Chapter 2 - The Rules of the Rinaldi Estate
The silence that followed my question wasn't the quiet of submission; it was the stunned pause of children who had never encountered an adult unwilling to play their game.
Alessandro blinked, his makeshift cereal-box armor shifting. Nico lowered his hand from the fruit bowl. Even Marco, the self-appointed ringleader, hesitated, his dark eyes narrowing as he tried to calculate my next move.
Across the kitchen, leaning against the marble island, Victor Rinaldi didn't move. He watched me over the rim of his wine glass, his expression unreadable, though a faint, dangerous flicker of amusement danced in his dark gaze.
"You didn't yell," Marco repeated, as if pointing out a glitch in a machine. "When we threw things at Miss Miller, she screamed. She called us little monsters and locked herself in the pantry."
"Miss Miller wasn't hungry," I said calmly, turning the burner under the pot of water. I grabbed a wooden spoon, my movements deliberate and unhurried. "And she clearly didn't have a four-year-old daughter waiting for her to prove she could handle a kitchen fire. Now, are you boys going to sit at that table, or am I going to have to eat all the garlic bread myself?"
"There's no garlic bread," Nico muttered, squinting.
"There will be, if you wash your hands." I gestured toward the marble basin. "Five minutes. Or I make oatmeal."
Groans echoed through the kitchen—a unified chorus of childish disgust that felt remarkably human beneath their mafia-heir posturing. But to my surprise, Alessandro kicked off his cereal box, Marco muttered something under his breath about unfair tactics, and all four boys shuffled toward the sink.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. My ribs ached, and the phantom weight of my thirty-six-dollar bank balance pressed heavily against my mind, but for the first time all day, the ground beneath my feet felt solid.
"You have an unusual management style, Ms. Valente," Victor’s deep, gravelly voice cut through the hum of the water.
I turned to face him, wiping my hands on a kitchen towel. "Your sons don't need a babysitter, Mr. Rinaldi. They need boundaries. And from the look of the kitchen floor, they've been running this estate like a cartel hideout for the past six months."
Victor pushed away from the counter, setting his wine glass down with a soft click. He was tall, intimidatingly so, moving with the quiet, predatory grace of a man who owned half the city and feared nothing in it. Up close, the lines around his eyes spoke of deep exhaustion—the grief of a widower trying to raise four chaotic boys in a world built on blood and paranoia.
"They lost their mother two years ago," Victor said quietly, his voice dropping so the boys wouldn't hear from across the room. "And every woman I've hired since either tried to exploit my name or fled in tears within forty-eight hours. If you think you can survive this house, you're either extraordinarily brave or entirely foolish."
"Try desperate," I replied, meeting his intense stare without flinching. "I need this job, Mr. Rinaldi. Which means I am not going anywhere."
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Victor studied me for a long, agonizing moment. The air between us tightened, charged with an unspoken tension that had nothing to do with the children.
"We'll see how you feel after dinner," he murmured, turning and walking out of the kitchen toward his study.
