Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
R AGE WAS A red haze over his vision. A sliver of ice in his gut. Worse, because it was Polly that had made him angry. And that was not Polly’s purpose.
She was his assistant. Efficient, perfect in every way. Polly Prescott fascinated him, as no woman ever had.
She had been nineteen when he had first given her the job. And her innocence and inexperience in all things had been visible in those wide blue eyes every time she had looked at him.
He could never understand why other people treated her like she was older. Perhaps more experienced. It was apparent to him that she was fresh off of whatever plane she had arrived on, likely from a small town, having never been in a major city in her life.
But she was hungry. And it was that hunger that had made her such a valuable assistant. She also lacked fear.
He wanted things done exactly as he wanted them done. More than that, he needed it. He did not allow for mistakes. He did not coddle the emotions of others. She seemed to understand that instinctively.
She managed everything in his personal life that required managing. And she did so with ease. At this point, she did so without him even having to ask. The idea of having to train somebody else to do what Polly did on instinct was unthinkable. Particularly this close to the Medical Technology Summit, and to the unveiling of all of his upcoming research that was entering clinical trial stage.
His mother had been the only person in his life who understood him. Who loved him as he was. When she was gone, he’d lost everything. He’d nearly lost himself.
Where his mother had accepted him, his father had sought to change him. To fix him.
He’d always been a person who had obsessions and hyperfocus. His mother had fostered that. She’d helped him learn everything about a topic he found interesting, had added toy cars to his collection whenever possible, along with facts about different engines, makes and models.
His father had hated it. He’d thought it a sign of a weak mind to be so tunnel-visioned when it came to interests. He’d thought it embarrassing that Luca had no friends at school. His mother had told him that people who did not fit in were destined to change the shape of the world, to make it better fit more people.
He’d liked that. When he felt himself not fit, he’d imagined the shape of everything changing around him and he had felt better.
He had been a source of tension between his parents, and he knew it.
When he was nine his mother got sick. Diagnosed with a late-stage cancer that had no hope of being cured. She’d been ignored by her doctors when she’d brought her symptoms to them, and when the illness was discovered it had been too late.
It had destroyed his life. Until he’d found a new focus.
A new purpose.
Medicine.
When it came to illness, particularly the illnesses of women, the medical community had been complacent for too long in his opinion. He had set out to learn everything he could. About technology and about the human body. About how they could both help each other.
There had been so many breakthroughs over the years. But still not the one that he had been hoping for.
But now he was on the verge of finding exactly what he needed for early detection of ovarian cancer with simple, accurate technology that would provide much more information than a blood test followed by a scan. With this, it was possible that the disease could be detected at stage one, and be screened for as part of yearly physicals.
It was the kind of technology that would have kept his own mother alive.
And while all of these things would sell themselves, and backers and researchers would be drawn to the mere rumor of its existence, he knew that making new medical technology ubiquitous was more complicated than that.
Hence the summit.
But for the summit, he needed Polly.
Whatever happened after that, he could focus on it then.
But he would do everything in his power to keep her with him now.
That was all that mattered.
“That is an incredibly horrendous thing to say to someone who has worked for you faithfully for five years.”
“Quitting on the verge of something this important to someone you have worked for for five years is an incredibly irresponsible thing to do. And frankly, I thought you were better than that.”
“I’m past the point of being able to be guilted into doing your bidding, Luca. I have done nothing less than everything you have asked these past years.”
“And why was this the straw that broke the camel’s back?”
“Because the camel had somewhere else to go. You have been unreasonable, inflexible, ogreish, some might say, every day these past five years. But I knew that it was the best place for me to be in order to gain experience for what I wanted to do later.”
“And I will be an invaluable reference for the rest of your working life if you simply do what I ask now.”
Yes. He was inflexible. He was in his very nature, down to his core. A person could not do the level of research that he did and also be the kind of person who bent with the breeze.
His work required focus. It required single-mindedness. It required a certain amount of selfishness around each and every endeavor.
Lucky for him, he had always been accomplished at those things.
His own father had found him confounding. Frustrating. He could admit that he had been a difficult child. Never content. Always obsessed, and there was a point where his father had been forced to contend with him on his own, and it had not gone well.
Luca could be philosophical about that.
Even if he did enjoy that his success was something his father benefited from, and therefore could not ignore. Especially as his father had told him once that he would never amount to anything, because no one as truly strange as his son was could ever make his way in the world.
So Luca had made his way in the world. And then some. Not only that, he was working to change the world. And it was precisely the characteristics his father had told him would preclude him from success that had brought him success.
Luca had found that he could pay people to handle what did not serve him or his work, and that was sufficient.
He didn’t need to change. He simply needed to be powerful enough to change the world around him.
He had done so.
He did not accept critiques regarding his personality. Because his personality was irrelevant.
“Have I asked you to do anything that was not explicitly outlined as a possibility in your contract?”
“Your contract did not say that I might be called to your home to consult with you when you were bare-chested, no.”
“You seem perturbed by that.”
She looked at him, and he saw her cheeks turn a slight shade of rose. She was affected by his nudity, and that was a terrible thing for him to observe. She was his assistant. She was out of bounds in that way. He had placed her there the moment he had first noticed that she was beautiful. He had not noticed immediately.
When he had hired her his immediate thought had been simply replacing one incompetent person with the next, as he knew the churn would continue.
But Polly had broken the cycle. She had become a one-woman management team. The Swiss Army knife of personal assistants.
And then one night, May twenty-fourth, four years prior, he could recall it clearly, the light in his office had caught strands of gold in her hair, as she had leaned in to hand him his espresso. It was three in the morning, and they were at the office late, with her assisting with whatever he needed.
He had been gripped then, with a hunger that had surpassed anything he had ever known before.
Sex was an appetite, like any other. He could forget about it sometimes, the same as he forgot to eat when he was deeply involved in a project. But eventually, it had to be satisfied. That was how he had always seen it.
A practicality. A necessity.
And because he saw it that way, it made it simple for him to observe the rules around it. And one very clear rule was that one did not make sexual advances to those who were subordinate.
Polly was his subordinate, and an extremely important one. Which meant that that momentary, violent hunger had to be locked away. Which he had done.
Very few things had the will to defy him. But Polly did. And in that, he supposed it shouldn’t be such a surprise that on occasion the strength of his need for her defied his rules as well.
But it was nothing he would ever act on.
This was the first time he had looked at her and realized she felt the same.
She always seemed bright-eyed, efficient and practical. He had acknowledged his attraction to her, but he had never thought about her own attractions, desires. He had never taken the step to thinking of her as a set being.
She was a tool. A lovely one. But had never been a whole person to him. Why should she be? It was not reasonable or practical.
And there she was, blushing prettily and demanding that he consider her feelings around the work that he asked her to do. The schedule he asked her to keep.
“You will continue to do your job. There will be no argument about it.”
“Two weeks,” she said, her blue eyes flashing. The color in her face intensified, and this, he thought, was anger. “I will give you two weeks, Luca. And not a day more. That means the day after the summit ends, I’m coming back to Italy, and I will not see you again.”
“I assume that means you’ll be flying commercial, then. How nice for you.”
She laughed. “I’ve survived it before. I can surely survive it again.”
“I’m not certain that you can. I think that you have forgotten everything that I’ve given to you, because you’re so dedicated to your own fiction. We both know that you are not a sophisticate. Not the one that you pretend to be. When I met you, you had absolutely no job experience.”
“I was getting an education.”
“And a fine one you got. But don’t forget that many people have degrees, and the thing that sets you apart is your very particular job experience.”
She looked outraged by that. Because he was right. He knew that. “Currently, what sets me apart is that my boss is unreasonable.”
“What boss would allow an employee to simply walk away from something this major?”
As far as his personal story went, he was not inclined to share it with the world. That his mother had died of cancer was a basic truth, anyone could discover it for themselves if they wished. But he didn’t speak of it.
It would be apparent to that person that the work he did came from personal experience. He did not know if Polly knew that. And he had no inclination to tell her.
It shouldn’t make a difference.
“That’s the thing. Mostly, it’s not about being allowed to do anything. Because it is generally understood that a boss does not own his employee. But you treat me like you do.”
“I remind you again of the contract—”
“That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? I’m a contract. And what you ask doesn’t have to be reasonable or human. It simply has to be in the contract. You don’t care at all why I might want to leave.”
“You said yourself. You have no desire to be an assistant forever.”
“I don’t. But most especially, Luca, I have no desire to be your assistant forever.”
He smiled. He couldn’t help himself. “Is that supposed to wound me, Polly? Do you think you’re the first person to remark that I’m difficult? That I am unpleasant? I know that. I don’t care. What I care about is that I accomplish the work that I have set out to accomplish. I don’t want friends. I don’t want a wife. I don’t want children. I want none of the things that would require I managed to find the sort of personality that makes other people comfortable. What I want is to save lives. That is what I do. If within that realm you find me unfeeling, then I must accept it.”
She looked conflicted. But she did not argue. “You have your two weeks. But don’t expect me to be cheerful about it.”
“I don’t require your cheer, cara . I simply require your compliance.”