Page 99 of The Crowned Garza

I’M SNACKING ONseedless grapes in the kitchen, watching Sofia’s every move as she reorganizes my entire pantry.

On the counter, my phone’s buzzing incessantly, Creed’s name flashing on the screen. As I’ve been doing since yesterday, I ignore it.

Eventually, Sofia sighs. Loudly. As if to let me know my nonstop staring is bugging her.

Good.I tried it with Paloma upstairs, but it didn’t work. That one’s a tough nut.

“Ask.” Sofia turns to me, ripping out her earphones. “Ask whatever you want.”

I roll a grape on my tongue. “Are youallowedto talk about him?”

“Not usually, no. But he gave us permission to answer truthfully any question you might ask. He said you are like that.”

“Like what?”

“Inquisitive. Intrusive. Manipulative.”

When I arch a brow at her, she quickly adds, “His words, not mine.”

I almost laugh. Can’t be offended if it’s the truth, can I? “Why do you call him Daddy?”

She giggles. “Dio, he hates that so much.” She giggles some more. “We call him Daddy because...well, to us, he is. I do not know how else to explain it. There is no one in the world we feel safer with than him. He has our backs, takes care of us in every way, and he shows up. He always, always shows up. And if that is not ‘Daddy’ then I do not know what is. Back home, to address him as anything other thanPadroneis considered blatant disrespect and has consequences. But he hates that even more.”

Huh. Still not sure how I feel about them calling him that, but I get it. “How do you feel about the whole indentured servitude thing?”

“It is a blessing.”

“How so?”

“On paper, that is essentially what we are to him. But we have been serving him since I was sixteen and Paloma seventeen. At this point, I think, we have a different kind of bond. We begged him to take us here with him, even though our servitude was about to be over at the time. Back home, being a Spinelli…ourfamigliais shameful. The Spinelli men are… Let me just say, the women in our family are usually eager to reach the age where our servitude to the Rossettis begin and often depressed when it ends. They treat us well. Contract extensions are asked for, more than not. But they rarely get approved. Ours thankfully did. Coming to America with Daddy, it is a dream. The best thing we could have ever wished for.”

Yikes.Imagine a life where servitudeisfreedom.

“Does he make you do stuff with him?” I ask. “Sex stuff, I mean. Like, is that part of the contract?”

“Make?” She throws her head back and guffaws. “I wouldlovethat. As I said, we have been serving him sinceadolescenti. We are some years older than him, but together we had a kind of, how you say, sexual awakening? I was stupid foolish for him. Paloma, too. We would get jealous of each other whenever he looked at one of us for longer than the other. We would have little spats over him. Even as a youth, he was so...how you say,godlike?You know how he looks, how he is. Like…like… I do not know. He is justperfetto!”

Eyes dazed with her memories, she flails her arms and grins like a giddy teen, her plump cheeks ruddying.

“Anyway, I gave him his first blow job—I think. But in the way that we liked him, it was never like that for him. In a way, looking back, for him it was more, how do you say, experimental? He was curious and, uh, clinical and, um, technical. Yes, that. He was keen to know how everything worked, what made us feel good, those kinds of things. Some nights he spent exploring me, some nights Paloma, some nights both of us together. He would want to know why some things that worked for Paloma did not work for me and vice versa. But we never went all the way—he has some weird hang-up on purity. For instance, he liked edging himself for long periods and rarely ever allowed himself to ejaculate. Like he was exercising some sort of, how do you say, self—um, self—uh, self-flagellation?”

I…don’t even know what to say to that, so I just nod and pop another grape in my mouth.

“Anyway, things changed after we came here. He had a lot on his plate with hisfamigliaand we had so much more freedom to do whatever we wanted. All I know now is that he likes to watch, Paloma likes to be watched, so they do the whole private sex club thing together sometimes. For me, I am just happy and enjoying life right now. But make no mistake, if Daddy says ‘kneel,’ I am kneeling. If he says ‘crawl,’ I am crawling.”

Oh,wow.That’s...a lot. Much more than I expected her to share.Too much, actually. She just…spilled it all. Didn’t even let me work to pry it out of her.

“Who did he say I am to him?” I ask once I find my voice again.

“He did not.” Something sad and wistful pirouettes across her face. “But I have known him a very long time. I know him more than he thinks I do. It is not hard to see and understand who you are to him.”

Before I can ask what she means by that, she turns her back to me and pops in her earphones, effectively ending the conversation.

The devil’s ears must be burning because my phone buzzes on the counter again, and this time it isn’t Creed.

Fraud:Meet me here at eight. [Attached: pinned location]

Fraud:Use a car service.