“I Need a Boyfriend by Tomorrow,” the Plus-Size Maid Whispered—And Her Mafia Boss Heard Everything

The kitchen of the Rossi estate was built like a commercial sanctuary for a man who rarely ate home-cooked meals, all brushed surgical steel, honed white Carrara marble, and cold, echoing space. At two in the morning, it felt like a mausoleum.

Sadi Miller leaned her full weight against the edge of the deep farmhouse sink, letting the cold stone press through her damp canvas apron and straight into her stomach. Her feet throbbed with a dull, sickening rhythm. A persistent ache traveled from her heels all the way up her calves, the inescapable tax of spending fourteen consecutive hours on her feet catering a private high-stakes poker game for men who treated her with the exact same level of awareness as the expensive oriental rugs beneath their leather shoes.

She scrubbed a heavy cast-iron skillet with a rusty wire brush. The harsh, scraping sound echoed loudly against the twenty-foot ceilings. It was the only sound in the house, save for the hum of the sub-zero refrigerators.

Down in the subterranean basement, the security detail played low-stakes cards in total silence. Upstairs in the master wing, the boss slept—or didn't. No one really knew what Roman Rossi did when the sun went down and the city of Chicago belonged entirely to the shadows. Sadi preferred not to dwell on it. Her job was to clean the messes, polish the silver, and keep her head down. She didn't ask how dark crimson stains got onto the French cuffs of the crisp linen shirts she took to the dry cleaner every Tuesday, and she certainly didn't ask why the heavy oak doors to the east wing were locked from the outside with heavy brass deadbolts.

Her phone buzzed sharply inside her apron pocket. Sadi ignored it, digging the wire brush harder into the stubborn ring of burned grease. It buzzed again. Then again. Three rapid, urgent vibrations.

With a heavy sigh, she dried her raw, pink hands on a flour-sack towel and fished out the device. The screen glared violently at her in the dim, recessed lighting of the empty kitchen.

Mother.

The notifications had rolled in like a slow-motion car crash:

Are you still bringing a plus one tomorrow? I need to tell the caterer by midnight. It’s $150 a plate, Sadi.

Chloe is stressed enough as it is. Please don’t make a scene by showing up alone and moping around the bar.

Derek and his new fiancée will be at table 4. I put you at table 12 near the kitchen service doors so you don’t feel awkward.

Near the kitchen service doors. Of course. So she wouldn't feel awkward. Or, more accurately, so her broad, soft frame wouldn't ruin the sleek, Pinterest-perfect aesthetic of her younger sister’s country club wedding photographs.

Sadi locked the screen and placed the phone facedown on the cold marble island. A hot, thick lump flared in her throat, burning behind her nose. She swallowed hard, gritting her teeth, utterly refusing to let the tears fall into the dishwater. She was twenty-eight years old. She paid her own rent on a drafty studio in Pilsen. She worked grueling, soul-crushing hours without a word of complaint. Yet three short text messages from her mother could instantly reduce her to a pathetic, hideously insecure teenager.

Derek. Table 4. She hadn't seen him in two full years—not since the humiliating afternoon he had packed his crisp button-downs into his Honda Civic and told her, with a look of suffocating, unbearable pity, that he needed a partner who "took better care of herself." Three months later, he was engaged to a twenty-two-year-old Pilates instructor who weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet and drank green juice for breakfast.

Sadi turned her gaze toward her reflection in the dark, uncurtained glass above the sink. She saw the familiar, unwanted geometry of her existence: the rounded shoulders, the soft jawline, the broad back, and the heavy, thick thighs hidden beneath her drab, oversized black uniform. She had spent twenty-eight years trying to shrink herself, trying to occupy less space in a world that constantly demanded women be small, fragile, and delicate. It had never worked. She was loud when she laughed. She was soft. She was large. And tomorrow evening, she was expected to walk straight into the lion's den with a smile on her face.

Sadi turned on the brass faucet, letting scalding water run over her raw knuckles just to feel something other than the crushing weight of public humiliation.

"I can’t do it," she whispered aloud. Her own voice cracked through the vast, empty room. It sounded terribly small. "I can’t walk in there alone." She gripped the smooth porcelain edge of the sink until her knuckles turned ghostly white. The tears finally spilled over, hot and fast, dropping into the soapy water below. She wiped roughly at her nose with the back of her wet wrist. "I just... I need a boyfriend by tomorrow."

It was a pathetic, embarrassing plea spoken to an empty room—a worthless wish thrown into a dark void.

Then a voice broke the quiet—low, gravelly, and far too close.

"What time is the event?"

Sadi went rigid as marble. The blood drained from her face so fast her head spun. Slowly, terrified, she turned around.

Roman Rossi sat at the far end of the marble island, almost completely swallowed by the deep shadows of the hallway archway. He wasn't wearing one of his custom-tailored three-piece suits. He wore dark gray fleece sweatpants and a tight black t-shirt stretched across a massive, heavily tattooed chest. A crystal lowball glass containing two fingers of amber bourbon rested in his right hand.

In the faint, moody light, he didn't look like the ruthless mob boss who controlled the entire South Side underground. He looked tired. But his eyes—pale, ice-gray, calculating, and entirely devoid of warmth—were locked onto her face with terrifying intensity.

"Mr. Rossi," Sadi gasped, pressing a trembling hand over her heart. "I—I didn’t realize you were down here, sir. I’m so sorry. I’ll finish the pans and leave immediately."

"I asked you a question, Sadi." His voice barely rose above a low, gravelly rumble, yet it completely dominated the massive room. Roman took a slow, deliberate sip of his liquor. The ice clinked sharply against the heavy crystal. "What time is the event tomorrow?"

Sadi stood frozen, her mind completely short-circuiting. She wiped her damp palms frantically against her apron. "It’s nothing, sir. Just a stupid family thing. My sister’s rehearsal dinner. I was just... talking to myself. I apologize for the noise." She reached blindly for her phone, desperate to grab her things and flee.

"Table 12, near the kitchen," Roman said smoothly.

Sadi’s stomach plummeted to her shoes. He had seen the screen. The phone had been faceup on the island earlier, the bright notifications glowing brightly across the glass before she had flipped it over. Fresh, burning humiliation scorched her veins.

"That’s private," the words burst out of her mouth before her brain could stop them.

You didn't snap at Roman Rossi. Men were dragged out of Lake Michigan with concrete around their ankles for significantly less insolence.

Roman didn't even blink. He merely observed her outburst with quiet, dangerous curiosity before setting his glass down on the stone. The heavy thud sounded like a judge's final gavel.

"You make my espresso at precisely 5:30 every morning," Roman said, his voice flat and even. "You remember that I take it dark with a single pinch of sea salt. When the federal agents raided this house with a warrant last month, you didn’t scream. You didn’t panic. You kept sweeping the foyer floor while they tore through the drywall with crowbars."

"It’s... it’s just my job, sir."

"You’re loyal. You’re quiet. You don’t ask stupid questions." Roman stood up.

At six-foot-three, he was an absolute wall of muscle, built like a retired heavyweight boxer disguised as an untouchable titan of industry. He walked around the island, his bare feet making no sound against the heated tile. He stopped barely three feet away from her. The overwhelming scent of fresh cedar, expensive tobacco, and faint gun oil wrapped around her senses.

"You need a boyfriend by tomorrow," Roman stated coldly. It wasn't a question. "Someone to show up, sit at table 12, and make the arrogant weakling at table 4 deeply regret his life choices."

Sadi crossed her arms tightly over her chest, suddenly hyper-aware of everything wrong with her. The messy, falling bun. The lack of makeup. The dark circles under her eyes. The heavy, broad body that always felt like it took up too much room in polite society. "Please don’t mock me, Mr. Rossi. I’ve had a really hard night."

"I don’t mock people, Sadi. I don’t possess the sense of humor required for it." His stone face remained entirely deadpan. "What I have is a logistics problem of my own. Tomorrow night at seven, there is a mandatory sit-down with the Moretti syndicate on the South Side. If I attend, I am going to have to personally execute two men. It will be loud, it will be incredibly messy, and the State Police will be crawling over my corporate accounts by Sunday morning."

Sadi stared at him, her lips parted in disbelief. He was casually discussing double homicide with the exact same conversational tone a accountant might use to explain tax deductions.

"However," Roman continued, taking another slow step closer, "if I am sitting at a suburban country club in Naperville, surrounded by fifty wealthy civilian witnesses, eating rubbery chicken and making polite small talk with your mother, I possess an ironclad, unbreakable alibi. My lieutenants handle the Moretti issue quietly, and I remain completely untouchable."

Sadi could barely pull air into her lungs. "You want... you want to come to my sister’s rehearsal dinner? As my date?"

"As your boyfriend," Roman corrected sternly. "A date implies we are casually exploring options. A boyfriend implies history. It implies I am fully invested in you."

"You don’t even know my last name, sir."

"Sadi Miller. Born in Oak Park. Twenty-eight years old. No criminal record. A dismal credit score, and precisely $12,400 in outstanding student loans for an art history degree you aren't using." Roman recited the confidential file without a single second of hesitation. "I run thorough background checks on every single person who steps foot inside my residence. I know vastly more about you than the idiot sitting at table 4."

A flash of genuine anger cut through her panic. "You can’t just step into my personal life like this is some corporate merger!"

"Everything in this world is a transaction, Sadi." Roman reached out his large, scarred hand. She flinched slightly, but he didn't touch her skin. He merely picked up her phone from the island, used his broad thumb to wipe a smudge of dish soap off the glass, and placed it directly into her trembling palm. "You can walk into that banquet hall tomorrow and let those weak people pity you. You can sit by the swinging kitchen doors, eating alone while they whisper about your size and your failed engagement." His piercing gray eyes locked onto hers with absolute authority. "Or you can walk in on my arm."

Sadi looked down at her phone, then back up into the dark, terrifying face of the most feared man in Chicago. He wasn't doing this out of charity. Mercy didn't exist in his bloodline. He needed a bulletproof alibi; she needed a shield against soul-crushing humiliation. It was cold. It was clinical. It was entirely insane.

Yet, when she pictured Derek’s smug, patronizing face and her mother’s cruel, pitying smile, something dark, sharp, and reckless ignited deep inside her chest.

"If you come," Sadi said, her voice steadying, "you have to play the part properly. No weapons. No subtle threats to the waitstaff. And you have to act like you actually... like you actually want me."

Roman’s icy gaze dropped briefly to her lips before rising back to her eyes. A muscle twitched rhythmically in his jaw. "I know how to execute a assignment, Sadi." His voice dropped an octave, turning thick and dark. "What time do I pick you up?"

"Six o'clock."

"Be downstairs at 5:45. I don't wait for anyone." Roman turned on his heel and walked back toward the dark hallway. "And Sadi?"