Maid for the Mafia

**ROMANY**

At that point, I was a little confused. "You know what happened to my neck," I grumbled, before remembering. *Nope. I forgot. He actually doesn't know.*

Damien wasn't in the room when Alex gave his 'demonstration'. In fact, Alex sent Damien out *right* before it happened and then he finished his little speech, *right* before Damien returned. *Oddly enough.

*Damien has no idea how uncomfortable Alex made me in there. As far as he knows, it didn't get any more physical than my bouncing on his knee. Shit.*

I glanced at the mirror just behind my head and examined my throat carefully. *Damn. There it is. A perfectly visible handprint.* I cringed, shrinking away from Damien and the fury in his gaze.

"*Motherfucker*."

"It was after you left the room," I admitted, my voice soft and fearful. "But I don't want to talk about it now. I'll tell you later. I promise. Right now, I just want to get this done."

He shook his head then scowled. "No. Tell me now. Tell me how in the fuck you sat there and let him wrap his fist around your throat to choke the fuck out of you."

"I-I didn't let him! I was trying to get him to stop."

Damien was seething, his entire body flexing as he stood there. His gaze locked on some point beyond the open door to my sitting room and then he shook his head at it, as if someone was standing there watching. "Is that all that he did?" he asked, his voice sharp with the crack of glacial ice. When I didn't speak, he chuckled humorlessly, snapping his eyes back toward my neck and shaking his head. "Did he touch you?"

"Of course he did," I hissed. "You can see that he did!"

He stalked toward me, his face tight. "You know better than that," he said. "Did... he... touch... you?"

I swallowed the rock that somehow formed in my throat and clamped my eyes shut, willing myself to calm down. *I already said that I'm not talking about this now. I don't have to answer him. I can just walk away.*

"Romany," he whispered. "Where else did he touch you?"

*Inhale... exhale... inhale... exhale...* I opened my eyes, to find Damien still glaring down at me. "Later," was all I could manage to get out, before I stepped past him and exited my suite.

On my way back to the guest suite, I noticed a large number of footprints leading to and from the service elevator. *What the hell is that shit? Has someone been playing in the mud?* The longer I stared at them, the more I realized... it wasn't mud. "Oh God," I hissed, my body trembling as the tangy scent of copper attacked my senses.

"Shit," Damien snapped, placing two hands on my shoulders and steering me toward the guest suite. He leaned down toward my ear and whispered, "Here comes the part of the job that *actually* earns you that money." "W-what?" I asked, just as the pair of us stepped back through the dreaded double doors of the doomsday diner.

Unlike when we left, the space was now brightly lit and I was able to see that the walls were not black after all. They were a deep, dark violet that was actually rather soothing. Alex stood just beyond the table, next to an extremely empty wheelchair. He didn't smile when walked in and neither Enzo, nor Antony was anywhere to be found.

"Well look who finally decided to join the party," Alex sniped while wiping a dark red substance from his hands with a strange bowl of orange goop and a towel. His bright green eyes fell over me slowly and although he didn't say anything, I could feel the absolute fury radiating from his gaze like an electrical charge.

Damien sauntered past me slowly, his eyes surveying the room. "Finished already?" he asked.

Alex's gaze narrowed at me for the briefest of moments, as if to say *'just you wait til we're alone'*, before shedding the animosity to focus on his best friend. "*We* are, yes. But the maid still has to sterilize the space."

*Sterilize the space? Come again?* I cocked an eyebrow, placing my hands on my hips as my eyes wandered about the immaculate walls and the elegantly polished floor... that... damn it... appeared to be not so polished after all. No, instead it was covered... in blood. "Holy shit," I whimpered. To the right of the large, overly embellished dining table was a massive pool of blood. But that wasn't all. There were... things in the blood. Tiny little pieces of God knew what that glinted off the lamplight creating shapes and swirls and... debris... in the blood. "What the hell is that stuff? What is in the blood?"

Damien sighed, glaring at Alex from across the room with a shake of his head.

Alex smiled. "Who cares what's in it? I'm not asking you to catalog it. I'm asking you to clean it."

I sneered at him, which seemed to cheer him up a bit, then turned around to find something to start the job with.

"Where the hell are you going?" Alex snapped.

I turned back around. "I'm not going to drink it, so I thought it might help if I grabbed some supplies."

"How clever," Alex taunted. "Fortunately for you, everything you need is in that large closet right there. So there's no need for you to disappear again," he snarled, fixing me with a pointed look.

"I'll help you," Damien said.

Alex cackled, "You will not."

"I will do whatever the fuck I want to do and what I want to do is help sterilize the space," Damien snapped.

"*She* is the reason it's such a fucking mess. Had she been here when she was needed I wouldn't have nine pints of Father Mateas seeping into my wood. So no, you will not help her, she will be the *only* one responsible for cleaning this up." "Did you say Father?" I asked. *I knew his clothes looked familiar.*

"She doesn't even know how," Damien argued.

"She has all fucking night to learn," Alex shouted.

"I'm helping her," Damien stated blandly, before walking toward the closet to gather what we would need. "You're going to have to shoot me to stop me."

Alex cackled again, the sound ripe with madness. "Okay, that's fine then. You helping her will only save me money, because if she doesn't do it alone, she won't get paid this week."

*Say what, Bob?*

Damien froze, his hands fisted at his sides. When he turned around there was pity in his eyes and anger in his face. "At least let me show her what to use."

Alex brightened. "We will both show her," he said waspishly, before his gaze shifted my way. The green of his irises all but disappeared as his eyes focused on my thighs. Suddenly, he smiled, licking his lips with a soft chuckle, as if he was remembering having me on his lap. "I guess she's earned that much," he supplied. "The first rule of Fight Club is... the longer you take to clean up the blood, the harder it will be to get it the fuck up." He smiled, slowly raising his chin as he stalked toward me, his eyes darkening with something like hunger. "First position... is down on your knees."