Page 2 of The Wages of Sin

“I told Jane you only trust me and Helen,” Rose said. “But she wanted me to tell you she personally vouches for Mary. Still, if you want to reschedule, I’m happy to come back once Helen is better.”

“Wait,” the client said. His tone wasn’t sharp exactly, just definite. That had been a long explanation for someone whose first rule was supposed to be “no talking.”

I lifted my gaze just far enough to see the client’s hand dip into his pocket and pull out his phone. There was a long pause as we all waited for the person on the other end of the call to pick up.

I wasn’t nervous.

I knew he was calling my boss, Jane, to verify what Rose had said. Our clients weren’t big on taking someone’s word second-hand. Hell, they weren’t big on the concept of trust in general.

Sure enough, a few moments later, the client spoke into the phone, his voice curt and hard. “Jane, I take it you know why I’m calling.”

Another pause.

“I see,” he said, followed by, “Fine.”

Apparently, that was all that needed to be said because, after that, he slipped the phone back into his pocket and took a step back, allowing us into his home.

Over the last year, I’d found myself in too many of these high-end Manhattan apartments to count. Most days, the tasks were fairly routine—scrub the bathrooms, sweep the floors, wash the windows, dust the shelves. There was nothing extraordinary about the job itself.

The only unusual factor was the clients.

See, the service I worked for didn’t cater to the typical Manhattan elite. We didn’t clean the homes of executives and socialites. Our clients had dark secrets, the kind they couldn’t risk a regular housekeeper stumbling across.

And I’m not talking about the white-collar crimes that have always been rampant in New York society. These weren’t corporate types trying to hide their insider trading or Ponzi schemes. These guys had real secrets.

Violent secrets.

The kind kept by crime bosses, capos, and hitmen. Men who demanded assurance that the people coming into their homes every week wouldn’t dare turn around and tell those secrets to the authorities.

That’s where the service came in. So far as I could tell, every cleaner who worked for Jane had a reason to stay away from cops.

I knew better than to ask anyone for their story, though. God knew I would never tell mine.

The only thing I knew for certain was that none of us would ever go to the police. Not for any reason.

Some clients believed this more than others. There were those who liked to hover over my shoulder while I dusted their shelves—as if I needed a constant reminder of the threat dangling over my head.

Fortunately, the current client didn’t appear to be that type.

The moment Rose and I stepped inside, he left us alone to do our jobs, disappearing into one of the many rooms inside the apartment.

And it was one hell of an apartment.

The main room was open and airy, with a high ceiling and hardwood floor. The furnishings were spare—a long L-shaped couch, coffee table, an elegant bar in the corner, and bookcases lining the walls—but you could tell at a glance what was there was of the highest quality. Leather, dark wood, glass, stainless steel—the whole place was stylish and modern.

But what really made it stand out were the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park.

I must have used up all my willpower resisting the urge to sneak a peek at the client with the butter-rich voice because, for a moment, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from that magnificent view.

Sure, Jane had sent me to some pretty impressive addresses in the past year, but none with a view this stunning.

It had to be an eight-figure view…which said a lot about the position of the deep-voiced client who owned it. A man had to get his hands pretty dirty in the criminal world to make enough to afford an apartment like this.

A shiver raced down my spine as I tried to push the thought out of my head.

The details of the client’s life were none of my business, I reminded myself as I finally managed to pull my gaze away from the windows and followed Rose into the kitchen. But once there, she quickly shooed me away.

“Bedrooms and bathrooms,” she barked like a captain handing out orders on the battlefield, making it clear that I was the subordinate on this job.

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