice on the wooden frame.

 

“Come in,” warbled a weak voice from the other side.

 

I twisted the handle and pushed my way within.

 

The cutlery on the tray clinked as I set it down on the bedside table. Marco looked at me from his bed and gave me a warm smile. He opened his mouth to say something, but a coughing fit interrupted. His thin chest wheezed with the strain. He doubled over, hacking into a handkerchief pressed against his mouth. When he pulled it away, I saw spots of blood staining the white fabric.

 

I rushed to his side and bent over to rest my hand gently on his back until the attack subsided. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” I asked quietly.

 

Marco patted my hand where it lay on the covers. “Don’t worry about me, Natalia. I’m an old man. This body ain’t the lean, mean fighting machine that it used to be.” He smiled again. His eyes, hazel and wise, were starting to cloud with age.

 

I tried to smile back, but part of my heart was too sad to make much of an effort. It killed me to see Marco suffering like this. He’d been bedridden for weeks now, under the doctor’s orders, trying desperately to stave off a cancer that wouldn’t take no for an answer. No matter what we did, though, the coughing grew worse, his strength faded, and bit by bit, his mind started to fail him. It was heart wrenching to witness.

 

In theory, I should have been glad he was dying. Marco Esposito was the reason I’d ended up in this life. This was his crime family keeping me prisoner, reducing me to little more than a servant in their home. I slaved day in and day out to make their food, clean their clothes, tidy the furniture, and on and on, endless chores that stripped the skin from my knees and the joy from my soul. Twelve years of this had taken its toll on me.

 

But Marco was also the one bright spot in my long, gray days of cleaning and shuffling quietly out of sight whenever someone entered a room in the mansion. I wasn’t supposed to be seen or noticed at all. As if the house just got cleaned by magic. Marco, though, wanted to see me. Every day that I walked into his room to bring him his pills and the medicinal tea he drank throughout the morning and afternoons, he gave me the same sunny smile and said the same words.

 

“You are such a beauty, Natalia.” His liver-spotted hand enclosed mine. There was frighteningly little strength in his fingers. The velvety skin was paper-thin, like tissue wrapped around a twig. I worried often I’d make one wrong move and snap something of his. I couldn’t afford to do that. He was in enough pain already.

 

My response to him was always the same. “You’re a charmer, Marco.”

 

He winked back. “Pretty girls like you bring out the best in me.”

 

It was the same routine every day. A moment of sunshine in an otherwise cloud-dense life.

 

I never would have thought a mob boss would be the one who treated me best of all. After all, Marco Esposito was a name that struck terror into the hearts of just about everyone this side of Chicago. Police officers, lawyers, business owners, and petty thieves all feared and respected Marco and the powerful organization he had built. From what I could tell, it was a far-reaching business, with tentacles that stretched not just across the city but across the country to even the globe. There were always some out-of-towners staying at the mansion, waiting their turn to have an audience with Marco to discuss some business venture or racket or scheme. They came from far and wide to beg for the chance to work with him.

 

I still struggled to reconcile that image with the man who was laying in the bed next to me. Surely a man this powerful couldn’t succumb to a mere disease. That seemed almost ridiculous. Everything else in his life he solved with a snap of his fingers. How could this be any different?

 

But it was different. Hordes of doctors tramped in and out of his chambers all day long, but nothing they did was working. The cancer kept moving, taking over, invading, not unlike what Marco himself had done to the city.

 

“Here are your pills, Marco,” I said, offering a palm full of colorful capsules to him.

 

He groaned. “Oh no, didn’t I just take my pills?”

 

“Those were your early morning pills. These are the mid-morning ones.”

 

“Early morning, mid-morning, late morning—it never ends!” He swished a hand back and forth through the air with each syllable, twisting his face into an exaggerated scowl. “All right, all right, let’s have ’em,” he said. He reached forward to take them from my hands. I watched for a moment as his trembling fingertips combed and combed through the air. He couldn’t force them to cooperate. His body was failing him right before his eyes.

 

After a few long, agonizing seconds of Marco clumsily struggling to pluck the pills from my outstretched hand, I pushed him gently back against the pillows. He sighed and let me. “Here, let me help,” I said quietly. “Open up.”

 

He opened his mouth obediently and let me feed the pills to him one at a time, interspersed with sips of water from the glass on the table by his bed. He massaged his throat when he had swallowed the last of them.

 

“There we go, not so bad, right?” I said, smiling sweetly.

 

“I feel like a child,” he replied crossly.

 

I reminded him, “Children don’t own mansions.” Or slaves, said a sinister voice in the back of my head. I tried not to focus on it.

 

Marco chuckled. “No, I suppose they don’t.” He rolled onto his side, trying to grab for the newspaper on the tray I’d brought in, but it was too far out of reach. The effort set off a heart rate alarm that stood next to his bed.

 

“Sit back,” I reprimanded, slapping him playfully on the arm.

 

He laughed and leaned back once more against the pillows. I handed him the paper. “What’s on my docket today?” he asked as he started to leaf through the news.

 

“Cosimo and Alessandra should be back from their trip early this afternoon,” I said quietly. My voice was somber. I kept my eyes fixed on the floor.

 

“The prodigal son returns home, girlfriend in tow,” he mused. His eyes flashed with something akin to anger. Cosimo, Marco’s thirty-five-year-old son, was constantly falling in and out of his father’s graces. He was being groomed to take over the family once Marco was no longer up to the task, but it was almost impossible to fill his father’s shoes to the man’s satisfaction. There was only one Marco Esposito, and try as he might, Cosimo was not him. His latest endeavor, a trip to Boston to negotiate an arms shipment with some contacts Marco had made there years ago, had gone horribly awry. Marco had spent all night on the phone, ironing out the messy wrinkles that Cosimo had managed to inject into the situation. It left him in a foul mood wherever his son was involved.

 

Alessandra, Cosimo’s long-time girlfriend, had taken to whispering in Cosimo’s ear about all the things he’d be free to do once Marco kicked the bucket. I’d heard them talking late at night a dozen times or more, Alessandra curled up next to Cosimo and stroking his hair while murmuring that Marco was old, Marco was senile, Cosimo was so much smarter and more ruthless. The rift growing between father and son was becoming scarier by the minute.

 

Even worse for my sake, Alessandra had taken an intense dislike to me. I couldn’t figure out the reason why. Maybe it was because of how Marco complimented my looks so often. Every time he did, I could see her lip curl into a sneer if she were anywhere within hearing distance. As long as Marco was nearby, though, I was safe. But the second I stepped out of his sight, she pounced, flinging more chores and harsh accusations in my face without warning.

 

If something in the house was broken, it was my fault. If a staircase was dusty or a picture frame crooked, I was the one getting the dressing down. She’d positioned herself as the mistress in charge of the house, like some twisted mob version of an evil stepmother, and I was the one on the receiving end of her venom. Her absence the last few days had been an immense relief. I was less than thrilled that she’d be coming back today.

 

“Won’t you be glad to see Cosimo again?” I asked.

 

“Hmph,” Marco snorted. “After he muffed the deal in Boston? Not thrilled, my dear, no.” His words were fatherly, if irascible, but his tone was something different. He didn’t sound like the good-natured, television-ready dad that he perhaps intended to portray himself as. No, there was too much blood and violence in Marco’s past for that. When Marco was disappointed, people died.

 

It scared me. I had yet to understand how a man could have two completely contrasting sides to him. My daddy had been the same way, though, until he died. For the vast majority of my life, he’d been a bitter, broken old man with spittle flying from his mouth as he went off the handle at me. But every once in a while, he’d come into my room and sit on my bed to read stories to me until I fell asleep. I remembered thinking that his face seemed so soft when he did that. Like he was a whole different man. It didn’t make sense to me then, either.

 

I tried not to think of Daddy too often. Part of me hated him, had always hated him. But the part of me that remembered those bedtime stories would grow sad at the thought that he was gone and the memory of how it had happened. All that blood. Try as I might, I could never wipe it away from my mind.

 

The best way to go about my days was in a numb trance. Head down and hands busy, that was the recipe for survival. I didn’t want to attract anyone’s attention, least of all Alessandra’s. These people had tempers that too often ended in agony and misery for those unlucky enough to be in their warpath. I didn’t want that to be me. So far, I was fortunate.

 

I stood up from Marco’s bed. “Leaving me already?” he asked, arching an eyebrow as he looked at me over the top edge of the newspaper.

 

“I’ve got to clean the living room today,” I murmured, “before Alessandra gets home.”

 

“Don’t let her get to you, Natalia,” he admonished. “She’s all bark, no bite.”

 

I bit my lip to hold back my tongue. Of course, she would never dare abuse me in front of Marco. She knew he had a soft spot for me. But if only he knew what happened when he was out of earshot.

 

I shuddered. I needed to make sure the living room was spotless prior to her arrival. I picked up the tray and started to head out.

 

“Never be afraid to stand up for yourself,” Marco called out to me just before I slipped through the doors.

 

I froze. Stand up for yourself. A boy in an alleyway had told me that a long time ago. I’d never forgotten it. Hearing those words come out of Marco’s mouth was spooky.

 

“I won’t,” I said softly. But that wasn’t true. I’d stopped standing up for myself the day that the Espositos took me from my father. Standing up would only get me killed.