Page 11 of Revenge on the Mafia

CHAPTER FOUR

SEVEN YEARS LATER.

ANNA

But I had killed him.

“This is the media room.” Magda threw the doors open and stepped aside to let me peep in. When my gaze ran around the room, I bit back another shocked gasp. Magda’s chest bulged with pride. I couldn’t even blame her. The room was, simply put, magnificent. No doubt it must have graced the glossy pages of Architectural Digest. But that wasn’t the reason for my awe.

She closed the natural wood-stained double doors and walked further down the hallway. “Signor Martello is rarely home, and this floor doesn’t get much use.” She stopped and threw open another door. “But I always keep it spick and span in case he has any guests.”

A guest room. Large. Beautiful. Empty. As all the other rooms before. When I didn’t step inside, she nudged not so gently, and I stumbled in. She walked past me into the adjoining bathroom and threw open the door. Another gasp from me. She beamed. The tiles were handmade, uneven, and made in a warm terracotta brown. This entire house felt like someone had sucked it out of Marbella and boxed it inside the four walls of a New York townhouse.

We walked out and took another turn down the hallway. We were on the second floor. Magda had told me there were three floors, not counting the basement where the staff stayed. I had planned to remember the entire layout like a blueprint. I couldn’t even remember the direction of the front door.

Seven years ago, I had killed a man. I had planned it, but luck had played a major role. Almost as if fate had made me stumble into his path. The thing I had realized after the accidental killing and the mad panic had passed was that revenge was the one thing that had given me a purpose.

Three men had been there. I’d gotten rid of one. Two more to go. I had warred over coming to New York for years. It was easy enough not to do it in the beginning. Waiting for Niccolò Martello to turn up in Marbella, checking the guest registry every day, and wasting time looking for him on the internet seemed better choices. More importantly, Mamá needed the care, and Mara was too young for it. The moment she turned eighteen… I knew she could visit her every day. But logic had still kept me chained. After a Sangria-filled night, I’d decided otherwise. Easy peasy.

Magda stopped on the landing. She was tiny, probably not an inch over five feet. With her gray hair neatly tied into a bun, she wore a pretty floral wrap-around dress. Her friendly gaze melted into irritation as she caught my hands feeling up the wall. I snatched them away. “Allora, I know, it’s nice but try not to make it dirty, sì?”

Everything here felt like the home we had sold eleven years ago. From the natural oak wooden door to the arched doorways and lime-washed walls. It was all rattan furniture, soft wrought-iron accents, and earthy tones.

The momentary dark cloud slid away, and sunshine flooded the landing through the arched floor-to-ceiling window. My chest tightened when I noticed yet another bougainvillea potted plant in front of it. “It feels like home.”

“Then your home must be a grand one.”

“Not really.”

But it was to me.

“Of course. Otherwise, you won’t be cleaning houses.”

No, I would have been playing in concerts if they hadn’t killed Papá, and he would have watched me from the front row. Every single time.

I gave a slight shake of my head and looked away, swallowing the ache creeping up my throat. “I didn’t mean to be rude.” Something must have given me away because her tone had softened. “I’m not used to having help.”

We stared at each other, an uncomfortable silence brewing between us. I couldn’t handle the unease, so I changed the subject. “Did Signor Martello design it himself?”

“Goodness, no. The man’s too busy—” She cut herself off before finishing awkwardly, “doing other things.”

Offing innocent people?

She turned chatty to fill the silence. “His sister-in-law designed it for him. He waited for a long time to find the right person, and Signora Martello was perfect for the job. She paid a lot of attention to it, you know.”

“Is she Spanish?” I knew she wasn’t.

“Spanish?” She frowned. “No. She’s as Italian as you can get.”

She moved toward the stairs going down, and I lingered at the ones going up. She followed my gaze. “There’s no need for you to see that floor. It only has Signor Martello’s private quarters. I can clean that.”

Dios mío. I kept a blank face to hide the annoyance bursting at my seams. Just like she was going to clean his office herself and cook his meals. So how was I to kill the man if I couldn’t get close to him?

Aside from the Spanish Revival interior, there was something else about the house that made it eerie. It was massive. If the owner killed me, which he most certainly would when he figured out who I was, no one would hear me scream. Literally. The walls were too thick. Too many floors in between and too few people living in it. Proof enough that allowing Sangria to make my final decision to come to New York was exactly that. A horrible alcohol-induced decision.

The basement was for the staff. The staff consisted of Magda and Isidora, a young girl they’d hired a few weeks earlier than me. There was also a driver, but he wasn’t always around. Signor Martello liked to be left alone. That was apparent enough from his non-existent social media profiles. It was never the extroverts who killed people and left them behind with screaming teenagers.

It probably took Magda months to clean the entire house. Joder, he could slit my throat and dump me in one of his guest rooms, and no one would find me until she cleaned it a month later. Given all this, the last thing I should have done was sneak around the house in the dark. As if in warning, my knee hit something, and a curse flew out of me instantly. Giving up on walking around in the dark, I switched on the light of my phone to guide me.