Chapter 5 - The Empire of the Living Room
The transition didn't happen overnight, but the atmosphere in the Rossi estate shifted from a cold, sterile fortress into something that finally felt like a home.
The first thing Leo did was throw out every single piece of furniture Victoria had chosen. The velvet curtains, the pretentious modern art, the cold marble centerpieces—all of it was hauled away in dumpsters within forty-eight hours and replaced with warm wood, comfortable armchairs, and endless shelves of children's books and sketchpads for Lily.
My bedroom was moved from the cramped servants' quarters in the basement to a spacious guest suite directly across the hall from Lily’s room.
At first, the other staff members didn't know how to treat me. The old housekeeper, who had been too terrified of Victoria to intervene during the abuse, avoided my eyes whenever we passed in the corridor. But Leo made his stance unmistakably clear on my second day as head of the household.
We were standing in the dining room reviewing grocery lists when one of the senior capos from Leo’s syndicate—a slick, arrogant man named Dante who wore expensive suits and expensive cologne—walked into the room without knocking, tossing his car keys onto the mahogany table.
“Leo, we have a problem with the docks in—” Dante started, before stopping dead in his tracks and eyeing me up and down with a condescending smirk. “Ah. Is this the new kitchen help? Tell her to bring me a scotch, neat.”
The room went dead silent.
I didn't flinch. I had spent three months being insulted by Victoria; Dante’s cheap arrogance didn't even register on my scale of intimidation. I picked up his car keys from the table, walked over to him, and dropped them neatly into the breast pocket of his designer suit.
“The kitchen help is off duty,” I said evenly, looking him dead in the eye. “And if you ever walk into this dining room without knocking again, Mr. Rossi will feed your car keys to you.”
Dante’s face flushed red with fury. He turned to Leo, sputtering, “Boss! Are you going to let this servant speak to me like—?”
“She’s not a servant, Dante,” Leo said, his voice as cold as winter steel as he slowly set his coffee cup down on the saucer. He stood up from his chair, towering over the capo by half a foot. “And she’s right. Next time, she won't just put your keys in your pocket. She’ll throw them in the harbor with your car attached.”
Dante swallowed hard, backed up a step, and muttered an apology before turning on his heel and fleeing the room.
Leo watched him go, then turned to me with a faint, rare smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“You’re adapting well,” he observed.
May you like
“I learned from the best,” I replied, picking up my clipboard again. “Though I draw the line at feeding car keys to syndicate bosses. That’s bad for the plumbing.”
Leo let out a short, genuine laugh—a deep, rich sound that I realized I had never heard him make before.
