CHAPTER 59
ALEXIA GREEN.
Doesn’t take eyes to see her sophistication from a mile away or her beauty that speaks in itself the minute she calls my name.
I can just imagine her at the edge of my room, her Cartier handbag or God forgive me, Prada handbag; resting on the little couch in my room.
I can see her glass skin shine with the morning sun and I can imagine that she’s dressed in some matching definitely worth my life ten times over, mini dress and coat.
Her perfume, Coco Chanel or something of the sort billionaire heiresses coat themselves with, meets me from the bed.
While she might look and sound like she took a plunge into the fountain of youth, I know I must look like I was rolling in hay all night.
My hair is always messy when I wake up. Add in the droll coating the corners of my mouth and this is not how I imagined I was going to battle it out with Christian’s fiancé.
I try to move, but her footsteps heightened by the sound of her sharp heels hitting the floor stop me.
“No. No, this will only take a minute.”
Then the sound of her heels moves over to my side of the bed, right to where Millie is probably awake in her crib and staring up at space wondering when mommy will come unwrap her and she can have her little kicks and yawns.
“Your child is beautiful.”
“Thank you. She gets that a lot.”
It might be her cute cheeks that make her cute and those blue eyes that twinkle when she’s full and having men with tattoos carry her around.
“Is this the kind of life you want for her?”
The room goes from a hundred percent happy to a negative point something percent dull.
She probably meant it in a nice way but in what universe is her statement freaking nice?
“I’m sorry, what kind?”
I play dumb.
I play the role of ‘mistress’ having been caught by the main chick and it sure as hell feels bad to the bone.
“You do not have to hide your whorish side from me, I know what you’ve been up to and let me tell you it will not end well.”
Okay, Athena Pallis is definitely a cunt. A rich one at that and she uses that to make me and my daughter feel like the roaches being sprayed with bug spray at her home.
“You don’t say. So I take it this is not a social visit?”
I feign sarcasm.
Sarcasm is the last thing I feel when her words ‘whorish side’ sink in.
But this is me, isn’t it? No matter where I go, no matter the country, no matter my disability or not, that word follows me everywhere like gum on a shoe.
‘Whore’. I’m no one’s whore!
“You are his mistress and don’t worry he did not have to tell me that for me to know. Men in our world keep mistresses and we women dismiss it as nothing short of warm holes that our men need to fill to feel better about themselves.
Right now, you, Alexia Green are a warm hole to Christian. A pest living off of his money and his mercy but even pests die.”
“Is that a threat, your royal cuntness?”
I have no idea where the bite comes from but I dish back her words and fist the sheet underneath wanting to strangle the bitch in front of me.
If I had her type of poison, maybe I would have fucked her man yesterday knowing full well he was engaged.
Maybe I would have snapped a few pictures and sent it straight to her mailbox!
“Not a threat, if I throw out threats you will be the first to hear them, Alexia. Believe me. This is simply what you ragazze americane call girls’ talk. You are a pest and there will be many more that come after you.
The difference between me and the said pests is, I have dignity. I would never allow a man to give me scraps while he gives his wife the whole world because that will be you.
He will buy me everything my heart desires and you will get my leftovers. You will go and there will be another woman in this room like you but I will be by his side. I will be on his bed. He will not just sleep with me like a hooker he picked from the street but make love to me.
You will be nothing once he lets you go and that’s what makes us different, Alexia. So once again I ask, is the life you want for you and your daughter?”
Her words cut me deep.
They flail my heart raw and throw me to another sulfurous fire that consumes me.
In her own, I’m rich but I’m trying to call you a whore using better words, she’s right.
Christian hasn’t called off the wedding and he won’t just because I asked him to.
And when he goes through with the wedding, what will be next?
Me and Millie watching him be a doting husband to the Prada bitch in front of us?
Me and Christian’s child being named mistress and bastard?
No. My baby won’t be a bastard. My baby won’t have any labels meant to bring him down.
I will protect him.
“You want me gone? That’s why you are here.”
“Ah she catches on quickly. I can see why he is fixated on you.”
“That’s not the only thing that brings him to my bed at night, warm hole or not.”
She doesn’t speak. I know what she’s thinking though.
She didn’t expect any fight. She expected to waltz in here and insult me till I cried and begged for forgiveness which is not going to happen anytime soon.
“You want a good life for your baby, do you not?”
She knows I do.
I don’t dignify her with an answer as she proceeds.
“Then I will give you that life on a silver platter if you want it, Alexia. All you have to do is say yes and it will be done.”
My throat throbs.
Selling myself to the lesser evil is the better choice.
I can’t watch him marry her. I can’t be here when he does that and maybe Brenda was right.
I need to run from this madness. Run from him, start afresh because there is no us.
If there was an us, he would be in my room right now and not his fiancé.
“How?”
“I will get you out of here, give you a better-paying job to sustain you and your child and where you are going, food and shelter won’t be a problem.”
“I’m not exactly in tip-top condition to work. And this is Sicily, I barely know anyone or know any Italian.”
I can feel her smile.
I’m a peasant in her eyes and I’m begging her.
“Which makes it better for you to work here more than any place else. My fiancé doesn’t take kindly to people backstabbing him. Once he figures out you left, he’ll scour everywhere looking for you, everywhere but my place.”
“You want me to work for you?”
“Goodness no. You’ll be a maid in my mother’s home, you can handle a maid job can you not? No one would think to look for you there.”
A maid?
A maid, I almost chuckle but I gulp it down with the bitterness and the feeling of having had lost.
“Your child will be taken care of; the other maids can take turns watching her while you dust the house.”
Yeah? While I dust and lick your boots too?
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity take it or leave it but I am the only one that can get you away from him unless you want to stay and—”
“When do I start?”
“All I will need is your child and you in the garden, there one of my men will lead you to a car and escort you out before anyone notices. Say you need fresh air or alone time with your child in the garden because if this is going to work right under his own nose, you need to do it right.”
“Okay.”
Done and dusted.
Sold. Again.
To get away from him.
If he hated me before, he’d hate me forever for this.
It doesn’t matter though because by the time he realizes I’m gone and finds me, he’ll already be married to this woman and they’ll probably have four fat babies as heirs.
I do it for my babies.
I’ll work and get enough money to leave Italy with my babies and start anew.
Xxx
“Just because you came highly recommended by the madame does not warrant special treatment neither does your blindness or your child.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I follow the cranky old woman holding onto the wall now and then to keep up.
The Pallis mansion is a maze, I’ve been here for five days adjusting to everything and it still feels like I’m walking in circles.
“This is your first day starting to work and I expect utmost diligence from you, young lady. The lady of the house might be back any minute now and she hates messes. Do not make a mess of things young lady.”
“I won’t”, I say meekly, the maid’s uniform chafing my skin.
“And when guests are around here, do not make eye contact or in your case, keep your head down and pretend you are invisible. You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Tabitha comes to a stop and I almost bump into her before her voice drops low and loses its sharpness.
“Madam Allagra, you are back so soon. We expected you to arrive a little later in the afternoon.”
My heartbeat skyrockets the minute this Madam Allagra speaks.
“Dealing with Ginnio requires patience. My patience ran thin and here I am. You understand of course.”
“Yes, madam. Mr. La Monda has proven quite for some time how difficult of a man he really–.”
My feet push me forward.
Her scent. It’s familiar.
Her voice. Definitely so familiar.
My lips quiver, I can feel their eyes on me and that makes my voice struggle to come out.
“I’m sorry, Madam. She is one of the maids brought by Miss Athena. She has still not learned her way around.”
“Athena was here?”
I take another knee-buckling step as my brain and my whole body ticks in disarray.
“Mom…mama?”