1
Lorenzo
Mom keepsher hand clamped around my wrist like she thinks I’ll bolt.
To be fair, I might.
The Danforth family estate rises in front of us—if you can even call it an estate. Estates are lawns and fences and maybe a fountain if the owners want to brag. This? This is…obscene. A peninsula jutting into the Long Island Sound, like a giant hand reaching out to strangle the ocean.
The mansion looks less like a house and more like something ripped out of a documentary about robber barons. White stone columns, glass walls that catch the morning sun, balconies stacked like gold. Every inch of it screams money. Old money. The kind that buys influence, hides sins, and buries bodies beneath a philanthropic foundation.
My naive mother beams anyway. I don’t have the heart to tell her there’s probably a room in her new place of employment reserved for sacrificing the poor.
Mom—sweet, sweet Angela, bless her heart—squeezes my wrist as if that might extract enthusiasm from me like juice from a lemon. “Isn’t it beautiful, Enzo?”
“It’s big,” I mutter.
The sigh she gives me, like she gave birth to a disappointment but still loves me enough to endure it, earns her an eye roll.
She swats my hand away when I try to pull her luggage out of the popped trunk of our car. “Be on your best behavior. We need this job. This could pay for—”
“Don’t,” I cut in. “Don’t say college.”
This pipe dream of hers is laughable at best.
Her eyes soften in that way that always makes my chest tighten. “You’re smart enough.”
“People like me don’t end up in colleges.” I tilt my head, pausing to correct, “We clean them. Maybe.”
Not my fault that I spent the past eighteen years as a proud delinquent. Who told the illustrious public school system of Middlesex to make a lazy lifestyle so appealing? Or Kent County. Or Somerset. Or any of the other billion hellholes I’ve hopped in and out of.
Mom swats my arm. “Stop it. You’re going to work hard, keep your head down, and not get into any trouble. You hear me?”
I grunt, which she generously interprets as agreement.
A sleek black golf cart hums toward us. A man in a white uniform hops out, sunglasses cutting half his face.
He doesn’t even glance at me, just nods to my mother. “You must be Mrs. Rossi.”
“Miss,” Mom gently corrects. “Miss Rossi.”
The dude continues without pausing, “The kitchen manager said to bring you straight to staff housing.”
Mom smiles politely. “And my son?”
“Oh. Right. He’ll be in staff housing, too.” The man gestures to me like I’m extra luggage.
Mom nudges me. “Say thank you.”
I don’t. I climb into the back of the golf cart and stare at the mansion as it looms closer, swallowing us whole.
The path curves through gardens that look like they require daily worship. Flowers I can’t name. Bushes trimmed into shapes I didn’t know bushes could be. Marble statues of people who probably never lifted anything heavier than a gold spoon.
The golf cart stops in front of a wing of the estate tucked behind a line of trees. A corridor connects it to the main house, but it’s still far enough away that the staff is out of sight. It’s still nicer than any place I’ve ever lived—clean brick, fresh paint, windows without cracks. Staff housing, I assume.
“Your room is 2B,” the man tells me. “Don’t touch anything outside the servant wing. Don’t wander. Don’t—” He pauses, as if trying to find the right words to avoid calling me what he’s thinking. “Just…keep to your lane.”
I smirk. “I wasn’t planning on graduating to yours.”
