Desire had no place between us. Even if he wasn’t injured. He was still a deadly rival who’d no doubt be pissed to discover me spying here and lying.
“Maybe you can help wrap this up before it starts bleeding again.” He lowered his gaze to the gash on his side. Angry red skin surrounded the open cut, but it wasn’t leaking profusely.
“Yes. I can. But it looks like you need a few stitches first.” Gesturing for him to take the chair I’d waited in, I got straight to work cleaning off the cuts and stitching him up, then applying ointment to them both. This first-aid kit had plenty of materials, perhaps the standard for a dangerous man who lived a violent life. Even though it’d been a while since I’d needed to use a needle on someone like this, the muscle memory came back to me. It wasn’t pretty, and it might scar, but he was patched up. Satisfied, I started to affix the gauze and bandages. He’d at least had the foresight to grab this first-aid kit from his bathroom before he came out here.
All the while, he watched me. And all the while, I did everything I could to avoid making any eye contact with him.
This wasn’t right. Maids didn’t double as nurses. Yet something common linked us together. This unspoken understanding that violence was part and parcel of this Mafia life.
“Today is your first day working here.” It should’ve been a question, but he said it to me as a statement after I finished tending to his wounds.
I nodded, glancing at him and doing my best not to let his heavy gaze affect me.
“How come you’re good at this?” he asked with a vague inclination of his head at the puffy protrusion of gauze that I’d strapped to his shoulder.
I shrugged. “Basic first aid.”
“Knowing how to stitch up a stranger is basic?”
I opened and closed my mouth. “It could be.”
He grunted his doubt at my reply. “Not freaking out at a dead man in my office isn’t basic, either.”
I met his gaze and sat back on my knees, putting more distance between us. “Renee explained that this can be a, um… a dangerous household.”
That should be a blanket statement that wouldn’t get me in trouble.I hope.Renee hadn’t really explained anything, just barking at me that what happened in this building stayed in this building.
I didn’t need her to give me pointers about how a Mafia family operated. I came from one.
The burn of Andre’s stare on me intimidated me. Lingering in his bedroom like this couldn’t be wise to begin with. But it was the worry that he’d get curious about how little I’d reacted tohiskilling someone that I didn’t welcome. Being expected to explainany more about why I was in that office was the very last thing I wanted to suffer through.
Because despite this innate and automatic pull to his dangerous aura, despite this draw to enjoy his presence and attention on me in any regard, I had to see this assignment through. I had to have something to give my uncle or else he’d hold my cousin’s life on the line.
I had to do it.
I had to stick with it.
And if that included staying here as a maid for a while longer until I could look at the papers in that messy office, then that was what it would take.
“She’s right,” Andre said at last as I stood and brushed my hands over my apron. “This is a dangerous household.”
Of one? With only you living here? Yeah, I got the memo onthat.
“And it’s a dangerous world out there, too,” he added dryly, standing.
I jumped back at how little space remained between us. With him on his feet and the fatigue painting the exhaustion over his face, it was dumb of me to latch on to how intimately close we were like this.
Taking a step back was instinct, but I struggled to pull myself away and behave like a normal maid should. With distance and blending into the background as low-level hired help.
“Thank you for your help,” he said, watching me closely.
I nodded, racking my brain to remember whether I had to curtsy or something. “It was nothing,” I replied, praying that he couldn’t tell how nervous I was, alone in his room with him and his seeming curious about me at all.
“Good night, Sofia,” he said as he turned toward his bed. Giving me his back seemed like the final dismissal, and I didn’t second-guess it.
“Good night, Mr. Orlov.” While part of me wanted to fuss and worry over his wounds, I wasn’t stupid enough to insert myself into a situation I wasn’t expressly needed for. More than anything, I was supposed to be lying low and staying off this man’s radar while I tried to spy on him.
Yet, when I returned to my small maid’s quarters, a tiny room on the next floor up from his, I showered and got ready for bed with an uneasiness I couldn’t shake.
