Twelve Interpreters Could Help The Mafia Boss—Until A Cleaning Lady Spoke Eight Languages

For three long seconds, no one breathed.

Charles was the first to break. His face went from pale to a mottled, greyish purple. He dropped his yellow notepad, his hands flying up in a wild, defensive gesture.

"She’s... she’s crazy!" Charles shrieked, his voice jumping an entire octave. "Mr. Rossy, she’s a cleaner! She’s an illiterate janitor! She doesn't speak... she doesn't even know what language we’re speaking! She's hearing things!"

Gregory didn't understand the English words, but he understood the shift in the room's temperature. His small eyes flicked from Charles to Dominic, then down to the woman on her knees beside his chair. His right hand casually drifted toward the left lapel of his tailored suit jacket.

"Don't move your hand, Gregory," Dominic said.

He spoke without looking at Gregory. His eyes were fixed on Mave.

Slowly, carefully, Dominic leaned back in his chair. The silver fountain pen was set back down on the desk with a quiet, deliberate click.

"Look at me," Dominic told her.

Mave squeezed the last drops of water out of her sponge. She set it carefully on the small red tray attached to the side of her bucket, pulled her hands back into her lap, and looked up.

Her gaze met his. She didn't blink. She didn't offer a meek smile or a terrified twitch. She simply stared back with the cold, dead-eyed neutrality of someone who had seen men much scarier than Dominic Rossy end up in shallow ditches outside Lyon.

"What is your name?" Dominic asked.

"Mave."

"Who hired you, Mave?"

"Apex Janitorial Services," she said. "Night shift. Third floor to forty-second floor. Twelve dollars an hour."

Dominic’s eyes narrowed slightly. He looked down at her blue smock, at the worn plastic badge pinned to her pocket that read MAVE - CREW 4, then back to her face.

"Where did you learn Pankisi Romani?" he asked.

"Marseilles," she replied flatly. "In the transit shelters. They run the cigarette trade out of the docks there. If you don't understand what they're saying, they take your shoes."

Across the table, Gregory’s second-in-command leaned down, whispering urgently into his boss's ear in rapid, dialect-heavy Russian. He had caught the word Marseilles and the name of the gorge.

Gregory’s face hardened into stone. His hand didn't come out of his coat, but his fingers remained tucked inside the wool.

"Ask him," Dominic said, gesturing toward Gregory, "where my brother is."

Mave didn't look at Dominic. She looked directly at Gregory.

She didn't use the polite, formal Russian that Charles had used. She didn't use the academic phrases. She used the sharp, gutter-born dialect of the Pankisi borderland, her voice dropping into a low, harsh rhythm that hit the air like stone chips hitting metal.

“The Italian wants to know which cellar,” she said to Gregory, her eyes cold. “He wants to know if it’s the old ice house near the canal, or the scrap yard on 114th Street.”

Gregory’s mouth snapped shut. His chest expanded as he took a deep, sudden breath. The metal caps on his teeth glinted under the lights as his lips pulled back into a snarl.

“Who the hell are you?” Gregory spat back in the same dialect. “Who sent you?”

“I’m the person cleaning the blood off this rug if you don't answer,” Mave said without a second's hesitation. “And you have three men on the roof who aren't going to get their pay if this room goes cold.”

Dominic didn't need a translation for the tone. He saw the shock register on Gregory’s face—the sudden, defensive twitch of his shoulders that confirmed the woman on the floor had hit a nerve.

"Charles," Dominic said smoothly.

Charles jumped. "Y-yes, Mr. Rossy?"

"Get out."

"Mr. Rossy, please, I have a contract with your firm, I was merely trying to keep the negotiations within the parameters of—"

"If you are still in this room in ten seconds," Dominic said, his tone as flat as Mave’s, "my men will throw you out the window. And we are on the forty-second floor."

Charles didn't pick up his pen. He didn't pick up his leather briefcase. He turned on his heel and sprinted for the double doors, his leather-soled shoes slipping twice on the polished parquet flooring before he burst out into the hallway.

The door clicked shut behind him.

Dominic reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a gold money clip, and detached a single bill. He tossed it onto the mahogany table.

"Mave," Dominic said.

"Yes?"

"Get off your knees."

Mave looked at the floor, then at her aching joint. She slowly stood up. Her legs were stiff, her right knee making a dry popping sound that echoed in the quiet room. She wiped her damp palms against the sides of her blue smock and stood by her bucket, her posture straight, her shoulders dropped.

Dominic looked at his two bodyguards by the door.

"Lock the floor," he ordered. "Nobody goes up. Nobody goes down. Call Paul. Tell him we have an address change on the brother."

He looked back at Mave.

"Sit in the chair," Dominic said, pointing to the high-backed leather seat Charles had just abandoned.

Mave didn't move immediately. "My smock is wet."

"Sit in the chair, Mave."

She walked over, her rubber-soled work shoes making a faint squeak against the floor, and sat on the edge of the five-thousand-dollar leather chair. She didn't lean back. She kept her feet flat on the floor, ready to move if metal cleared leather.