I take the early bus across town the next morning, watching the neighborhood change through smudged windows.
Cracked sidewalks and check-cashing stores give way to gated driveways and hedges trimmed with surgical precision.
I've been making this commute for almost two years now. Five days a week, sometimes six, scrubbing floors and folding sheets for three men whose last name opens doors and closes coffins.
The Moretti brothers—the Mafia itself.
Everyone in our neighborhood knows the name, even if they pretend they don't. Everyone knows what the black cars and the men with guns mean. Everyone knows to look the other way.
I never really delved into the details of their work. Never asked questions, never lingered in doorways, never let my eyes stay too long on the men in expensive suits who came and went at odd hours.
I was more interested in the income—the envelope of cash their consigliere Enzo pressed into my palm every Friday, the money my family needed to keep the lights on and the creditors at bay.
Poor people don't have the luxury of conscience or morals.
That's what I tell myself every time I polish silver that probably paid for someone's silence, or scrub marble floors in a house built on blood. I suspected something fishy from the very first day.
The guards at the gate with their badly concealed weapons. The soundproofed rooms. The way conversations stopped the moment I entered, like someone had hit a mute button. I simply preferred not to know.
Ignorance wasn't bliss, exactly, but it was survival.
The estate sprawls across a hillside like a sleeping beast, all stone and iron and old money arrogance. I make my way toward the service entrance as always, change into my uniform in the cramped staff room, and begin my rounds.
Dusting the library with its thousands of leather-bound books no one ever reads. Polishing the banister of the grand staircase until I can see my reflection in the dark wood.
Emptying ashtrays in the study that always smells like cigars and something darker, metallic, a scent I refuse to identify.
My thoughts drift to the brothers as they always do.
Luca, the eldest. Thirty-four years old with steel-gray eyes that look straight through people like they're already dead. He runs the empire with cold precision, never raises his voice, never needs to.
In two years I heard him laugh exactly once—a sound so empty it made my skin crawl for hours afterward. He barely acknowledges my existence, which I prefer. Being invisible to Luca Moretti feels like safety.
Matteo, the middle brother. Thirty-one and dripping with charm like honey laced with arsenic. He smiles too much, touches too easily, makes everything sound like an invitation and a threat at the same time.
Where Luca is winter, Matteo is a bonfire—beautiful until you get too close and realize you're already burning.
And then there's Santo. The youngest at twenty-eight, all brooding silence and coiled tension. He's the one who actually says good morning when he passes me in the hallway.
The one who once handed me a glass of water without being asked when I was scrubbing the kitchen floor in July heat. His pale green eyes look almost kind until they don't.
Full sleeves of tattoos covering strong arms I try not to stare at.
These are the men I dream about.
Not soft boys who stammer through confessions. Not Nico with his shaking hands and wet puppy eyes. Men like the Morettis. Dangerous. Commanding.
Men who take what they want without asking permission. Men who would never tremble when they reached for me.
Not that they'd ever notice someone like me. I'm the help. Invisible. Beneath them in every way that matters. A fantasy that will never be reality.
I'm polishing the windows in the east corridor when Matteo rounds the corner, phone pressed to his ear, speaking rapid Italian that echoes off the marble walls.
"No, no, ascoltami..." His voice is sharp, impatient. "I don't care what Ferraro thinks! He had his chance. Now he pays like everyone else."
A pause. A cold laugh. "Then remind him what happens to people who waste my time. Sì. Sì, exactly. Ciao."
He stops mid-stride when he sees me. His conversation ends, but his eyes don't move. He looks at me. Really looks.
That long, penetrating stare that always makes me feel like he's peeling back my skin layer by layer, seeing every secret I've ever buried.
It doesn't matter that I'm wearing a shapeless uniform. It doesn't matter that my hair is pinned back severely, that I've got a rag in one hand and cleaning solution in the other.
Under Matteo Moretti's gaze, I might as well be standing completely naked. Exposed. Catalogued.
God, what I wouldn't give for a man like him to actually see me. To want me. To look at me like I'm something worth having instead of something to clean up after.
Then he pockets his phone and moves on, footsteps echoing down the marble hall until he disappears around the corner. Not a single word to me.
"Matteo!" A sharp voice echoes down the corridor. Santo rounds the corner a moment later, jaw tight with barely contained anger.
He's in all black as usual—tactical pants, fitted shirt, like he's perpetually ready for a war that hasn't started yet.
"We're not finished. You can't just walk away when—"
He stops as he sees me. The fury drains from his face for just a second, replaced by something softer. Those pale green eyes flick over me—not the way Matteo looked, but like he's actually seeing me as me.
"Good morning, Gianna." A quick smile, there and gone, barely more than a twitch of his lips.
"Morning, Signore Santo," I manage, heat flooding my cheeks.
And just like that, I'm forgotten. His expression hardens again, attention snapping back to the empty hallway where his brother disappeared.
"Matteo, mio Dio!" He takes off after him, boots thudding against marble, and I hear their voices rise somewhere in the distance. Angry Italian. A door slamming.
Later, I find Enzo in the kitchen, reviewing inventory lists with his usual quiet efficiency.
"You look troubled, signorina," he observes without looking up from his papers.
"Long night. Family stuff."
"Ah." He nods slowly, and I get the sense he knows more than he's saying. He always does. "Family is complicated. Especially in houses like this one."
I want to ask what that means. I want to ask a lot of things—about the brothers, about the business, about why a man like Enzo stays loyal to men like them.
But poor girls who ask too many questions don't stay employed for long. So I just nod, thank him for nothing in particular, and go back to work.
The bus ride home feels longer than usual. I stare out the window and watch the mansions shrink back into bodegas and chain-link fences, and try not to think about the way Matteo looked at me.
Try not to remember the way Santo said my name.
Men like the Morettis will never look at me the way I look at them. I'm a fantasy to myself, but to them? I'm just furniture. Background noise. The girl who scrubs their floors and disappears.
But God, what a fantasy it is.