They Auctioned Off My Housekeeping, Then the Mob Paid a Million for It novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Ring Box

Rocco sends her uncle's men away and helps Livia pack, Thurston learns her real name and panics, and in his nightstand she finds an engagement ring engraved for Margot.

Thurston's building was a converted cannery in Fells Point, six floors of brick and glass with a night doorman.

Silvio's car was a gray sedan parked across the street with two men in the front seats.

Rocco told me to stay in the back of ours.

I didn't.

I got out and stood beside him on the sidewalk in the borrowed gown, with the harbor wind coming straight through it.

"Livia," he said.

"They're sitting outside my home. I'd like to see their faces."

He looked at me for a second, and then he crossed the street.

He didn't hurry. He walked up to the driver's window and rapped on the glass with one knuckle.

The window came down.

I couldn't hear what he said. It was short.

The man in the passenger seat looked past him at me.

I looked right back.

The window went up.

The gray sedan pulled away from the curb and turned the corner.

Rocco came back across the street, and I noticed his hands had never left his pockets.

"What did you say?"

"That you're with me."

"And that's enough?"

"For tonight."

Walt held the lobby door open and stared at the four men behind Rocco. "Ms. Maitland? Everything all right?"

"I'm moving out. These are my movers."

"At ten at night?"

"It's been that kind of night."

We rode up in the freight elevator, because the passenger one was too small for five men and me.

I let us into the apartment I had cleaned every day for two years.

It smelled of lemon polish and of Thurston's cologne.

His running shoes were by the door where I had set them out that morning.

One of Rocco's men picked up a stack of flattened boxes from the pantry.

He had found them without being told where they were.

"Take only what's mine," I said. "The books. My mother's rosary. The green suitcase."

"That's all?"

"I never had much."

That was true, and it was the part that stung.

I had moved in with two bags and a lamp.

In two years I had not added one real thing.

Thurston had a way of saying "our place" that meant his.

I went into the bedroom and pulled the green suitcase out from under the bed.

Rocco stood in the doorway, not coming in.

He looked at the made bed and the neat row of Thurston's shirts.

Then he looked at me, kneeling on the floor in a ball gown.

Something moved in his face.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Say it."

"You used to climb the fence at the club to get out of piano lessons," he said. "I carried you back over it. You bit me."

"I was eleven."

"You drew blood."

I almost laughed. The sound caught halfway.

The front door banged open.

"Livia!"

Thurston came down the hall with his tie torn loose and his collar open.

Margot was behind him in her red silk, holding her heels in one hand.

He stopped dead when he saw Rocco.

Rocco didn't move, and he didn't say a word.

"Who the hell are you?" Thurston said. "You can't be in here. This is my apartment."

"It was," I said, getting up. "You can have it back."

"Livia, sweetheart, stop."

He tried a smile. It came out shaky.

"You made your point. You embarrassed me, fine, I deserve it. Come home."

"I'm not going home with you."

"Where are you going? You have no money. You don't have a job. You don't have anybody."

Margot touched his sleeve. "Thurston."

"No, I'm serious, Margot. She has nobody."

"She has me," Rocco said.

It was the first thing he'd said since the door.

Thurston finally looked at him properly.

He saw the scar and the dark suit.

He saw the four men in the hall with cardboard boxes.

"I don't know what you are," he said. "But I'm calling the police."

"Please do," said one of the men in the hall, pleasantly.

"She's a Corsetti," Rocco said.

Thurston stared.

Nothing happened on his face for a moment. Then it happened all at once.

He knew the name. Everyone in Baltimore did.

It was written on the side of the produce market, the parking garages and a wing of the hospital.

"That's not possible," he said. "Her name is Maitland. She's from Ohio. She said she was from Ohio."

"I said I came from Ohio," I said. "I never said I was born there."

"You lied to me for two years."

"I lived on your floors for two years," I said. "You never once asked me a question you didn't want the answer to."

I zipped the green suitcase.

Margot had gone quiet. She was staring at the ring on my right hand, and then at Rocco's bare one.

"I'll get the nightstand," I said to nobody. "I left my charger."

I pulled open the drawer on Thurston's side of the bed, because that was where the charger always lived.

There was a small velvet ring box under it.

I opened it.

Inside was a diamond cluster on a thin band, sized much too small for my finger.

The inside of the band was engraved.

M.D. & G.K. Forever.

I turned around and held it up so he could see it.

"You told me we were saving for a ring," I said.

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