The first day ended at seven forty-five p.m.
Rosalina had not expected to leave before eight so she considered this a victory.
She shut down her computer, straightened her desk until everything was exactly where it had been when she arrived — she had a feeling Enzo Salvatore noticed things being out of place even when he wasn't looking — gathered her bag and coat and said goodnight to Giorgio who was still typing with the dedication of a man who had made peace with late evenings.
"Does he always stay this late?" she asked quietly, nodding toward the closed double doors.
Giorgio looked up. "He's usually here until ten."
"Every day?"
"Every day."
Rosalina looked at the closed doors for a moment.
She thought about what kind of person stayed in an office until ten every night. What they were running toward or what they were running from. Then she reminded herself that her job was to manage his schedule not psychoanalyse it and said goodnight again.
The elevator came.
She stepped in and let the sixtieth floor go.
The metro home was crowded and loud and smelled like the end of a working day.
Rosalina stood in the middle of it and felt something unknot slowly in her chest.
She had done it. One full day inside the Salvatore Group headquarters. She had updated projections and made coffee and managed four separate scheduling conflicts and sat in on a briefing as note taker and fielded eleven phone calls and learned the names of six department heads and eaten lunch at her desk because there hadn't been time for anything else.
And at the end of it Enzo Salvatore had said good work to the top of a page.
She was going to count that.
She was absolutely going to count that.
The apartment was warm and loud and smelled like Betty had been cooking.
Rosalina pushed open the door to find Brian at the kitchen table doing homework with the focused expression he wore when he was pretending to do homework but was actually thinking about football, and Betty at the stove stirring something that smelled like it had onions and optimism in it.
"SHE LIVES!" Betty announced without turning around.
"I live," Rosalina agreed, dropping her bag by the door and toeing off her heels with the relief of someone releasing two small prisoners.
Brian looked up. "How was the scary building?"
"Tall," she said. "And cold. And very serious about itself."
"How was the scary boss?"
She thought about green eyes. About good work said to a page. About Luca Anderson laughing in the corridor like she had said something genuinely funny.
"Precise," she said.
Brian considered this. "Is that good or bad?"
"Undecided." She crossed to him and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "Did you eat the actual breakfast this morning or just crackers?"
"I had crackers and an egg."
"That's almost a meal."
"It was a very good egg."
Betty finally turned from the stove, pointing her wooden spoon at Rosalina with the energy of someone who had been waiting all day for this conversation. She was beautiful in the loud warm way she had always been beautiful — dark skin, natural hair piled high, eyes that missed nothing and judged almost everything with affection.
"Okay," she said. "Tell me everything. Was he handsome? Because the internet says he's handsome but the internet also said that about three men who turned out to be deeply average so I have trust issues."
Rosalina sat down at the kitchen table and stole a piece of bread from the basket in the middle.
"He's my employer Betty."
"That's not a no."
"That's a professional boundary."
"ROSALINA."
Brian made a face. "I don't want to hear this part."
"Then go finish your homework in your room," Betty said without looking at him. To Rosalina: "Was he handsome."
Rosalina ate her bread.
Betty waited.
"He has green eyes," Rosalina said finally, in the voice of someone making a purely factual observation about weather or architecture.
Betty's wooden spoon hit the counter.
"GREEN EYES?"
"It's not—"
"On a dark haired Italian mafia man—"
"He runs legitimate companies—"
"WITH TATTOOS—"
"Betty."
"Rosalina Maria Evans I applied for that job for a REASON and the reason is becoming clearer every second—"
"You applied for that job," Rosalina said firmly, "because I needed the salary. Which I now have. Because I got the job. Which is what matters." She pointed at the stove. "Your onions are burning."
Betty turned around.
They were not burning.
"That was a lie," Betty said.
"It made you stop talking."
Brian, from behind his homework, made a sound that was definitely a laugh disguised as a cough.
Rosalina stole more bread and felt, for the first time since the alarm went off at five thirty, entirely like herself.
Tuesday arrived with rain.
Milan in the rain had a different quality — the stone darker, the streets quieter, the light doing something softer and more melancholy against the glass towers. Rosalina stood at the metro stop with her umbrella and thought that it was actually quite beautiful if you weren't running late.
She was not running late.
She arrived at six fifty.
Giorgio was already there. She was beginning to suspect he lived on the sixtieth floor. She had not yet ruled it out.
"Morning," she said.
"Morning." He slid a revised schedule across the desk without preamble. "Conference call moved to eight thirty. Board minutes need to be distributed before ten. Mr. Salvatore also has a visitor expected around eleven — his brother."
Rosalina looked up from the schedule. "His brother."
"Matteo Salvatore." Giorgio's expression remained professionally neutral. "He visits occasionally. He is—" a small pause in which several things seemed to be considered and discarded — "less formal than Mr. Salvatore."
"How much less formal?"
Giorgio looked at her over his glasses.
"You'll see," he said.
She had the conference call notes transcribed and distributed before nine thirty.
She had the board minutes formatted and sent before nine fifty.
She had Enzo's eleven o'clock briefing prepared, his coffee on his desk, and two scheduling conflicts resolved before ten fifteen.
At ten forty-five she was on the phone with the finance department when the private elevator at the end of the corridor opened.
She registered it peripherally — the elevator, the sound of it, the change in the air of the corridor — and kept her attention on the call.
"Yes, I understand the figures need to be with me by Thursday at the latest. Mr. Salvatore will need time to review before Friday's meeting so Thursday morning would be preferable to—"
"You must be the new one."
She looked up.
He was leaning against the corridor wall with his hands in his pockets and a grin that suggested he found the world generally amusing and saw no reason to pretend otherwise. He looked like Enzo the way a sunny day looked like a storm — same raw material, entirely different weather. Dark hair, green eyes — lighter than Enzo's, more mischievous — and the same tattoos running up his forearms. Younger. Easier. The kind of handsome that knew it was handsome and had decided to be charming about it rather than intimidating.
"One moment please," she said into the phone with complete professionalism. Then to the young man: "I'll be right with you."
He looked delighted by this.
She finished the call, noted the Thursday deadline in the system, and stood.
"Rosalina Evans," she said. "Mr. Salvatore's PA."
"Matteo Salvatore," he said, pushing off the wall and extending his hand. His handshake was warm and easy. "Enzo's better looking younger brother."
"I'll take your word for it."
Matteo blinked. Then he laughed — surprised and genuine. "Oh I like you already." He tilted his head toward the double doors. "Is he in a meeting?"
"He's between calls. I'll let him know you're here." She pressed the intercom. "Mr. Salvatore — your brother is here."
A pause.
"Send him in."
No warmth in the voice. No particular anything. Just the words.
Matteo caught her expression — whatever it was, she had apparently failed to keep it entirely professional — and leaned in slightly.
"He sounds like that on the intercom," he said confidentially. "He sounds like that in person too. And at dinner. And at Christmas." He straightened. "We've all made our peace with it."
"That's very healthy," Rosalina said.
Matteo pointed at her. "I'm telling him you're funny."
"Please don't."
He was already pushing through the double doors.
She could hear them through the door.
Not the words — the walls were thick enough for that — but the quality of it. Matteo's voice, animated and warm. And beneath it, quieter, something that might — if you were listening carefully and felt like being generous — be called ease.
She wasn't listening.
She was absolutely working.
She was perhaps also listening slightly.
It was the same voice. The same low register. But something in it was different when it was talking to his brother. Looser, somehow. Like a coat worn open instead of buttoned.
He is not unkind, Clara had written. He is simply precise.
And beneath the precision — what?
She turned back to her screen.
That was not her question to answer.
Matteo came out forty minutes later looking satisfied in the way younger siblings look when they have successfully annoyed someone who loves them.
He stopped at her desk.
"He wants the Thursday meeting moved to Friday," he said. "Something about the Milan property acquisition."
She was already checking the system. "Friday at what time?"
"Two."
"He has the Ferrara call at two fifteen."
"Then two thirty."
She made the change. "Done."
Matteo watched her for a moment with those lighter green eyes.
"Can I ask you something?"
She looked up.
"Are you afraid of him?"
The question was direct and genuine. Not teasing. He actually wanted to know.
Rosalina considered it honestly the way she considered most things.
"No," she said.
Matteo studied her. "Most people are."
"I know." She tilted her head slightly. "Does that seem like a problem to you?"
Something moved across his face — surprise, and then something warmer than that.
"No," he said slowly. "Actually I think it might be exactly the opposite."
He said goodbye with the ease of someone who fully intended to come back and took the private elevator down.
Rosalina sat for a moment in the quiet of the corridor.
Through the glass wall of his office she could see Enzo at his desk. He had his glasses on — she hadn't known about the glasses, that was new information — and was reading something with the focused stillness of a man who had forgotten anyone else existed.
She looked away quickly.
Turned back to her screen.
Not her question to answer, she reminded herself.
She had work to do.
*******