Chapter 4 - THE TAILOR’S FITTING
By Friday afternoon, Whitmore House had transformed into a whirlwind of corporate and social chaos. Floral arrangers from Boston were hanging white roses from the grand staircase balustrades, catering vans were unloading crates of champagne in the lower kitchens, and local news crews were already staking out the front gates to snap photos of arriving VIPs.
Up in the master suite, Vanessa was undergoing her final wedding gown and party-dress fittings with a notoriously difficult Italian tailor named Signor Moretti, who treated everyone in the room like an incompetent peasant.
Naomi was quietly steaming the silk drapes in the adjacent dressing room when she heard Moretti’s sharp voice rise over the hum of the steamer.
“No, no, no! The hem is entirely uneven! Who pinned this? Was it an amateur?” Moretti shrieked, waving his hands frantically in the air.
“It wasn't me, Signor Moretti, it was the idiot seamstress you hired from downtown!” Vanessa snapped back, standing on a raised pedestal in a blindingly white silk evening dress, glaring at her reflection in the three-way mirror. She looked stressed, her skin flushed, the perpetual anxiety of perfection eating away at her edges.
Then, Vanessa’s eyes shifted in the mirror. She caught Naomi’s reflection through the open doorway of the dressing room, moving quietly with a steamer wand.
An ugly, inspired light flickered across Vanessa’s face.
“Hey! You—maid!” Vanessa called out sharply, snapping her fingers twice.
Naomi turned off the steamer and walked into the suite, keeping her hands resting calmly at her sides. “Yes, Ms. Sterling?”
“Get down here,” Vanessa ordered, pointing a manicured finger at the hem of her expensive silk dress. “Signor Moretti says the fabric is pulling weirdly on the left side. Kneel down and hold the fabric taut against the floor while he re-pins it. And make sure your hands don't snag the silk—you know how clumsy you help-types can be.”
Signor Moretti threw his hands up. “Yes, yes! Quickly! Down on the floor! We have no time for your slow movements!”
Naomi looked at the raised pedestal. She looked at the expensive silk pooling around the floor. And then she looked directly into Vanessa’s eyes in the mirror.
She saw the trap clearly. Vanessa didn't need her to hold the dress; she wanted to humiliate her in front of an outsider. She wanted to force the quiet, untouchable housekeeper onto her knees under the pretext of manual labor right before the grand event, cementing the social hierarchy in stone.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Ms. Sterling,” Naomi said, her voice remaining perfectly even.
Vanessa’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me? Did you just refuse a direct instruction in my own home?”
“My duties include estate maintenance and textile care, but kneeling to serve as a human footstool during a private fitting falls outside my employment contract,” Naomi replied smoothly. “If the hem is uneven, Signor Moretti’s assistant can hold the pins. That is what assistants are paid for.”
Signor Moretti gasped, clutching his chest as if he’d been physically stabbed. “Insolence! Absolute insolence! I have never been so disrespected in a billionaire’s home!”
Vanessa’s face turned bright red with fury. She stepped down off the pedestal, the silk dress hissing against the floor, and marched right up to Naomi, her eyes blazing.
“You miserable, ungrateful little fraud!” Vanessa shrieked, losing whatever fragile grip she had on her composure. “You think you’re safe here because Ethan treats you like a human being?! Let me tell you something—after tomorrow night, my first official act as mistress of this estate will be to throw you out into the street with zero reference and zero severance! You’ll be scrubbing toilets in a truck stop by Sunday morning!”
Naomi didn't flinch. She didn't blink. She simply looked down at Vanessa with a gaze so chillingly calm that it made the designer step back instinctively.
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“Tomorrow night is going to be very interesting, Ms. Sterling,” Naomi said softly. “I hope you enjoy every single second of it.”
Without waiting for a dismissal, Naomi turned around and walked out of the suite, leaving Vanessa trembling with impotent rage in the middle of her Italian gown.
