Chapter 5 Ultimatum
Dante Caravelli.
Giovanni's report landed on my desk three days after I'd warned the Rosetti girl to stay away from Jasmine.
She'd been in my daughter's room again, this time for forty minutes, alone with her, talking.
I read the report twice, my control cracking with each word.
"When?" My voice came out flat, deadly calm.
"Yesterday afternoon, Maria left Jasmine alone for her rest time. The girl was delivering linens and heard Jasmine calling for her." Giovanni stood at perfect attention, waiting for orders.
"Calling for her specifically?"
"Yes, Don Caravelli, apparently they've formed some kind of attachment."
The words made something cold and angry twist in my chest. I'd given explicit orders, had made my position clear, and this girl had disobeyed me again.
"Where is she now?"
"Servants' wing, it's past midnight, so she should be sleeping."
"She won't be for long." I stood up and walked out of my office, down the stairs, all the way to the servants' quarters.
Antonio appeared beside me halfway there. "What are you doing?"
"Handling a problem."
"By confronting a girl in her room in the middle of the night? That's not handling, that's intimidation."
"Good, maybe she needs to be intimidated; she's been here three weeks and caused nothing but problems." I kept walking, my jaw tight.
"She needs to understand her place."
"Her place? Brother, she's a person, not a possession."
"In this house, everyone is whatever I say they are. She knew the rules; she broke them anyway. There are consequences for that."
Antonio grabbed my arm. "Don't do something you'll regret."
"I won't regret putting a disobedient servant in her place." I pulled free and kept walking.
The servants' wing was dark and quiet. I found her door and knocked hard, the sound echoing in the narrow hallway.
Silence, then footsteps, the door opened, and the Rosetti girl stood there in simple clothes, her hair down with her eyes wary.
She should be afraid.
"We need to talk." I didn't wait for permission, just pushed past her into the tiny room.
She closed the door and crossed her arms, her chin lifted in defiance. "About?"
"You were in Jasmine's room again, after I forbade it."
"She called for me. Was I supposed to ignore a child asking for help?"
"Yes, that's exactly what you were supposed to do, you're a servant, not her friend, not her confidant, nothing." I stepped closer, using my size to intimidate.
"You work here, you follow orders, you stay away from my daughter, those are the only rules that matter."
"Your daughter is lonely and sad; she needs someone to talk to about her mother."
"She has therapists for that."
"She has strangers who get paid to listen; it's not the same." Her eyes flashed with anger.
"She needs someone who understands loss, who won't judge her for grieving."
"And you think that's you? You think you're helping her?" I laughed without humour.
"You're making it worse, you're making her care about you, and when you leave, she'll lose someone else, is that what you want?"
"I'm not planning to leave."
"You will, everyone does, they leave or they die or they betray, that's how this world works." I was too close now, close enough to see gold flecks in her dark eyes.
"So I'm giving you a choice: you can leave voluntarily tonight with enough money to start over somewhere else, or you can stay and never go near my daughter again, ever."
"That's not a choice, that's an ultimatum."
"Call it what you want, decide now."
She stared at me for a long moment, and I saw her weighing options, calculating risks. This girl was smarter than she looked.
"I'll stay," she said finally. "But I want something in return."
"You're not in a position to negotiate."
"One hour, supervised if you want, once a week, I talk to Jasmine about her mother so she doesn't forget completely, that's all I'm asking."
"Absolutely not."
"Then I'll keep breaking your rules, I'll keep finding ways to see her, and you'll keep having to threaten me. We can do this dance forever, or you can give me one supervised hour and I'll follow every other rule you have."
The audacity of it should have made me furious, but instead I found myself considering it.
Antonio's words echoed in my head. Jasmine had smiled more in one conversation with this girl than she had in months.
But letting them continue contact meant risking attachment, meant risking Jasmine getting hurt when this girl inevitably left or betrayed us.
"Why do you care so much?" I asked. "What's in this for you?"
"Nothing, I just don't want her to hurt like I did, I don't want her to spend years wishing someone had just listened."
"Touching story, but I don't believe in altruism; everyone wants something, so what do you really want?"
She met my eyes without flinching. "I want to help a sad little girl remember her mother. If that makes me suspicious in your world, then your world is more broken than I thought."
We stood too close, the tiny room making the confrontation more intense than it should be. I could smell lemon, something else, something that reminded me of Isabella's garden.
I pushed the thought away violently.
"One hour," I heard myself say.
"Supervised by Antonio, once a week, you talk about Isabella and nothing else, no discussions about anything except her mother."
"Agreed."
"And if I find out you've broken any other rules, if you've caused any other problems, the deal is off and you're gone, do you understand?"
"Perfectly."
"Good." I turned to leave, stopped at the door.
"Don't make me regret this."
"I won't."
I left before I could change my mind, before I could do something stupid like ask why her eyes looked so sad when she talked about her own mother.
Back in my office, I poured whiskey and tried to understand what I'd just done. I'd negotiated with a servant, had given in to her demands, had let her manipulate me into giving her access to the one thing I protected above all else.
My daughter.
Antonio appeared in the doorway. "So?"
"One supervised hour per week, you'll handle it."
"You made the right choice."
"Did I? Or did I just give her exactly what she wanted?" I drank the whiskey in one swallow.
"She's playing some kind of game, I just can't figure out what it is yet."
"Maybe she's not playing anything, maybe she's just a girl who sees herself in Jasmine and wants to help."
"Nobody is that selfless, especially not in our world."
"Then I'll watch her, make sure she's not up to something, but brother, you should consider that maybe you're wrong about her."
After he left, I sat in the dark and thought about the Rosetti girl's face when she'd talked about helping Jasmine; there had been real pain there, real understanding.
But pain could be faked, understanding could be performed; I'd seen it a thousand times.
I pulled up the file Giovanni had compiled on him: Lilith Rosetti, age twenty-three, daughter of a failed mafia boss and a dead mother, no siblings, no close family except a friend named Selena.
Nothing remarkable, nothing dangerous.
But something about her bothered me, the way she looked at me without fear, the way she'd stood up to me twice now without backing down, the way she made me feel like I was the one being judged.
I didn't like it.
I didn't like her.
But I'd made a deal, and unlike her father, I kept my word.
She'd get her hour with Jasmine.
And I'd be watching every second of it.