That last bit had shaken me like nothing else. I’d stood in that alleyway, shocked, my jaw almost falling to the ground as she stood up and her long glorious blonde hair tumbled down her shoulders, almost reaching her waist as she bowed her head and said in a muffled, tortured voice, “I’m so sorry.”
Then I, Frank King, did the one thing I never, ever did unless it was absolutely necessary – and in this case, it certainly was not.
Rather than grabbing her to the collar and taking her to the police station, I opened my mouth and asked her why she was doing this. She didn’t answer. And instead of taking that as the reality check I so desperately needed, her reluctance only fueled my determination to know. Therefore, after a well-aimed threat to take her to the police station, she squared her shoulders and told me that if I wanted to do so, at least I should first give her the wallet so that she can make sure her siblings had something to eat.
“Your siblings?” I’d asked. And she promptly stood up and led me to them.
Following her and discovering the situation in which she and her siblings lived was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. But what stunned me was not where they lived, or the severe sickness that gripped her brother. No, it was the tenacity in her eyes, despite all that. As I looked around the house, taking it all in, she stared at me as if daring me to judge her, to do or to say something.
How… just how could I run away from that?
I know I had always been a hard man to reason with, especially when it came to matters of justice. In fact, my business associates had confessed one time too many to me being a difficult, rigid partner. But that toughness was one of the reasons I got to where I was today. And so, I never for once thought I’d one day bend the rules of my morality and actually offer to take care of her family.
And I did it on one condition – that she come work for me.
After a brief discussion where she revealed that she never finished college, had no credentials whatsoever, and previously did jobs that leaned more towards manual labor, I decided that a perfect fit for her would be to work as my maid.
So here she was, standing right in front of me, in the living room at my house.
I walked towards the sofa and sat it, clasped my hands in front of me, and cleared my throat, wondering where to begin. When I played this scene in my head, everything had seemed so smooth. I’d meet her, tell her the terms and conditions, and leave her to begin her work.
But one thing I’d not been counting on was this sudden… strange feeling in my chest, that ‘poof’ that went off every time I raised my head and looked at that face of hers.
Now that her face was free of the cloth, her skin appeared clearer, almost angelic. Was it just the lighting or did she always have such pink, succulent lips and big blue eyes?
And why did she have to wear such a tightfitting gown?
Frowning, I snapped my head to the side and shut my eyes, shaking the thoughts away. What the hell had come over me?
Coughing, I turned to her.
“How is your brother?”
“He… He’s holding up well, sir.”
Her voice was soft, with a lilting quality that seemed to flow across the room.
Blinking, I gave a firm nod and stood up before walking over to the kitchen. Waving my hand at her as a signal that she should follow, I continued, “So you know why you’re here, don’t you?”
“Yes, I…” She swallowed, her steps lightly tapping against the marble floor, “…I’m here to work for you.”
“Then that’s—”
“Sir?”
Her interruption had me turning around, my eyebrows in a questioning arch as I looked at her. “Yes?”
“First, I wanted to say that I’m extremely grateful for all you did. My brother is now in a good hospital, and my sister lives in that nice house with the other maid. If not because of you, we'd still be in that dump and I don’t even know how much longer we would have survived on our own. I’m extremely grateful but I… I just want to know one thing.”
She paused, raising her eyes to look tentatively at me. Leaning against the wall, I folded my arms and nodded at her, “Yes?”
“What do you get in return?”
Frowning, I dropped my arms from my chest and walked towards her, turning around to point at everything in sight, “You’re working for me. As my maid. You’re cleaning and cooking and taking care of all that.”
“Yeah, yeah,” She sighed, biting her lip as she also looked around, “But you’re paying me for this, aren’t you? If you said that I should work for free, I’d understand that. Not only you insist on paying me, but you also took care of my brother’s hospital bills and put my sister in a good, safe house. I… I’m just…”
She sighed, clasping her hand in front of her as she shook her head, a confused expression on her face. “Why are you doing this? You don’t even know us and we didn’t exactly meet under a very friendly circumstance.”
That – that earnest, soft-spoken bundle of words that just left her lips – constituted the same question I’d been asking myself for the past two days, right after I opened my mouth and said that I’d do all these things for them.
Why did I do that?
I didn’t know her or her siblings… I was under zero obligations to be the good guy. Heck, she should be with the cops by now, not with me.
But as I stood
