Chapter Four #3
The curtains are drawn to keep the light out, and the temperature is set perfectly.
The first thing I notice when I open my eyes is the note on my nightstand, which makes me smile.
For a man who is always glued to his computer or phone, I find it sweet that he took the time to dig around my place for a sticky note to leave me a note instead of a text.
I bite back a yawn as I reach for the note, smiling as I read it.
Didn’t want to wake you. I’m sorry I had to leave for work, but I made your favorite breakfast. Get some rest. I’ll call you later.
R.
I spend an embarrassing amount of time staring at the note, and by the time I drag myself out of bed, it's pretty late in the morning.
My body feels deliciously sore, tiny aches making themselves known all over my body, but I realize I wouldn't change anything about last night.
Good thing I have the day off today, or it would be hell going into the office like this.
I think of him as I clean up, and when I walk into the kitchen to a full breakfast laid out on the kitchen counter, I can't help the flutter in my chest. I heat up my food and bring it with me to my office before settling down to work.
I spend the rest of the morning on my own work, reading through a report on a new security software update our company has been working on. When I'm satisfied with the changes, I email the report to my brothers and the legal team to go through it.
I’m about to start on files for the Rossis' company when my stomach grumbles. I glance at the time and groan when I realize it's past noon. I grab my phone and frown when I don’t see a text or a missed call from Lorenzo. He probably buried himself in work that he forgot about.
I order takeout for two from Lorenzo's favorite restaurant in case he wants to stop by for lunch before settling back in my seat to text him. When he doesn't immediately respond, I call him, but I'm sent straight to voicemail.
Silly man probably has his phone on do not disturb while he works.
On a whim, I decide to bring lunch to him instead.
He’s probably buried in paperwork and forgot to eat—again.
I grab the takeout when it arrives, throw on a jacket, and head to the Rossi offices.
The drive is quick, and I use the time to imagine the look on his face when I surprise him with food.
Maybe we’ll eat in his office with the door locked. Maybe we won’t eat at all.
The thought makes me smile.
When I arrive at the building, security waves me through without issue—one of the perks of being on the approved list. I take the elevator up to Lorenzo’s floor, balancing the takeout bags as the doors slide open. His office door is closed, so I knock once and push it open.
“I brought lunch, and I’m not taking no for—”
I stop mid-sentence. Lorenzo isn’t there.
Instead, Leonardo Rossi sits behind his son’s desk, reading glasses perched on his nose as he reviews a stack of documents. He looks up at my entrance, and his face breaks into a warm smile.
“Fiona, cara! What a lovely surprise.” He rises from the chair, coming around the desk to greet me. “Lorenzo told me you’re helping out on a project. Thank you for that.”
“It’s no problem,” I say, trying to keep my voice even as I glance around the office. “I’m always happy to help. I, um, brought lunch for Lorenzo. Is he around?”
Leonardo’s expression shifts to something apologetic. “Ah, I’m afraid you just missed him. He’s out on a lunch date.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. “Lunch date?”
“Yes, isn’t it wonderful? I booked a table at Carbone’s,” Leonardo says, utterly oblivious to the way my heart has just cracked down the middle.
“Estella has been wanting to introduce him to her niece for months now. With all his brothers married, Lorenzo is the only one left. Estella thought Natalie would be perfect for him, and sometimes a parent has to take matters into his own hands, yes?” He chuckles warmly.
“Lorenzo didn’t want to disappoint his stepmother, so he agreed to one lunch.
But hopefully it will turn into more. Natalie is a sweet girl. Perfect for a busy man like my son.”
Christ.
“Oh,” I manage through the lump in my throat. The takeout bags feel impossibly heavy in my hands.
“I apologize, cara. If he had known you were coming, I am sure he would have told you.” Leonardo gestures to the food. “But please, don’t let it go to waste. You’re welcome to eat here, or I can have someone put it in the refrigerator for Lorenzo when he returns.”
“No, that’s—that’s fine.” I take a step back toward the door. “I just remembered I have something I need to take care of at home. Work thing. Can’t wait.”
Leonardo’s brow furrows with concern. “Are you alright, Fiona? You look pale.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, forcing a smile that feels like broken glass on my face. “Just tired. Please don’t mention I stopped by. I don’t want Lorenzo to feel bad about missing lunch. It’s not a big deal.”
“If you’re sure, cara.”
“I’m sure. It was good to see you, Mr. Rossi.”
I’m out the door before he can respond, my legs carrying me to the elevator on autopilot. The doors close and I slump against the wall, the takeout bags sliding from my fingers to the floor.
A lunch date. He’s on a lunch date.
.
Christ, I can still feel him inside me. My body is raw with aches from our lovemaking last night, and not even twelve hours later, he's out with another woman?
No, Leonardo is mistaken. He has to be.
By the time I get home, my shock has hardened into something colder.
I dump the takeout on the counter—I’ve lost my appetite—and march to my laptop.
My fingers fly over the keys as I bring up Carbone’s security system, and there isn’t one shred of guilt in me as I hack into the camera feed.
My face is practically pressed to the screen as I gain access and scan the full restaurant.
Of course, it’s full. It’s a popular spot, expensive, but the food is worth every penny.
My breath hitches as I watch a man walk into the restaurant, so I zoom in on his face, but there is no mistaking that raven black hair and that perfect jawline. I try to console myself with the fact that he came in alone, but then he walks to a chair by the window and…there she is.
My breath hitches as I watch Lorenzo walk into the restaurant, so I zoom in on his face, but there is no mistaking that raven black hair and that perfect jawline.
He approaches a table by the window where a woman is already seated.
She’s beautiful—dark hair, elegant dress, bright smile as she sees him. They sit across from each other.
I should stop watching. I should close the laptop and walk away. But I can’t.
I watch them talk, torturing myself with every smile she gives him, every gesture of her hands.
About fifteen minutes in, something shifts.
The woman pulls out her phone, types something, then looks back at Lorenzo with an expression I can’t quite read.
He nods, says something that makes her laugh, and then—
She reaches across the table and takes his hand. Then she rises from her seat, leans in, and presses her lips to his cheek. The kiss lingers for a moment, her hand squeezing his, and when she pulls back, she’s beaming at him, and he returns her smile with one of his own.
The casual intimacy of it makes me sick to my stomach.
I don’t wait to see what happens next. I’ve seen enough.
..
Leonardo was not lying.
Lorenzo is on a date with another woman. Hours after he made love to me like I was the most precious woman in the world, he agreed to sit across from another woman. I guess it makes sense now why he wouldn’t respond to my texts or answer my calls.
That cruel son of a bitch.
My fingers tremble as I type in a few commands and change his entire order to a mushroom dish.
Stuffed mushrooms for appetizers and a side dish of creamy mushroom soup, taking pleasure in knowing how much he hates the smell or taste of anything with mushrooms in it.
It's petty but not nearly what he deserves. Maybe later, when my heart isn’t aching, I’ll think of a better way to get back at him.
I bite down the urge to cry as I take a screenshot of him dining with the woman and attach it to a scathing message telling him not to contact me anymore.
I click send, and once I see the delivered notice, I block his number and drop my head onto my desk, mourning a love that’s ended before it had a chance to fully bloom.
Damn it.
Damn him!
I push back and brush my hair from my face as I start pacing. The untouched takeout sits on my counter, mocking me. I want to scream, to shatter something—possibly that handsome face of his—anything to release the suffocating pressure inside of me.
Work.
The second the word pops into my head, I realize it might help distract me from the man who just broke my heart.
I grab my laptop and move to the couch, curling up with the files spread around me as I go through them from where we left off last night.
I block Lorenzo from my mind as I go through the credentials used to log in to accounts and note down the name that keeps recurring.
Except something doesn’t feel right. I grab another file and flip through the pages, and right there is a medical leave letter.
I freeze. Wait, I know that name.
I kneel on my couch as excitement pumps through my veins. I dig through the files littered on my desk until I find what I’m looking for. The name on the medical leave is the same name used to log into the company’s accounts. How was a sick person on leave able to do all this?
“Someone’s lying,” I mutter to myself, refusing to think of yet the other liar I let into my life.
I push Lorenzo out of my thoughts as I pull up the hospital’s system on my laptop.
It takes me twenty minutes to bypass their security—embarrassingly outdated for a medical facility—and access the patient records.
Sure enough, the man on medical leave is indeed admitted there.
Has been for three weeks. “How the hell does a sick person have access to accounts and protected documents?” I mumble.
One thing I’ve learned from “interning” at the company is that no one leaves with company property, and everything is kept in a closed network.
To access the original files or log into accounts, one would need to be in the building.
And yet, here's one document with signatures from a man who's supposed to be in the hospital.
And the login credentials point to him being in the office.
Shit, how did we miss this?
Someone has clearly been using the sick man’s identity and login credentials to steal and cover their trail. Using the cops as a distraction. It’s all so clean. So smart.
But I am smarter.
“I’ll find you,” I promise, cracking my knuckles and settling in my chair as I turn to the computers.
I fall into a zone, fingers dancing across the keyboard with a document open on one screen as I work on the other.
A few more clicks and the document's metadata pops up on the screen.
Information in the matrix of dates, times, and software versions.
Nothing juicy yet.
I begin to sift through the data, my eyes narrowing on the “last modified” field.
Eight days ago? Huh. So the document was modified while the signatory was going through surgery.
I pull up the security logs next—specifically, the entry records for the building.
If someone was using this man’s credentials while he was in the hospital, they had to physically be in the office.
I cross-reference the dates and times the credentials were used against the list of employees who badged in during those windows.
The list narrows quickly. Only five people were in the building during all the suspicious login times. I eliminate three based on their access levels—they couldn’t have reached the systems in question. That leaves two.
One of them is Derrick.
The other is Zack Pettibone.
I bite my lip as I type a series of commands, and the screen flickers, a new window opening to display a string of code. I run a program to extract more detailed information from the metadata, and then something pops up on the screen. A computer name.
Then I go pale.
It was fun, I realize. Playing detective at Lorenzo's company was fun, but I never accounted for the moment I would come face-to-face with the truth. I have a building, an office, and a username.
And most importantly, the identity of the mole in the Rossi family.
I save everything to an encrypted file and email it to myself as backup.
Then I print out the key evidence—the login records, the metadata, the cross-referenced security logs—and leave the pages spread across my coffee table next to the employee file.
If something happens to me, someone will find this.
I grab my coat and phone and don’t bother shutting off my computer before I run out of my apartment to confirm for myself that I didn’t make a mistake.
I have to be certain.