Endangered Hearts

  Endangered Hearts

  Amanda Lance

  Endangered Hearts

  Copyright © 2013 by Amanda Lance. All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: March 2014

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1495991646

  ISBN-10: 1495991644

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  First Impressions

  Emilia had no way of knowing it would be the most beautiful thing she would ever see. She had heard the stories about the house, of course, as haunted and depraved as the man who lived there. And it wasn’t surprising that the mansion was in the outskirts of Weston—one of the richest areas in Massachusetts—since it had always been her experience that rich people were often more eccentric than the poor. Though mostly, she had heard of how he scrupulously analyzed the work all the girls did, pointing out dirt and dust bunnies that were not really there, ranting long after tears were shed about window streaks and beds not made to perfection.

  The woman who employed her gossiped freely about how Ana had hysterically struggled with her heavy German accent to pronounce the names he had called her. And Emilia had been there herself, picking up her paycheck, when Becky outright quit after claiming that “the freak” had threatened to kill her, saying that her blubber was more useful than she was.

  At first, Emilia was insulted that she had not been the first one put on the schedule for the freak’s house. She was often requested over the other girls and told that customers liked her for being polite and on time—a fact she knew may have been mediocre, but one she prided herself on, nevertheless. And since this particular house was scheduled for two four-hour cleanings every week, it was a chance to earn some serious tips.

  Still, it wasn’t until almost everyone else bluntly refused to go to Iram Manor that Emilia was offered the job. She accepted happily, feigning ignorance at the friendly warnings from her co-workers and more determined than ever to make it work. In her mind, one dirty house was just the same as the next.

  Emilia always knew she was in Weston right around the time she spotted the first house worth around (by her guess) half a million. She noticed how they would gradually get a little bigger as she drove along, a little more space between one another, the landscaping more grandiose. The individuals jogging down the street would begin looking more like movie stars than real people, and the children would be riding bicycles that were probably—no, scratch that—definitely worth more than her car.

  She recognized one or two of the houses, having cleaned in this neighborhood before. And Emilia was willing to admit to a certain combination of awe and envy she felt when she walked into her first mansion. Yet, sometime in between cleaning their toilets and listening to their children complain about how they needed the newest iPhone, there was an instant where any feelings of jealousy and even the slightest impression of wonder dissolved into simple annoyance.

  Most of the time, however, she just smiled, nodded, and tried to bear it when they spoke to her like an imbecile or something under their shoe. She’d often compare it to getting her teeth cleaned, the sensitivity of it painful in some places, but not unbearable. Because, even though she was in the top ten percent of her class, even though she was pre-med and she probably knew more about their own anatomy than they did, she often found that those with money were more likely to look down at those without it.

  Emilia continued to drive long past the prestigious houses with acres of meadow for sale, historical sites, and parking lots filled with classic cars. It wasn’t until she took the final turn off the main drive that she came across the dead-end road she was looking for. Immediately, the land around it looked lost, untamed, which in itself was unusual for the prosperous town. Normally, all things in Weston were well managed and refined to the extent one would expect of an area with individuals of higher income. So to see drooping branches over a street sign seemed odd to Emilia, eerie even. And though it was still humid from the Indian summer, she shivered.

  She made her way down the road slowly, as it was littered with potholes and more gravel than pavement. Broken pieces of road lay out in the grass, and she wondered how people with so much money would let their tax dollars go to waste. Thinking for sure she was in the wrong place, she looked for a place to turn around until she saw a sign that forewarned “Private Drive” and signaled her blinker.

  There were small sticks and branches in the road and even more paved debris. Though it may have been her imagination, it felt as though the street itself was becoming gradually worse in quality; as if enough people didn’t travel along it to make repair worthwhile.

  She glanced down at the GPS on the dash. This couldn’t have been it, could it? But suddenly a long line of tall trees and well-trimmed shrubbery emerged, almost blocking a driveway entrance from the road. It wasn’t until she actually pulled into it that she saw the reflective sign against one of the trees: “Private Property.” Another signed warned “Trespassers Prosecuted” each with the lettering in a bold, threatening font. Regardless, Emilia didn’t look at them twice. Several houses in Weston had private security guards outside their gates and everyone had a security system. Though the signs by themselves looked excessive—not to mention outdated—they still weren’t outside the realm of normal.

  As the unpaved road turned into a freshly tarred one, she caught a glimpse of the cast-iron gates that were held up by stone pillars. Holding her hand up against the sun, she glanced in both directions—the gate and pillars stretched as far as she could see. She had no distinct way of knowing—though she guessed, off-hand—that the land around it had to have been at least ten acres; a large estate, but still not unusual for Weston.

  Emilia pulled her car, a squealing Honda, up to the front gate and put it in park. Unsurprisingly, there were cameras at the top of the pillars there, blinking every few seconds, but for some reason they gave her a creepy feeling, making her hesitate to remove her seat-belt and even to leave her car. She wasn’t sure why those cameras gave her the heebie jeebies, but they did. Even after she scolded herself the feeling wouldn’t go away. Emilia had to remind herself that a lot of well off people had security cameras—both the real and the fake kind—she knew she had been watched and recorded on them before, so what was the big deal now? It was because she was self-conscious, she told herself. Yeah, that was all. This guy probably only had them as a preliminary requirement for his homeowners insurance. There’s no reason for you to feel weirded out…

  She spotted the plastic keypad attached to the fron
t gate right away though the glare from one of the cameras threatened to blind her. No doubt there was a doorbell of some kind, but Emilia never got the chance to discover it for herself before a voice—feminine but stern—emerged from the speaker.

  “Leave your vehicle and use the employee entrance located at the back of the house.”

  After that, there was nothing else except the subtle sound of the gate opening. “Um, hello?” she said into the speaker. Emilia wasn’t sure she had heard the voice correctly. Leave her car there? Where was the house? Unsure of what to do, she hit the dusty red button at the keypad’s center. “Hi, I’m from Green and Clean Housekeeping…”

  She waited, but there was no response.

  Emilia stared at the speaker before cursing and stamping her foot into the ground. Even standing on her tippy-toes, she couldn’t see the house. They wanted her to carry all of the cleaning supplies up there? Her green little Civic wasn’t that ugly, was it? Sure, it had a duct-taped mirror, a few dents and bumps, a crack in the windshield, and some torn up interior, but the gas mileage was worth bragging about. Couldn’t the rich relate to how great that was?

  She tried not to take it personally and grabbed the cleaning caddies from the trunk. If she were a yuppie, she’d probably want to keep the eyesores of “the help” as far away from her family and guests as possible, too. After all, some of these people had worked extremely hard to earn their living, and once they got to the top of the proverbial food chain, she could understand why being reminded of the poor might be the last thing they might want. Emilia slung one of the caddies over her shoulder and gripped the handlebar of the other, still unable to shake the strange feeling the cameras gave her as she walked through the opening gate.

  At first, there was just the yard, as wide and open as the sky itself. Emilia had difficulty just trying to focus on the hundreds of yards of bluegrass as the gates slammed shut behind her. There wasn’t a single tree in sight, making the slight curves that began and ended on the drive look more like a golf course than someone’s yard. Yet, as she continued to walk, she could see in the far distance, sporadic statues, which enlarged the closer she came. Though it was already after Labor Day, a large circle of sunflowers stood proud, surrounded by azaleas and a stone bench. Emilia wanted to stop to admire them properly but knew it was null and void to the work ahead.

  Other small gardens came into view; small maple trees, Japanese cedar, dogwood and cherry blossoms with cobblestone paths between… all encompassed by intrinsic flowers that she couldn’t have identified if her life depended on it. Each patch was different, obviously having been designed by someone who was an expert on the subject of landscaping. Even with as beautiful as they were, however, Emilia thought they were not a proper introduction to the manor.

  The chimney stacks came into view first. They were different in size but appeared to be symmetrically placed from each other. Emilia counted twelve total. It was odd, in the general vicinity of the neighborhood, so many Weston houses had modernized, Cape-Cod-style homes or oversized ranch farmhouses. This house, however, was something entirely different. Instead of a mansion, it was closer to a château—or what she always imagined one would look like, anyway. Three visible stories looked like they were created from the same kind of stone that surrounded the front gate, the sheltering for Victorian windows. And while Iram Manor was easily the largest house she had ever seen, that wasn’t what amazed her.

  What was so fantastic about the place was its design, its style. The manor looked old world, a castle taken straight out of England and placed right in the middle of Massachusetts. Obviously, since that wasn’t possible, she presumed that it had its own architect, European, undoubtedly, and brimming with good taste. The closer Emilia came to the house, the more beautiful it appeared, and she genuinely admired the obviously painstaking work it must have taken to create the balconies, the slate roofing, the foundation around such a monstrous house on uneven ground.

  Emilia walked along as instructed, not surprised there weren’t any toys even this close to the house. People this wealthy had to have at least one or two live-in nannies who did nothing but clean up and take care of the kids. She smiled at the relief. With a house this size, there was easily eight hours of work to do a week, but at least she might not have to cover the kids’ rooms.

  There were additional gardens—each more exotic than she could have imagined with flowers that looked like orchids, and something with sharp, yellow petals. A manmade stream ran somewhere she couldn’t see, though she knew it was there from the sound of running water. Another cobblestone path began away from the house and went into a valley of trees so orange, they looked as though they were on fire. She saw a few small birds jumping from branch to branch and told herself that if things worked out, she would have to go exploring.

  There were several different doors to choose from once Emilia reached the back of the house, but she was unsure which entrance was for the employees. With muddy footprints and an uncoiled hose on the ground, she presumed she was on the right path but still wasn’t sure exactly where she was supposed to be. An unopened box of garbage bags and an extension cord sat on the edge of the picnic table, so she tried the door closest to there, knocking three, four, then five times.

  Emilia waited between knocks, rapping a little harder each time. After a few minutes, however, she grew torn between putting the caddies down and trying the next door. The decision was made for her when an older woman finally answered.

  Wearing a straight-legged pant suit, she was probably in her late forties, with pristine makeup and her chestnut hair in a flawless bun. She looked down at Emilia from behind her thick glasses and frowned, which made Emilia second guess her perception of her instantly.

  “You’re late.” Emilia instantly recognized the voice from the gate, though there was a noticeable accent there that she hadn’t noticed before.

  “I’ve been knocking. I also didn’t account for the extra time it would take to walk—”

  “Excuses are not necessary.” As she stepped aside, she withdrew a phone from her jacket pocket and a plastic pen. Emilia cringed, only imagining what kind of note the older woman was probably making about her. “This will not be acceptable in the future.”

  Emilia nodded and stepped inside. The older woman was already walking away, so Emilia struggled to close the door and readjust the caddy weight while following her.

  “I am Mrs. Levkin, Mr. Zafar’s assistant.” She looked up from her phone. “You will arrive here Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3:00 PM sharp. You will do your duties and leave at 7:00 PM sharp. Your duties are as follows: maintaining the bedrooms on the second floor in addition to dusting, floor care, and the polishing of certain furniture items on the first floor. You are responsible for the sitting room, which includes window washing, empting the fireplace, and steam cleaning the carpet and furniture at appropriate intervals.”

  Emilia nodded with each new direction. Of course she had questions, but it seemed vital not to interrupt. How many times had Mrs. Levkin given this same speech to other cleaning girls, a dozen times? Two dozen?

  “Before you leave each day, you will vacuum the second floor hall and the rug in the sitting room and dining room. Bathrooms on the first and second floor must be cleaned regularly. Once monthly, you will dust the library and the chandelier in the hall. The kitchen and breakfast rooms are not used often, but when they are, you may have to look after them as well.”

  The duo still hadn’t moved from what Emilia was now realizing was a massive laundry room, but if the rest of the house was as massive as this service room, she knew she’d have her work cut out for her.

  Emilia let her gaze travel upward. The house was as quiet as a classroom on exam day. No running pipes, running of small feet, voices, or even appliances. Frankly, it was as startling as the cameras. She would have thought that even in the middle of the day, a house that large, that grand, would have been livelier.

  “W-what about the third floor?”
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  Mrs. Levkin’s face formed a grimace. “Under no circumstances are you to go to the third floor. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  For a second, she smiled. “Good. Any other questions?”

  Emilia shook her head and smiled. For the moment, at least, her objections had been made clear and Emilia appreciated the efficiency Mrs. Levkin seemed to conduct herself and the rest of the house with. Emilia promised herself that as long as she continued to be professional, Emilia would do so as well.

  “Well.” She looked the young woman up and down. Emilia hoped that her personality defects wouldn’t be visible. “I hope you last longer than the rest of them.”

  Emilia’s eyebrows went straight up, but before she could ask about her meaning, Mrs. Levkin turned on her heel and started walking. “Come along, then I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

  Following her short steps, Emilia noticed how they were uneven from each other, the slight limp making the older woman look feeble. Still, she didn’t have any trouble leading Emilia out of the labyrinth of cemented rooms, all semi-connected to one another. While she told Emilia it was “only” the basement, her eyes guessed that in square feet alone it was bigger than Emilia’s entire house.

  After journeying up a short set of stairs, she introduced Emilia to a kitchen that was massive but practical, with lots of overhead space and red marble countertops that were not nearly as glamorous as Emilia expected.

  “I do the shopping once a week,” Mrs. Levkin said. “This room is the pantry, and as I showed you, the basement may be used for additional food storage.”

  Emilia marveled at the massive quantities of food, but the lentils, dried fruits, and granola were the only things she recognized.

  “There is the breakfast room…” They walked past a room with golden paneling along the edges of the walls that glittered in the midday light. Emilia was mesmerized by the way they contrasted with the dark curtains and furnishings. Mrs. Levkin continued on—didn’t even yield—and Emilia hurried on behind her as she pointed out one bathroom from another, a closet…