Chapter Fifteen
Victoria
Monday morning, I walk into Conti Headquarters with eight hours of sleep behind me, actual food in my stomach, and an inbox that I’m scared to check.
Honestly, two out of three is still a miracle.
I did not work this weekend.
Not Saturday. Not Sunday.
Not one email. Not one spreadsheet. Not one harmless little glance at the access audit that would have become six hours of “just checking something.”
I had not intended to obey Mario’s note.
I am a grown woman, a licensed attorney, and the managing partner of my own firm. I do not take orders from impossible men who leave soup and notes in my refrigerator.
Except apparently, I do.
Or at least, I did this once.
For practical reasons. Because I was exhausted. Because the work would still be there Monday. Because Benjamin and Ainsley could keep the most urgent pieces moving without me. Because there was no point attempting it while my body was still recovering.
Definitely not because Mario told me to.
I step through security, visitor badge clipped to my blazer, briefcase over my shoulder, and my laptop bag in hand.
My phone buzzed all morning before I even got here. Benjamin had already sent two revised vendor-access summaries. Ainsley had flagged three payroll permissions that still needed clarification.
There are twelve calendar invites waiting for me, four marked urgent, which is pretty much always a lie, and one message from a department head who apparently thinks “role-based access protocol” is a personal attack.
It is fine.
All of it is fine.
Because I slept.
I slept Saturday night. Then again Sunday night. Deep, dreamless, uninterrupted sleep. No 3:00-in-the-morning wake-up. No tossing and turning. No furious sexual frustration. No waking up aching and cursing Mario Conti for existing.
Well.
Not cursing him.
Thinking about him, yes.
A lot.
Too much.
But thinking about what actually happened is very different from being tortured by what had not happened yet.
Now there are memories, which is worse in some ways. Better in others.
I cross the lobby, grateful that my legs are no longer shaky and that I can approach the day with a professional outlook.
You know, aside from telling my boss that I had sex dreams about him and having the best sex of my life.
Aside from that, I am composed. I am professional.
I am wearing a dark gray pencil skirt suit today with a green blouse because it says calm, authority, and power.
Also, it really compliments my eyes and ass.
My heels click as I cross the lobby floor and arrive just in time for the elevators to open.
I step inside with three other people, all of whom are mercifully too busy with their own phones to notice that my pulse jumps the second the doors close.
Thirty-second floor.
I have walked onto this floor before, many times now.
But this morning, everything feels slightly different.
There’s the same frosted glass, the same polished floors, the same art on the walls. The same muted conversations because this isn’t just any floor. This is the floor where the CEO works.
But I am not the same. I am different.
I now know what Mario’s hands feel like on my body.
I now know what he looks like hovering above me, his body strong and powerful and so very capable.
I now know the feeling of being filled by him, stretched, possessed.
I now know the sound of his voice saying my name in that commanding tone and how he speaks Italian when he's losing control and how his eyes change when he watches me come apart.
I now know the feeling of waking up with him beside me and the taste of coffee in the morning.
The elevator opens, and my pulse leaps again.
I do not know what to do with myself.
I know what I want to do.
I want to step into his office, push him back against his desk, and have my way with him until neither of us can breathe.
I am a very different woman from the one who got on this elevator Friday afternoon, stumbling, exhausted, frustrated.
I step off the elevator and immediately see Lorenzo Conti walking toward me from the opposite corridor.
For one horrifying second, I start to panic.
Which is ridiculous.
Lorenzo does not know.
Of course he does not know.
Why would he know?
There is no visible sign over my head that reads ‘slept with your older brother and had a religious experience’.
Hopefully.
“Victoria,” Lorenzo says, smiling as he approaches.
I am briefly grateful he does not call me Ms. Murray.
Then I am briefly alarmed by how normal my name sounds coming from a Conti who is not Mario.
“Lorenzo,” I say. “Good morning.”
He slows when he reaches me, his gaze moving over my face with that polished, observant calm that makes me want to smooth down my clothes and stand a little straighter.
“You look better,” he says.
My entire soul attempts to exit my body.
“Better?” I repeat.
“Yes.” His smile turns faintly amused. “Less like you’re about to collapse any moment.”
Oh.
Right.
Normal better.
Not had-the-best-sex-of-my-life better.
“Sleep helped,” I say, which is true and also the understatement of the century.
“I’m glad to hear you got some.”
I nearly choke on nothing.
Lorenzo’s brows lift slightly.
I recover with what I hope is a normal smile and not the expression of a woman who definitely “got some.”
“Yes. Some,” I say. “Enough.”
His head tilts a fraction.
He’s far too perceptive.
I shift my briefcase higher on my shoulder. “Which is good, because I have a rather large amount of work waiting for me.”
“Unmanageable amount?”
“No. Nothing like that,” I clarify. “Just have some catching up from the weekend.”
“Ah, so the workaholic has survived the weekend.”
I laugh, and it comes out easier than I expect. “Unfortunately for everyone, yes.”
“Not everyone,” he says. “The access audit has caused several people a great deal of discomfort.”
“That is usually how I know I’m doing it right.”
His smile deepens. “Mario said something similar.”
My stomach jumps.
“Did he?” I ask, my voice careful.
“Yes. Though with fewer words.”
“Ah, that does sound like him.”
I hope it didn't sound too familiar.
Lorenzo’s eyes sharpen for a single second.
Not suspicion exactly.
Interest.
I force myself not to react.
There is nothing wrong with saying that sounds like him. I have worked with the man for two weeks. I am allowed to notice patterns. I am an attorney. Pattern recognition is practically half my job.
Lorenzo only says, “He has a 9:30 call, but he asked that you send him the updated access summary directly once you have it.”
“Of course,” I say. “I’ll have a preliminary version to him by early afternoon.”
“No rush.”
I look at him skeptically.
He laughs softly. “All right. Some rush. But not enough to skip lunch.”
“You have all become very invested in whether I eat.”
“We are Italian,” he says simply. “Our blood runs red with sauce.”
I smile despite myself. “So I’ve noticed.”
He gestures down the corridor, falling into step beside me as I head toward my temporary office. “Did you get any clarification from payroll?”
“Not yet. Ainsley messaged me about that Saturday, but I decided to leave it for today.”
Lorenzo stops walking.
I take two more steps before I realize and turn back.
He is looking at me with open surprise.
“What?”
“You left something for Monday?”
“Yes.”
“Voluntarily? Not at gunpoint?”
I laugh. “You make it sound like a miracle.”
“It is a little miraculous.”
“It was one weekend.”
“One weekend in which you did not work?”
“I have taken weekends off,” I insist.
His expression says he does not believe me.
“Really.”
Now he looks genuinely pleased.
What is with these men, and they’re obsession with my habits?
It makes me feel warm inside.
“That is good,” he says.
“Please do not make a thing of it.”
“I would never.”
“You already have.”
“Yes,” he admits. “But I will restrain myself going forward.”
“Thank you.”
We continue down the hall.
I should feel irritated by his amusement, but I do not. Lorenzo is easier than Mario in some ways. Safer, though that is probably an illusion. He notices things, but he does not press every bruise just to see if it hurts.
At least, not as openly.
“I’ll send you the payroll questions too,” I say, returning us firmly to work. “There are three department-level permissions that may be justified, but I need written clarification before I leave them in place.”
“Send them over. I’ll push if they stall.”
We reach my office door. I stop outside it and turn to him.
“Also, there’s an employee who has emailed me multiple times since last week. It’s not your department. I believe he’s in Ricardo’s, but he has emailed me several times about the access changes.”
Lorenzo’s expression sharpens slightly. “Who?”
“Peter Hanley. He’s a compliance manager who oversees domestic transport, I believe.”
“What kind of emails?” he asks.
“Persistent ones,” I say. “Not inappropriate exactly. But increasingly argumentative. He keeps insisting certain permissions are necessary for his role, but so far, he has not provided a business justification for keeping them.”
“What permissions?” Lorenzo asks.
“Executive travel calendar visibility, leadership compensation summaries, and the security incident archive.”
“Those aren’t necessary for his position.”
“Exactly,” I say. “I believe he used to be in Executive Operations. Or Executive Support. Something like that. His old role appears to have involved coordinating travel logistics for senior leadership and preparing internal reports for the previous CEO’s office.”
“That would explain the travel calendar,” he says.
“And possibly limited access to incident summaries if he was coordinating executive movement,” I add.
“Maybe even compensation summaries if he was preparing board materials. But he’s no longer in that role.
He transferred to domestic transport compliance under the previous ownership, and as far as I can tell, his permissions were never revoked. ”
“Legacy access,” Lorenzo says.
“Yes. He kept the old keys when he moved into a different room. Or rather, they never took them away.”