The Maid: Mafia Romance (Series)

Sisterly Bonding

“Knock. Knock. Mel, are you awake?” I knocked on the door and waited. Nothing. “Mel, are you in?”

Still nothing. There was no response from Amelia. Maybe she was still sleeping. She had a long day yesterday, what with checkups and tests, and it was already well into the night before she got to rest. I didn’t want to interrupt her while she was still snoozing.

I quietly slid the door open, just enough to poke my head through, only to see an empty bed. I panicked, thinking Lorenzo was back and had kidnapped her. I jerked the door open and bolted inside, frantically searching for her.

“Amelia, where are you, Amel-”

I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw her standing out on the balcony. What was she doing there?

“Mel,” I called. She didn’t react to my voice. I called her again, this time a bit louder. “Mel.”

She still didn’t hear me. I moved closer. She was staring out into space, like she was lost in her own thoughts or something.

“Mel.”

I reached out to touch her. She flinched, turned, and reacted with a startled look. It took her three long heartbeats to recognize me.

“Jen.” Her eyes softened, and she smiled. “Sorry I…I…didn’t hear you come in.”

I called her name dozens of time and was making so much racket, and she said she didn’t hear me? “Oh.” Was all I could say. “Mel, are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” she replied, her eyes back to gazing outside.

I followed her line of vision, but there was nothing interesting to see but the normal city down below. The world was already buzzing with noise: cars honking, people lining up for coffee, the normal everyday sounds. This was the normal world.

“It’s so different,” she finally said, and that caught my attention.

“What’s different?”Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“Here. I’m so used to waking up listening to the birds chirping outside…”

“Birds chirping outside?” I asked like I couldn’t believe what she had just said. No, I’d heard her the first time; it was just kind of weird to hear her say it.

“Yes…” she said. “But here…I hear the whole city coming to life. I’m not used to this. It’s… different.”

“Is it a good different or bad different?” I asked because this kind of determined her state of mind.

Prior to all this shit that had happened in our life, when we were still young innocent girls, this was the norm for us. The city life. Cars on the road, the normal traffic jam. But now she said she was not used to this. If she’d told me she had just come back from the moon, I would have found it more believable, but birds chirping outside…that’s just plain weird.

She didn’t answer my question. I kind of had already gotten the impression that she missed that shithole of a place called Lorenzo’s residence. Well, under normal circumstances, Lorenzo’s place was paradise. The guy was loaded, and his place was fit for a king, but Amelia wasn’t his guest. She was his prisoner, so no matter how majestic the place was, it was still a cage from a prisoner’s point of view.

I tiptoed around the topic, not sure if I should proceed with this subject, but I was really curious. What did happen to her during those four months with Lorenzo?

“Mel, do you want to talk about it? You know…”

And she shut me down right away. “Tell me about your boyfriend,” she suggested instead, walking to the bed and sliding under the covers.

I sighed and went to plump the pillows for her. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything. I’m curious.” She offered me a small smile, like she was genuinely interested to know about my love life. “My kid sister who I haven’t seen for almost five months had blossomed into a beautiful woman and now she has a boyfriend. I’m curious to know what happened.”

Yeah, like I was curious to know what had happened to her, too, during those times we were apart, but if by listening to my story made her smile, then I’d happily talk about it. At least she was smiling now. That was something.

“Well, my love story. It wasn’t a sudden thing. It was a gradual process. I was his maid first, you know.”

“Mm-hmm.” She nodded her head, listening intently to me talking.

“Like I told you last night. He’s a mafia boss. But he’s not actually a real mafia. Well, that’s what I think anyway. All he does is legal business work. And those shady businesses he does, they are all mainly loan companies with high interest rates. His full name is Giovanni Dente. Everyone calls him Boss, but I call him Gio. Although I used to call him Boss in the beginning of our relationship; now it’s just Gio.”

“Gio. That’s a very interesting name,” she commented quietly to herself. “That’s not a common name, is it?”

“Mm-hmm, it’s not.” I nodded my head in agreement. “It’s the shortened form of Giovanni. But he doesn’t like it when people call him by that name. He gets really mad. I’m the only special one who can call him that.”

“It seems like he loves you a lot,” she concluded from our short conversation.

“You can tell?”

“When a man allows you to call him by that special name and doesn’t allow anyone else to do the same, it must mean you are someone special to him.”

“Hehe. That’s what I thought, too.” I smiled, happy that she saw how much Giovanni loved me and how lucky I was to be his lover. “It was funny, you know. This one time, when I was his maid. Oh, let me explain first, our relationship is very confusing. Just so you don’t get this mixed up. In the beginning, I was his maid, now I’m his lover.”

I had to explain to my sister the different status of our relationship as we progressed from maid and master to lover and lover. “So this one time, when I was his maid, I’d managed to run away from him and worked at this carnival park. He found out and ended up chasing me all over the carnival grounds until he caught me outside of the toilet.”

Amelia laughed, her eyes crinkling, and I was really happy because she looked to be enjoying herself. Well, I was glad my story was funny.

“He found you outside the toilet?”

“Yeah. And I was jiggling. And he asked me, why the F are you shaking?”

“F?” She crinkled her eyes in confusion.

“Yes, the letter F. Like, you know, the beginning of that swear word,” I explained.

“Oh, that F.” She nodded in understanding.

“Yes,” I said and continued. “Anyway. So, I was shaking my butt off, and he asked why the F are you shaking, and I said because I need to urgently pee.”

Amelia burst into laughter again. “Oh, Jen. If your love story got turned into a TV series, I’d tune in every day.”

“Yeah.” I laughed too. “So anyway, he got so pissed. So he took me to this Ferris wheel with those compartments, and it swings you to the top, and you know how I hate heights. Well, he took me there anyway. And he was talking and talking, and I was talking and talking, and then all of a sudden, he just asked me to shut my eyes and told me to say, ‘Gio, handsome boy.'”

Amelia sat up straighter, her eyes fully alert. “He told you to say that?”

“Yes. So I repeated those words, and then he just started attacking me with questions, and I don’t know, it was so confusing, I haven’t a clue what he was talking about.”

“What kinds of questions did he ask?”

“Well, he keeps talking about this twin dragon necklace.”

“Twin dragon necklace?” Amelia asked, her face going pale.

“Mel, are you okay?”

“I’m…I’m fine.” She gave me a small smile. “Tell me more about this twin dragon necklace.”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have it. He just kept asking me if I remembered someone, a boy, about fourteen years ago, who gave me that necklace.” I stopped again. Amelia didn’t look too good. “Mel, are you really okay? You’re looking a bit clammy.”

“I’m fine,” she replied. “Please continue.”

Still, I wasn’t sure. “I’ll go get you some water, okay.”

I went to pour some into the cup and gave it to her to drink. She took a few sips and put it down. Then she pressed me for the story again.

I was starting to wonder why she found my love story so interesting, especially that segment about the necklace. Well, I supposed if it made her happy, I’d keep talking, although rather unenthusiastically compared to before.

“So he keeps talking about this boy from fourteen years ago who gave me this twin dragon necklace, and I said I can’t remember because I’d lost my memory.”

“You told him all about your lost memory?”

“Yes. I just told him the truth, that I don’t remember. And it can’t have been me because I don’t have that twin dragon necklace. I mean, if I had it, I would have known, right? He said it’s a very special necklace. The pendant, the twin dragon, it’s made out of jade stone. Very rare. But he didn’t listen to me. And from that day on, he just calls me his Jennifer.”

“He…he calls you Jennifer?” Amelia gripped the bedsheets, her knuckles turning completely white.

I was beginning to get frantic again. “Mel…I’m really worried. Are you okay? Do you want me-”

“Jen. Just…please just continue.” She gripped my arm, her action unintentional, but it was like she was forcing me to speak.

“Mel, you’re hurting my arm.” I winced at the pain.

She retracted her hand once I’d made her aware of the situation.

“I’m sorry,” she said and went to give the same attention to the bedsheet, her knuckles turning white again. “What else did he say?”

I sighed. “There’s not much else to tell, Mel. I just told him my name is Jenny. Not Jennifer. But he still keeps calling me by that name. He assumed I was his friend from fourteen years-”

Amelia paled even more.

“Mel, what’s wrong?” I was literally screaming now because Amelia started shaking and tears were rolling down her face. “Mel, why are you crying? Are you in pain anywhere? I’m going to call the doct-”

I turned to leave, and she gripped my hand, stopping me.

“Mel.” I watched her, unsure of what she wanted me to do.

“Jen, I’m fine. I’m okay,” she said slowly as if she was trying to reassure herself more than me.

I sat back down and gave her more water. I watched her breathing settle. After a small while she was better. She slid further under the bedcovers.

“Jen. I’m sorry. But could you please leave.” She turned to face the wall, her back to me. “I’m really tired. I want to rest for a bit.”

“Mel…” I didn’t want to leave her when she was like this. I wanted to stay and comfort her. “But you’re…you’re… I could stay. I could-”

“Go. Please. I want to be alone.” Her words were firm and decisive. In the end, I had to respect it.

“Okay. We’re leaving to go back to New York in a couple of hours. I’ll come get you then.”

She didn’t respond. The bedcover was now over her head.

I sighed with a heavy heart.

God, my chest hurt. Amelia was not good. Not good at all. I thought she would be okay, but clearly whatever Lorenzo did to her had a huge effect on her mental health. I needed to discuss this with Gio. I walked back to his room.