Chapter 5 - A Maid No Longer: The Boss's New Rules
Sadi felt the room tilt. The air in the study suddenly felt too thin to breathe.
"The master suite?" she gasped, her eyes darting toward the heavy oak doors as if expecting an army of guards to burst in and drag her away. "Roman, be serious. I clean your bathrooms. I scrub the lime deposits out of your steam shower. I live in a five-hundred-square-foot apartment where the radiator clanks all night. I cannot pretend to be your live-in partner!"
"You aren't pretending anymore, Sadi," Roman said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, immovable register that brooked no dissent. "This is no longer a country club performance to spite a suburban idiot. This is survival."
He walked over to his desk, picked up the porcelain espresso cup, and took a slow sip. He set it down, the porcelain clicking sharply against the saucer.
"The Moretti syndicate did not just lose two captains last night," Roman said, turning his cold gaze back to her. "They lost their primary distribution corridors. Their remaining underboss, a psychotic degenerate named Salvatore Moretti, knows that I orchestrated the hit. But because of the fifty civilian witnesses who saw me feeding you dessert and dancing with you in Naperville, he cannot use the law or the commission to strike at me openly."
Roman’s eyes darkened, the pupils dilating with lethal intensity.
"Salvatore will look for a weak point. He will look for leverage. By now, his scouts are already pulling surveillance on everyone connected to me. If you return to your apartment in Rogers Park, you will be taken within forty-eight hours. You will be used to bleed me."
Sadi’s stomach plummeted into a bottomless pit of cold dread. "Used to bleed you? Roman, I’m just an employee! Why would he think I mean anything to you?"
Roman walked back over to her, his movements slow, deliberate, and suffocatingly dominant. He reached out, his large, calloused hand cupping the side of her neck. His thumb rested directly over her carotid artery, feeling the frantic, rabbit-fast pulse pounding beneath her soft skin.
"Because last night," Roman murmured, his thumb stroking the sensitive curve of her jaw, "I sat at a public table and told fifty people that you were the only thing in this city I couldn't live without. The entire underworld believes you are my weakness, Sadi. And in my world, what the underworld believes becomes reality."
A strange, dizzying warmth bloomed in Sadi’s chest, warring violently with the terror clawing at her throat. His touch was electric, commanding, yet shockingly tender.
"What... what are the rules?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Roman’s lips curved into a faint, predatory shadow of a smile.
"Rule number one: You do not leave this estate without a four-man armed escort. Ever."
"Rule number two: You do not do domestic labor. No sweeping, no laundry, no serving coffee. The staff has already been instructed. If you pick up a duster, the head housekeeper will be fired immediately."
"And rule number three?" Sadi asked, her breath catching as his fingers trailed down to the collar of her black maid's shirt.
"Rule number three," Roman said softly, unbuttoning the top button of her drab uniform with effortless precision, "you sleep in my bed. Salvatore’s informants inside the federal task force will have listening devices focused on this perimeter. The house staff includes ears that do not belong to me. If we sleep in separate wings, the facade crumbles."
"Roman..."
"Go upstairs to the west wing," he commanded gently, stepping back and severing the contact. "A team of stylists from Michigan Avenue will arrive in one hour with a complete wardrobe. Throw that uniform in the incinerator."
Two hours later, Sadi was standing in the center of the master bedroom suite—a palatial expanse of dark hardwoods, floor-to-ceiling panoramic glass overlooking private forested grounds, and a king-sized bed draped in charcoal Egyptian silk.
Racks of designer clothing lined the sitting room: cashmere sweaters in rich jewel tones, tailored trousers cut specifically to celebrate and flatter her wide hips, silk loungewear, and elegant evening gowns that cost more than her annual salary.
Three professional stylists were bustling around her, hemming fabrics, adjusting necklines, and laying out pairs of handmade Italian leather shoes.
"The emerald tones are exceptional on you, Miss Miller," the lead stylist murmured, fastening a supple black leather belt around a camel-colored cashmere coat that framed Sadi’s hourglass figure with staggering sophistication. "Mr. Rossi specifically requested that we emphasize your natural silhouette. He insisted that nothing be oversized or hidden."
Sadi looked at herself in the three-way mirror.
The woman staring back was unrecognizable. Gone was the invisible, tired domestic worker who shrank herself to avoid taking up space. Standing in the mirror was a striking, voluptuous woman of immense presence—a woman who looked like she belonged beside an emperor.
Suddenly, the heavy double doors of the master suite swung open.
Roman entered, having changed into a charcoal suit without a tie. The stylists immediately bowed their heads in silent reverence, collected their garment bags, and filed out of the room like ghosts, closing the doors behind them.
Roman stopped in the center of the room, his dark eyes raking over Sadi from head to toe. The air grew thick with tension.
"You look like an empress, Sadi," he said, his voice rough and low.
"I feel like a target," she replied honestly, crossing her arms defensively over her cashmere-clad chest.
Roman crossed the room in three long strides, stopping right in front of her. He reached out and gently uncrossed her arms, holding her hands in his.
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"You are under my protection," he whispered, his eyes blazing with an unshakeable, terrifying conviction. "As long as you wear this ring and stand under my roof, there is not a man on this earth who can touch you without losing his life."
Before Sadi could respond, the wail of a perimeter siren shattered the silence of the estate.
