"The Clumsy Maid Bathed the Mafia Boss’s Savage Dog, but When the Animal Chose Her, the Secrets Buried in His Mansion Began to Surface
The first bucket struck the dog squarely across the shoulders. The second emptied over his head.
For one breathless second, Evelyn Hart remained on the icy stones of the service courtyard, one knee twisted beneath her, while four gallons of warm, lemon-scented water streamed from the black dog’s ears. Around her, the morning work of the Romano estate stopped. A cook froze with a crate of vegetables in his hands. Two groundskeepers backed toward the greenhouse. Even the fountain seemed to have gone quiet beneath its skin of February ice.
The dog was a Cane Corso named Titan. He weighed nearly one hundred and fifty pounds, had broken a professional groomer’s wrist the previous fall, and obeyed only Gabriel Romano, the man newspapers called a real-estate investor and nearly everyone in Milwaukee called something else when they were certain no one could hear.
Evelyn had worked in Gabriel’s Lake Geneva mansion for seven days.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered.
Titan lowered his massive head. A growl rolled through his chest and into the stone under Evelyn’s palms.
Then a colder voice came from the archway.
“Do not move.”
Gabriel Romano stood beneath the gray limestone arch in a black wool coat, snow melting in his dark hair. He was forty-six, broad-shouldered, and so controlled that the people around him seemed nervous on his behalf. His chief lieutenant, Victor Sloane, waited two steps behind him. Beside Victor stood Vanessa Sterling, the elegant Chicago philanthropist whom gossip columns had been calling Gabriel’s future wife for almost a year, although no engagement had ever been announced.
Evelyn tried to stand anyway. Her cheap left shoe slipped, and she dropped back onto her hand.
Vanessa gave a soft laugh. “She fell into the dessert cart yesterday. Perhaps clumsiness is a strategy now.”
Heat rushed into Evelyn’s face. The accident with the cart had involved one bent silver tray and twelve undamaged lemon tarts, but Vanessa had repeated the story at breakfast until it sounded like an attack on civilization.
Gabriel’s eyes flicked toward Vanessa. Her smile disappeared.
“I said do not move,” he repeated.
“I heard you.” Evelyn kept her gaze on Titan. “I don’t think he wants anyone standing over him.”
“He has never objected to me.”
“He isn’t looking at you.”
That answer drew a shocked breath from someone near the kitchen door. Evelyn wished she could gather the words back. She had spent fourteen years learning not to challenge a man with anger in his eyes. Yet Titan’s eyes did not show anger. His pupils were wide. His ears were pinned flat, and every time Calvin Pike, the estate’s animal handler, shifted the metal clasp of a heavy leash, the dog’s injured left hip trembled.
“Put the leash down,” Evelyn said.
Calvin stared at her. “You don’t give orders here.”
Titan’s lips lifted from his teeth as the clasp clicked again.
“He’s afraid of that sound.”
“Titan is afraid of nothing,” Victor said.
Evelyn looked at the old scar disappearing beneath the dog’s wet fur. “That is what people say when they would rather punish fear than understand it.”
Gabriel descended the courtyard steps. Titan glanced at him but did not relax.
“Calvin,” Gabriel said. “Put it down.”
The leash fell onto a wooden bench. The change in Titan was immediate. His growl softened, though he continued to pant.
Evelyn slowly brought one foot beneath herself. “He needs to get warm.”
“You have done enough,” Gabriel said.
“I made him wet.”
“By falling on him.”
“I prefer to think of it as an unplanned bath.”
One of the groundskeepers coughed into his fist. Gabriel’s mouth shifted, not quite becoming a smile.
Evelyn stood without looking at the watching staff. “Let me finish it.”
Vanessa stepped forward. “Gabriel, surely you will not let a maid who cannot carry water wash that animal.”
“Not in the grooming room,” Evelyn continued. “The floor is slick, the spray hose is loud, and there are steel rings in the wall. If his hip hurts, that room tells him pain is coming and the door will close behind him.”
Gabriel studied her with unsettling attention. “And your solution?”
“Rubber mats in the laundry room. Buckets, cloths, warm towels, and an open door. No leash. No Calvin. Titan decides whether he comes inside.”
“He may decide to bite you.”
“Then I will decide to leave.”
The wind pushed snow across the stones between them. Gabriel looked at Titan, then at Evelyn’s split shoe and soaked uniform.
“Rosa,” he called.
The house manager appeared from the kitchen doorway.
“Clear the laundry room.”
Vanessa’s face sharpened. “This is absurd.”
Gabriel turned toward her. “Then it should be easy for you to ignore.”
Ten minutes later, Evelyn sat on the floor of the warm laundry room with her back against a dryer. Rubber runners covered the tile. Towels waited beside two buckets, and the door stood wide open. Titan remained in the hall, suspicious of the room and everyone beyond it.
Evelyn did not call him. She dipped a cloth into the water, wrung it out, and placed it on the mat halfway between them. Then she began folding towels while humming the same four notes she had used years earlier at the county animal shelter.
Vanessa waited near the stairs, visibly offended by every passing second. Calvin muttered that the dog would never enter. Victor checked his watch. Gabriel said nothing.
After two minutes, Titan put one paw on the runner.
Evelyn kept folding.
He placed another paw inside. He sniffed the cloth, then the bucket. Finally, he approached Evelyn with his body low and his attention fixed on the open doorway behind him.
“You can leave whenever you want,” she told him softly. “That makes two of us.”
Titan smelled her empty hand. Evelyn lifted the warm cloth where he could see it.
“Shoulder first. Not your hip.”
She touched him once, lightly. His muscles hardened, and she immediately pulled back.
“All right. You said no.”
For several seconds, Titan watched her. Then, by the smallest measure, he leaned toward the cloth.
Evelyn washed him slowly. She described meaningless things in a calm voice: the dryer that rattled during its final cycle, the cook who hid cinnamon in the coffee, the cottage fireplace that smoked whenever the wind came from the east. Titan’s breathing eased. When she reached his hindquarters, she worked around the injured joint without lifting his leg.
He lowered himself onto the mat.
Gabriel moved nearer to the doorway. Something in his expression had changed. He was not watching a servant perform a task. He was watching someone translate a language he had mistaken for disobedience.
Evelyn reached for a dry towel. Her knee caught the bucket, sending water over the mat. She slid sideways.
Titan rose and pressed his body against her hip before she could fall. Evelyn grabbed his shoulder and found herself leaning over the dog everyone feared.
A startled laugh escaped her. “I bathe you, and you keep me alive. That seems fair.”
Gabriel smiled.
It was brief and unguarded, and it made him look less like the man who could silence a room with one word and more like someone who had forgotten what warmth felt like until it surprised him.
Evelyn dried Titan by pressing towels against his coat. When she sat back, exhausted, he lowered his enormous head into her lap.
No one spoke.
Gabriel finally entered. “Titan. Come.”
One of the dog’s ears moved. The rest of him did not.
“Come,” Gabriel repeated.
Titan pushed his head more firmly against Evelyn’s knees.
Victor looked offended. Vanessa looked betrayed. Rosa turned away to hide a smile.
“He may want five more minutes,” Evelyn suggested.
“He has never wanted five more minutes with anyone.”
“Maybe no one ever asked.”
Gabriel considered the dog for a long time. “Five minutes.”
Titan stayed for forty-three.
That evening, Evelyn changed clothes and walked toward the small staff cottage near the eastern wall. Snow had covered the path, softening the mansion behind her into a distant palace of light. She heard heavy steps and turned.
Titan stopped.
“No,” she told him. “You live up there.”
He continued when she did.
“Your dinner is probably served on china. Mine is soup from Monday.”
Titan followed her to the cottage, pushed through the door when she opened it, and stretched across the rug in front of the fireplace as though he had signed a lease.
Twenty minutes later, a black SUV stopped outside. Gabriel came alone.
May you like
Evelyn opened the door halfway. “He followed me.”
Gabriel looked over her shoulder. “Titan.”
