Two
Ciro
Something was wrong with Lyss yesterday.
Not in the abstract way people mean when they say someone seemed off. I’ve seen fear before, real fear, the kind that doesn’t announce itself. It leaks. It stutters through muscle memory. It hides in hands that know exactly what they’re doing until they don’t.
I clocked it the first time she dropped the tamper when I went for my afternoon caffeine fix.
It happened again when she laughed too fast.
The part that bothered me wasn’t that something rattled her. It was that whatever it was didn’t belong to the moment.
I keep replaying the end of yesterday without trying to. She kept looking past me, like she was watching for someone else. Her body tensed all at once—not surprised, just ready. When someone else spoke, the relief hit her so hard she nearly stumbled.
People only react like that when they think they’ve seen the wrong person.
That’s where my thoughts get stuck.
People don’t flinch like that for strangers.
By the time I reach the office this morning, I’m no longer wondering if something’s wrong. I’m wondering how I’m already part of it.
She’s very good at pretending she’s fine.
Too good.
The cart looks like any other coffee setup in the City—metal box tied with a chain to a pole, chalkboard sign, a cheap awning—but she stands close to it, like it’s the only solid thing she can count on.
Her feet are planted. Her shoulders are squared.
Her chin is lifted just a little higher than it needs to be.
Defensive posture.
Her mouth curves into a smile when she catches me watching. It’s quick. Practiced. Bright enough to pass.
“Morning,” she says.
Friendly. Light. The kind of voice people use when they don’t want follow-up questions.
“Morning,” I answer.
She reaches for a cup. There is a slight shake, which irritates me.
Not because she’s nervous. People are nervous all the time around me. The City runs on nerves. What irritates me is that I clocked it instantly.
I deal in numbers. Forecasts. Patterns that usually behave if you apply enough pressure in the right place. People are harder. Too emotional. Too unpredictable. I prefer distance when I can get it.
Her eyes flick down to the counter and then back up again. Blue. Clear. Too observant for someone pretending not to notice me.
“Two sugars, no froth crimes, the way the coffee gods intended?” she asks.
There’s humor tucked into the edges of it, like she’s trying to sell ease along with caffeine.
“That’s it,” I say.
She nods, relief passing over her face too fast, like I just made her job easier than she expected. Another thing I file away without meaning to. “No cookie this morning?”
She pours. Steam hisses. The tremor settles once she’s in motion.
“Maybe this afternoon.” I glance at the chalkboard. Big looping letters. Cute lies. World peace with every cappuccino. Free therapy with drip.
A corner of my mouth lifts despite myself.
“You offering refunds if the world stays broken?” I ask.
Her smile this time is more real. Not softer. Sharper. Like she appreciates the challenge.
“Only store credit,” she says. “Redeemable for more false hope.”
Her humor is too quick and too polished to be accidental, the kind built to keep people entertained instead of curious.
I don’t know why that matters, and if she was scared of someone, why did she come back?
She slides the cup across the counter, fingers brushing the cardboard sleeve like she’s grounding herself again. When she meets my eyes, something tightens behind them. Not fear exactly.
She reaches for the next cup automatically before realizing there’s nobody behind me in line. The motion stalls halfway, fingers tightening briefly around the marker in her hand before she sets it back down beside the register.
“Can I get you anything else?”
No rehearsed upsell. No forced brightness. Just the question landing between us while steam curls from the espresso machine behind her.
“No,” I say, sliding my wallet back into my jacket. “You always this busy?”
A faint crease appears between her brows, like she’s deciding whether the question deserves an answer.
“Busy enough,” she says finally while snapping a lid onto another drink. “Quiet enough to notice people who look like they don’t usually buy coffee from a cart.”
I glance down at the suit. Italian wool. Silver watch. Shoes worth more than the cart probably clears before lunch.
“Should I be offended?”
One corner of her mouth lifts as she wipes her hands on a towel tucked beside the machine. “Only if I’m wrong.”
The thing is, she isn’t wrong. There’s a fully staffed kitchen upstairs on the forty-eighth floor along with an assistant who keeps expensive coffee within arm’s reach all day long.
Still, every morning this week, I’ve ended up standing in front of her cart instead.
I take the cup from her, careful not to crowd the counter between us. Her fingers pull back just before they touch mine, smooth enough that someone else probably wouldn’t notice it.
I do.
But she keeps her attention on me a fraction too long afterward, like she’s checking whether I noticed.
I step back before I can think too hard about why that matters.
By the time I reach the lobby of my building, she’s already serving someone else. Head down. Focused. Efficient.
I lift my phone and take the photo before I can talk myself out of it.
She never looks up.
I forward it to Jim Adelson at Clear Security.
Me: Run her.
Jim: That's all?
Me: Quietly.
Jim: Something I should know?
I watch her laugh at something the customer says. It doesn’t reach her eyes.
Me: I saw something yesterday. Probably nothing.
Jim: I’ll let you know.
Back in the elevator, I tell myself she’s a coffee girl with a good defense system and a bad poker face.
That should’ve been the end of it.
A decent coffee. A sharp mouth. Five minutes out of my day.
Except I don’t usually think about women after I walk away from them.
And somehow, she’s still sitting in the front of my mind hours later.
The boardroom smells like espresso and polished wood, which is fitting, considering how much money gets burned in here before noon.
Dante sits at the head of the table, jacket off, sleeves rolled, already in control of the room without needing to say a word. Oldest brother privilege. CEO gravity. He doesn’t posture because he doesn’t have to.
Matteo, my second oldest brother, is to his right, tablet open, attention split between real-time data and whatever long game he’s running in his head. CIO means he knows everything before the rest of us do. He just enjoys watching us catch up.
Luca, my older brother, leans back in his chair, arms crossed, calm in the way only someone responsible for execution can be.
COO energy. He’s the one who makes sure decisions don’t stay theoretical.
He’s also the one who reads faces better than any of us, which makes him dangerous in a quieter way.
And then there’s me. Baby brother. CFO. The one who tells them where the money is bleeding and how fast.
I slide into my seat and drop the folder in front of me. The numbers don’t need drama. They’re already bad enough.
“Aryanna Karimi,” Dante says, without preamble.
There it is.
“Amal Jewelry closed three major engagement accounts this quarter,” I say, tapping the edge of the report spread across the table between us. “Two of them bought exclusively from us last year.”
Matteo leans back slightly in his chair, one hand resting against his jaw. “You think they targeted them?”
“I think they made it easy to leave.” I slide the packet toward him and point to the campaign still open on the tablet beside his coffee.
Clean white backgrounds. Thin platinum bands.
Smaller stones photographed on bare hands instead of velvet displays.
“No heritage messaging. No dynasty branding. No multi-generation bullshit. Just younger couples buying rings without feeling like they’re financing someone’s family empire. ”
Luca exhales slowly. “That’s not an accident.”
“No,” I agree. “That’s a strategy.”
Dante steeples his fingers, eyes distant for a moment. He’s not looking at the room anymore. He’s looking five moves ahead.
“And the offshore?” he asks meaning our stones sourcing.
I don’t love that he already knows the answer.
“Flagged again,” I say. “Same bank. Different issue.”
Matteo swipes his screen. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s a pattern,” I counter. “And patterns matter when they get you audited.”
Dante’s gaze snaps back to me. Sharp. Assessing. The look he gives when I push too hard.
“We already dealt with this,” Dante says from the head of the table, one arm stretched across the back of his chair.
I tap the corner of the report in front of me. “We delayed it. That’s different.”
Silence settles across the boardroom.
Luca shifts beside the windows overlooking Market Street, uncrossing his arms. “Ciro’s not wrong.”
Dante’s gaze cuts to him briefly before returning to me. “We leave it alone.”
I keep my voice level and slide the financials closer to him. “That leaves us exposed.”
“It keeps things contained,” Dante says.
“For now.”
His jaw tightens. “I said leave it alone.”
The room shifts with it.
Matteo closes his tablet. Luca pushes back from the table. The meeting is over whether Dante formally ends it or not.
I gather my folder more slowly than necessary, frustration sitting heavy under my ribs. I can handle being outvoted.
I have less patience for decisions that ignore the math.
Matteo pauses beside me on his way out, coffee cup still in hand. “Let it go.”
I slide the reports into my leather folder. “That usually means I shouldn’t.”
By the time the elevator doors slide shut, tension is already climbing up the back of my neck. I loosen my tie with one hand and stare at the numbers glowing above the panel as the car starts down.
My office can wait. So can the emails stacking up on my phone.
Instead, I head for the lobby and push out onto the sidewalk, my mind still turning over the meeting, the numbers Dante dismissed, and Lyss standing behind that coffee cart like she somehow wedged herself into the middle of my day.
I should be thinking about the exposure risk sitting in those reports upstairs.
Instead, I’m thinking about the way she pulled her hand back before I could touch it.
I’ve spent years staying ahead of problems before they turn expensive.
The dangerous ones are usually the ones you convince yourself you can ignore.
Going back to the office would be the responsible choice. The one I’m supposed to make. When things get tense, I usually turn it into work. There’s comfort in that. Order. Keeping things contained.
While the elevator descends, the meeting keeps running through my head. Amal Jewelry’s numbers. The offshore issue. Dante’s voice shutting it down. Leave it alone. Contain it instead of fixing it.
Containment works until it doesn’t, until pressure builds where you can’t see it and the numbers stop adding up.
I pull my phone from my pocket, thumb hovering over Matteo’s name. He’ll talk. He always does. Luca would listen. Dante would remind me who’s in charge.
I slide the phone back instead.
There are problems I can’t touch right now. That doesn’t mean I can turn my brain off.
I push through the front door. The City hits me all at once—traffic, voices, the cold wind off the bay.
I stop when I see the cart just outside the door. Same awning snapping in the wind. Same chalkboard with its neat lies about peace and therapy.
She’s there.
Same posture. Feet planted like she’s braced against more than the weather. Her hair is pulled back today, exposing the line of her neck, the way she tucks loose strands behind her ear when the wind picks up.
I register it all before I let myself acknowledge that I am.
She looks up as I approach, eyes narrowing just a fraction. Recognition. Not surprise.
“You’re back,” she says.
“So are you,” I reply.
Her mouth curves. “Occupational hazard.”
I step closer, resting my hands on the edge of the counter. The cart smells like roasted beans and something faintly sweet underneath.
“Two sugars, steamed milk with no froth again?” she asks.
“You always remember.”
“I remember patterns,” she says, and there it is again, that sharpness under the humor. “They make people easier.”
She pours steadily this time, the steam lifting between us for a second before fading. “Rough meeting?” she asks, sliding the cup toward me.
I glance up. “Is it that obvious?”
She shrugs. “You look like someone who lost an argument without losing the data.”
I huff a quiet laugh before I can stop myself. “That’s uncomfortably accurate.”
“Sorry.” She grins without sounding sorry at all.
I take the cup, fingers brushing the heat through the sleeve. Grounding. Practical.
“Do you always read people this well?” I ask.
Her gaze holds mine. “Maybe? I don’t know. It’s the curse of the job, I guess.”
We stand there in a pocket of quiet while the city moves around us. I don’t feel rushed. That’s new. I don’t feel like I’m wasting time, which is even newer.
“What’s Lyss short for?” I ask.
She hesitates. Just a second. Long enough to matter. “Alyssa.”
It fits her. Soft at the edges. Strong in the middle.
“Ciro,” I offer.
Her brows lift. “Just Ciro?”
“Just,” I echo.
She smiles at that, smaller this time. Realer.
“Well,” she says, “enjoy your coffee, Just Ciro.”
I take a step back, and then stop. There’s a question sitting on my tongue that has nothing to do with caffeine or meetings or offshore accounts. “Same time tomorrow?” I ask instead.
Her eyes flick to the chalkboard, and then back to me. Measuring. Deciding.
“Occupational hazard,” she repeats.
I walk away with the coffee in my hand, still thinking about her by the time I open the doors to my building.