Page 65 of Sinner's Vows

I had a hard time eating breakfast with a cheerful face. Portia is a ray of sunshine, but nothing can cast lightness over everything I’ve learned this morning about Dominic. I’m just following the motions, whatever Portia tells me to do.

We clean the kitchen after breakfast. I take a shower and get dressed, all while she potters around in the room, righting things needing no righting. A security guard is always on standby, and she ignores him as if he is part of the furniture. Portia is clearly much more in tune with this life than I’ll ever be.

I can’t stop thinking of Dominic. He left over an hour ago, leaving me with a hollow ache in my chest, one I can’t shed. The urge to cry tightens my throat out of nowhere, and I need to swallow every emotion down to keep myself in check. The last thing I want is for Portia to read my face or my feelings. The one I can school; the other I seem to have no control over anymore.

When her phone rings and she answers with a quick conversation, she has me by the hand. “Dr. Wong is here.”

When a short and thin Chinese woman stalks into the room minutes later with a medical case, I almost wither under her cold glare.

“I’m here to check up on a bullet wound,” Dr. Wong says as she points to the bed. “Show me.”

Portia closes the door to give me some privacy from the security guard. Without wasting time, I strip the jeans I dressed in earlier as Dr. Wong puts on sterile gloves.

As I lie down and lift my T-shirt, she just shakes her head.

“Too busy, too busy here,” she grumbles under her breath as she carefully peels off the bandage but making sure not to shift my underwear if it isn’t necessary. “Pain?” she asks as she takes a minute to inspect the wound, but her gaze wanders, and she sees everything else down there, too.

“It’s fine.” And it really is. In comparison to the other healed wounds on my lower belly, I can bear this easily.

“Good. Leave this uncovered now. No soaking in the bath, only careful cleaning. Don’t let anything rub against it. Any changes, fever, puss, anything, let me know.” She straightens and glances to Portia. “Makes sure she eats. Lots of carbs, proteins, fats. She’s too skinny.”

The women exchange a look, and I can’t help but feel like an outsider. Clearly, these two have come some way.

“Yes, Doctor.” Portia has a new sparkle in her eye, and I bet it’s because someone gave her the green light to fatten me up to the BMI of a cheap pork sausage.

Dr. Wong is even more efficient in leaving the room than in arriving, like a gust of wind just passing through the house.

“Excellent,” Portia says once I’ve pulled my jeans back on. “Now we can get down to the real work for the day.”

“Hunting down journals?”

“Making a nice, hearty carbonara with extra fatty pancetta and Pecorino Romano,” she says, listing the ingredients as she ticks them off with enthusiasm on her fingers. “Home-made fettuccine. Organic eggs. Pepper. Lots of freshly ground pepper.”

Yes, I’m drooling, but I’m still stuffed after breakfast, as Portia made me finish the packet of American-style bacon she air-fried.

She reaches for my arm with a soft squeeze. “I’ll get a driver to fetch us all the right ingredients. As is, Dominic’s been living on the bare minimum here. If you’re staying a while, we need to stock up.”

“But this isn’t his place?” I ask, wanting to drill into the layers of mystery that’s Dominic Scalera. Plus we need to definestaying a while, because this isn’t my plan. I might have paused any ridiculous escape attempts, but it doesn’t mean my brain isn’t working overtime to find the nearest exit.Act only when the time is right.

Portia just shrugs and looks at her wristwatch. “Doesn’t matter. He will be where you are, and that for a while. Come on. Time for us to go do some manual labor.”

She leads the way out of Dominic’s bedroom, which seems to have become mine now, as she never took me back to my original corner guest room where Dominic parked me yesterday.

The guard follows behind us as we head to the foyer and the magnificent staircase. When Portia scales the stairs and I follow, I glance around the elegant space. It really is something out of a fairytale in a way, one Disney hasn’t gotten hold of. No, this place is the real Brothers Grimm, with every gory secret still intact.

“How long have you known the family?” I ask.

“Oh, a long time. I worked for the Don for over forty years. First as just a cleaner when he was still building his business, and then when they moved here, I proved myself enough to become the head housekeeper. He looked after me and my own.” She pauses and holds on to the railing, seeming to catch her breath as she reflects back. Then she turns to me and looks me in the eye. “I’d be the first to admit he wasn’t a good man, but herewarded loyalty, and when I came to America when I was only sixteen?—”

She takes the stairs again, seeming to need to organize her thoughts, and when we reach the landing, she huffs out a breath. “These stairs didn’t get to me like this when I still worked here. Good grief, I need to walk more and stop thinking the garden is enough.” She brushes away a rogue curl. “Let’s just say, Don Scalera gave me my first job. I was out on the street, and well, it was about to go very wrong for me.”

“How did you come to America?” I ask, curious how she came over at sixteen.

“With my parents. As tourists,” she says, making quotation marks with her fingers. She nods in the direction of a corridor, and I follow. “Totally illegal. They came with the plan to stay. They wanted to leave the Mafioso crap behind in Italy. But that isn’t how it works. My dad got into the wrong side of the turf war, Randazzo’s side, and things went very wrong, very fast.”

An electric shock would have surprised me less in that moment.

“Who?” I ask, pushing down my surprise, and feigning only mild interest.

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