[COMPLETED] The Mafia Boss Made His Maid Taste Her Pecan Pie—Then Asked a Question That Made Her Leave the Table

Nell held the glass while Emmett Fontaine drank. His hand trembled against hers, although he refused to let her steady it for more than a moment. When he finished, she returned the water to the bedside table and gathered the crumbs from his blanket.

“Was it your bakery?” he asked.

Nell looked at the empty pastry box. “The pastries?”

“The pie.”

She hadn't brought pie. She had brought two small rolls filled with cinnamon, the kind he could chew without becoming breathless. She had learned not to correct every mistake. Sometimes correcting him only made him more frightened.

“I made something yesterday,” she said. “Pecan pie.”

Emmett gazed at the window. “Don't let them take the book.”

Nell's hand stopped above the box.

“What book?”

“The blue one.” His brow drew together. “Marisa wrote everything in it. Not the measurements. The reasons.”

Marisa had been Nell's mother. She had died six years earlier, before Emmett's breathing became difficult and before the bakery closed. Nell knew the notebook. It had lived in the bottom drawer beneath the oven, wrapped in a dish towel to protect it from grease.

She had not seen it since the fire.

“Dad, where is it?”

Emmett blinked at her. His expression changed from concentration to mild embarrassment.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Have we met?”

Nell felt the familiar disappointment settle without showing it. She told him she had brought the pastries and asked whether he wanted the window opened a little. He nodded.

At the nurses' station, she spoke to Miriam, the nurse who had cared for him since the previous spring. Miriam confirmed that Emmett had been more alert that week, although his memories were still unreliable. The facility was also waiting for the balance of his monthly care bill.

“I can bring the difference on Monday,” Nell said.

Miriam lowered her voice. “The administrator isn't asking you to settle it this afternoon. But there was another letter from the collection office.”

Nell already knew. The creditor could deduct from her wages without asking whether anything remained after rent and medical expenses. On Friday she had calculated the shortage at forty-one dollars. She could cover it by taking an extra cleaning shift on Sunday, provided her landlord waited two days for the rent.

She signed out and took the bus toward her boarding house.

At almost the same hour, Benny Santino laid a personnel folder on Carmine Orsini's desk. The office overlooked the port. From its windows, shipping cranes moved slowly against the pale December sky.

Carmine opened the folder. Inside were copies of a job application, identification documents, tax forms, and three years of performance evaluations. Odette had written the same observation each year: reliable, discreet, never late.

“Nell Brisco,” Carmine read.

“That's what everyone calls her,” Benny said.

“It isn't what this says.”

He pointed to the identification copy. Her full legal name was Eleanor Marisa Brisco. On the estate's daily schedules and payroll printouts, someone had shortened it to Nell. Her former surname appeared on a background-check authorization: Fontaine.

Benny looked again. “She changed her name.”

“Her surname. Three years ago.”

A civil docket number was printed on a garnishment notice attached to her payroll file. The creditor was a company called Crescent Hospitality Recovery. Carmine didn't recognize the company, although its address was on a street where Bellarose owned several properties.

He turned another page. The wage deduction had begun within Nell's first month at the estate. She had not asked for an advance, a favor, or permission to ignore the order. She had simply worked.

“Find out what judgment this is,” he told Benny. “Through the court records. Nothing taken from her private life that we aren't entitled to see.”

Benny nodded. “You think she's hiding something?”

“She is. That doesn't tell us whether she has done anything wrong.”

Carmine considered the notebook he'd inherited from his father. It was locked in a cabinet downstairs, one of several ledgers the older man had kept even after the household accountant began using computers. A penciled line on one page had stayed with Carmine for years: seven minutes, no less, no more. Beneath it was an unpaid invoice bearing a baker's name that now seemed familiar.

He had always assumed it referred to a disputed shipment of flour.

“Ask my grandmother whether she remembers Fontaine,” Carmine said.

Benny paused. “Palmira?”

“Yes. But I'll speak to her myself.”

He closed the personnel folder. Whatever had happened to the woman at his table, he did not intend to turn her employment record into gossip among his staff.

The next morning, Nell arrived at the estate just before six. She started at the third-floor landing, where a narrow window overlooked the garden. Odette came upstairs while Nell was polishing the banister.

“Mr. Orsini has asked that you be available after breakfast.”

Nell continued wiping the wood. “Am I being dismissed?”

“That's not what he said.”

“Then what did he say?”

Odette watched her. “That he wanted to ask you a question. Privately this time.”

Nell had heard those words before. A manager at her first job had asked why she used a different surname from the one in a newspaper clipping. At her second, an employer had demanded to know why her wages were being garnished. She had left both places before their curiosity became public conversation.

Three years at the Orsini estate had been longer than she'd expected to stay anywhere.

“If he needs a cook,” Nell said, “you can tell him I don't want the position.”

Odette's expression tightened. “He hasn't offered one.”

After breakfast, Nell was taken not to the main dining room but to a smaller room beside the library. Carmine stood near a window. There were no bodyguards inside. The door remained open.

“You've worked here three years,” he said. “I've treated you like someone whose name I didn't need to know.”

Nell hadn't expected an apology, and she wasn't certain that was one.

“It's work, sir.”

“Your mother was Marisa Brisco?”

The question landed harder than his questions about the pie. Nell considered denying it. But her mother's name was in public records, and Carmine had enough influence to discover the truth without her help.

“Yes.”

“And your father is Emmett Fontaine.”

“Yes.”

“Did they own a bakery?”

Nell set her gloved hands together. “They did.”

Carmine said nothing for a moment. Then he moved aside so she could see the open doorway.

“You may leave whenever you choose,” he told her. “I won't discuss your family with the guests. I need to know one thing, and I would rather you hear why I'm asking before you answer.”

He placed a yellowed invoice on the small table between them. She recognized the typewritten bakery address immediately. The paper was six years old, bearing her father's business name and the name of the purchaser: Orsini Imports.

At the bottom, in handwriting she knew almost as well as her own, was a note from her mother.

Seven minutes. Never five. Never ten.

Nell reached toward the paper but stopped short of touching it.

Carmine had not expected her reaction. Her eyes filled, not with fear this time, but with the effort of keeping an old grief contained.

“Where did you get this?” she asked.

“It belonged to my father.”

“My mother wrote that.”

“I thought so.”

The room remained quiet. For the first time, Nell understood that Carmine's interest in the pie hadn't begun with a dessert served the previous evening.