“Don’t Touch the Dog!” — The Mafia Boss’s Little Girl Walked Up to His Most Dangerous Dog… Then Everyone Froze

"His name is Bruno," Damian said.

The three men from the Indiana port were gone. They had filed out through the west corridor fifteen minutes earlier, their boots silent on the runner, their faces carefully vacant of anything that might be interpreted as an opinion. Men who worked for Damian Cruz did not have opinions about what happened inside his study; opinions were expensive, and they often came with a sudden change in life expectancy.

I was still standing by the door.

Sophia was sitting cross-legged on the parquet now. Bruno had not left her side. The dog had turned his bulk around three times, flattened the corner of a thousand-dollar Persian runner, and laid his jaw directly across her knees. He looked less like a beast of war and more like a fallen boulder.

"I know his name, Mr. Cruz," I said.

My hands were balled into my apron pockets so hard the cotton seams were tearing.

"You shouldn't have brought her here, Rosa."

He didn't say it angrily. That was the problem. Damian Cruz was never loud when he was dangerous. His voice was naturally low, seasoned with the flat, clipped vowels of the Chicago south side and the cold precision of an elite prep school he had attended before his father took three bullets in a barbershop on 18th Street.

"The school had a leak," I said. "A pipe. In the ceiling."

"You have people."

"My sister is in Milwaukee. The daycares on Cermak don't take cash after noon."

"You should have called in."

"If I don't work the four hours, I don't get the forty-eight dollars," I said.

The words came out before I could stop them. You did not talk about money with Damian. He signed checks that could buy two city blocks without blinking, but his life was lived in figures so large they ceased to mean anything related to bread or winter coats. To him, forty-eight dollars was the tip he left the valet at the Drake for not scratching his bumper.

To me, forty-eight dollars was three days of milk, two loaves of white bread, and the late fee on the gas bill.

Damian looked at me over the green-shaded lamp on his desk. He had dark eyes—almost black—set deep under heavy, straight brows. There was gray at his temples, though he couldn't have been more than thirty-six. A thin, neat scar cut through the edge of his chin, perfectly aligned with the crease of his mouth.

"Forty-eight dollars," he repeated.

"Yes, sir."

Bruno let out a long, wet sigh. His tongue lolled out, pink and vast, leaving a damp circle on the hem of Sophia’s dress. Sophia didn't mind. She was busy using her purple marker to color the leather of his collar where the brass studs were set.

"He took eight inches of hide off a man from Gary two weeks ago," Damian said, watching her work. "A man who tried to reach over this desk to hand me a pen."

"She didn't know," I said, my voice rising half an octave. "She’s six, Mr. Cruz. She doesn't understand about... about people."

"She understood something," he said.

He stepped around the mahogany desk. He moved with a peculiar, heavy grace, like an athlete who had spent his youth in boxing rings. When he approached, Bruno didn't move his head from Sophia’s lap, but his tail—a thick, docked stump—gave two slow, rhythmic thuds against the floorboards.

*Thump. Thump.*

Damian stopped four feet away.

"Get up, Rosa."

I hadn't realized I was leaning against the doorframe for support. I straightened my back. My mother had always told me that when you stand before a man who owns the ground you walk on, you do not look at his boots. You look at his tie. If you look at his boots, he thinks you're a dog; if you look at his eyes, he thinks you're a threat.

I looked at the silver knot of his silk tie.

"Starting tomorrow," Damian said, "you don't clean the east wing."

My stomach gave a sickening lurch. "Mr. Cruz—"

"Mrs. Gable can take the guest suites," he continued, as though I hadn't spoken. "You will be responsible for the ground floor library, the morning room, and the small courtyard behind the pantry."

"Sir, that's... that's half my hours."

"You will be paid for forty hours a week," he said. "At twenty-five an hour."

I blinked. The room seemed to tilt slightly.

In the immigrant neighborhoods around Pilsen, twenty-five dollars an hour was what men made after twenty years in the ironworkers' local. Cleaning women made eleven. Sometimes twelve if the lady of the house was feeling Christian around Christmas.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because the dog needs to eat at two o'clock," Damian said. "And because my brother Victor is coming from Miami on Friday."

He looked down at Sophia.