Chapter Five
LIVIA
Today, I won't be wearing heels. For good luck.
My flat black shoes let me move quickly through the marble lobby of Ferretti Global Risk. My blouse is crisp white. My skirt is navy and tailored.
I carry a slim leather portfolio and keep my chin up. This is my first official day. I will not give anyone a reason to doubt my place here.
The elevator rises smoothly. I review my notes one last time. Public filings. Compliance gaps. Areas where their current framework fails to address layered family risks. I close the portfolio as the doors open on the executive floor.
Valentino, in all his dark-suited glory, waits at the reception desk, looking at me with those same eyes that have haunted my dreams since I saw him last time.
He looks at me, expression unreadable. "Ms. De Luca."
"Mr. Ferretti."
"I'll walk you through the building. Keep up."
That's it. No welcome or orientation packet. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much different.
I'm nearly jogging to keep up. The hallway we enter stretches long with glass walls that show open-plan workspaces.
Employees glance up but look away fast when they see him. He does not slow down or explain anything unless I ask. "This is operations," he says without stopping.
"Threat monitoring runs twenty-four seven. We track digital footprints, travel patterns, financial anomalies. Every client gets a risk score updated hourly."
I nod. "I saw the architecture in the filings. Strong on data. Thin on context."
He stops at a glass door and holds it open. I step inside a large conference room with screens along one wall. He closes the door behind us. The click sounds final.
"Context is what we add after data confirms the threat," he says. His voice stays flat. "Assumptions get people killed."
"I did not assume. I read the public records. Three high-net-worth families lost protection contracts last year because reports focused only on grids and ignored succession disputes. Numbers alone do not predict when a brother will sabotage a sister over inheritance."
He leans against the table. Arms crossed. "You think emotional language wins contracts."
"I think it closes them. Legacy Shield wants protection that feels personal. Not a robot reciting probabilities."
"Emotion clouds judgment." He delivers the line like a rule carved in stone.
My response is quick. "Then maybe your clients should hire a robot. Cheaper suit."
His eyes narrow, and for a second the air feels charged. He pushes off the table and continues the tour. I follow, my heart beating harder than I like.
We move through the compliance wing and he introduces protocols in short bursts.
Access levels. Escalation matrices. Vendor vetting. I ask targeted questions. He answers with straight facts, not an iota of warmth in his logic.
When I suggest a tweak to the incident response flow, he stops again. "Your tweak adds layers. Layers slow response."
At this point, I'm starting to get exasperated by his absolute commitment to not showing any humanity.
"Layers prevent mistakes when family members lie to protect each other," I counter. "I’ve seen it. A mother omits her son's gambling debt because she loves him. Your grid flags the debt. It misses the lie. The lie creates the real vulnerability."
He studies me for a moment. “I see,” he mutters vaguely.
He introduces me to the team at eleven, taking me through the open-plan floor where operations, intelligence liaison, and the compliance function all share space in a layout that is designed for information flow and also, I suspect, for Valentino to be able to observe the entire floor from the corridor without entering.
People look up when he brings me in. The specific look of people assessing a new variable in their system.
I’ve been assessed before.
By Calloway & Voss partners who weren't sure a thirty-year-old woman with a gap year and no legacy connections belonged in their building.
By Dante's colleagues who saw my face and saw my father behind it.
By rooms full of people who looked at me as a spoiled rich brat and expected either more or less than I was.
I’ve gotten quite good at walking into rooms that aren't sure about me yet.
"Livia De Luca," I say to the floor generally, before Valentino can do the formal version.
"I'm starting in compliance strategy. I'm very good at finding gaps in systems and very annoying about naming them out loud. I'm told this is a feature rather than a bug."
I look around. "Please tell me who makes the coffee on this floor and whether it's good."
It's silent for a beat.
Then someone in the second row, young, dark-haired, wearing a slightly amused expression, speaks, "Marcus. And it depends on whether Marcus likes you." She points at a blank-faced, glasses-wearing young man in front of her.
"Marcus," I say, looking at him. "I like strong coffee, so I’ll absolutely cover for you if you need to leave early, and I brought biscuits from the place on Aldgate Street.”
I produce the tin from my bag.
Marcus's expression decides to be amused.
Valentino, at the edge of the room, says nothing. But when I glance at him just briefly, something in his face has shifted, marginally, into an expression I cannot quite classify.
It's neither displeasure nor approval, but something that is specifically neither.
I put the tin on the nearest desk and follow him back to the conference room.
He sets me up in the corner of conference room B with the full Aurelius briefing archive. Six months of preparation documents, competitor analysis, client testimonial framework.
He tells me to find the gaps.
I sit down, open my laptop, and pull up the Aurelius files he's already shared to my access.
This is, genuinely, my favorite kind of work.
Twelve family offices. Multi-generational. The brief is thorough. Financial structures, principal family trees, recent succession activity. A threat matrix for each. It's meticulous work. I can feel the intelligence behind it.
But something's missing.
I read through for forty minutes before he appears at the side of my desk.
"First impressions?" He inquires.
"The risk architecture is sound. The mapping of internal fracture points is precise." I pause. "But the language is wrong. I think I mentioned this earlier. We need to work on our emotional language."
He waits.
"These families are going to read this and feel like they're being autopsied.
" I turn my screen toward him slightly. "You've identified every point of vulnerability as a threat vector.
A daughter's recent divorce listed under volatility indicators.
A patriarch's declining health listed under succession risk multipliers. "
I look up at him. "These are people's lives."
"They are also risk variables."
"That's my point."
He pulls the screen back toward him to read, and for a moment he's close. Too close. He leans across me to scroll down. His hand is near my shoulder, not touching, but he might as well be.
My skin prickles from awareness I don't dare investigate right now. He's my boss, I repeat over and over in my head to shove memories of that night down.
That's about as effective as wearing a clown costume to a gun fight.
I clear my throat and fix my eyes on the screen.
He straightens after a moment and I slowly pull in a much-needed breath, blinking a few times to focus.
He's already looking at me when I glance up.
I don't know how long he was looking before that.
"The language is precise," he murmurs, "because it needs to be. Emotional language introduces subjective interpretation. Subjective interpretation creates gaps."
"Emotional language is what makes clients trust you."
"My clients trust results."
"Your prospective clients," I say carefully, "are twelve family offices evaluating whether to hand you the most intimate details of their lives. You need them to trust you before there are results." I hold his gaze. "A threat grid doesn't do that. A narrative does."
Something in his jaw tightens.
A chair scrapes somewhere. Someone's pen falls down.
He looks at me for a long moment.
"You have until Thursday," he says, "to show me what that looks like in practice. A revised framing for two of the family profiles. Keep every data point. Change nothing structural."
He picks up a file from my desk and sets it back down with the small precision of someone who moves things exactly where they mean to. "Then I'll decide if you have a point."
He walks away.
I turn back to my screen and breathe out slowly through my nose. I work until four-thirty, when Valentino appears in the doorway.
"We're running the presentation prep this evening. I need you in the room."
I look up from the archive.
The evening. Right.
I do a rapid internal calculation. Piper's availability, Nico's dinner, his bedtime, the forty-minute commute back to our end of the city.
"What time?" I ask.
"Six. Runs until we're done."
"How long is until we're done?"
"However long it takes."
I close the folder. "I can't do this evening."
He looks at me and from his eyes, I get the distinct impression that he's not used to hearing the word can't. "I need the compliance perspective in the room."
"I understand that. I can have written notes to you by five-thirty that cover everything I've flagged this afternoon. I can be available by phone—"
"Ms. De Luca." He steps into the room, and his voice doesn't rise, it never rises, it simply becomes more precisely itself. I don't know how else to describe it, but the hairs on the back of my neck rise up.
That long look returns and I almost squirm. My son’s face rises in my mind. The small apartment. The need to keep this job.
"This is a first-week priority. The evaluation is in six weeks. I don't run prep sessions by phone," he asserts, coming to stand directly in front of me, forcing me to look up.
"I know." I hold his gaze. "But I have a childcare commitment. I can't move on this kind of notice."
I breathe in. Hold it.
This close, my body reacts with a small shiver, and I fucking hate it.
Valentino Ferretti is nothing like that passionate lover who whispered “patience, tesoro” into my ears. This man is arrogant, cold, and treats love like a variable to minimize.
But I can't forget that damn tattoo. It's a brand on my mind. My skin remembers every single touch, every press of skin on skin.
I release my breath. “I'm sor–”
“Find a way around it by next week. I need your body, mind and soul in this.” The emphasis on body, mind and soul doesn't land innocently in my mind.
He leans down so his face is level with mine. Wood and spice from his cologne mixes with the air coming into my lungs.
God, this smell. I resist the urge to whimper from all the memories it triggers.
His gaze drops to my mouth for half a second, barely long enough to register, before returning to my eyes. “Aurelius isn't a file you can do at fifty…not even seventy percent. Do you understand me, Livia?”
I swallow, pulse kicking up as I nod. “Yes,” I squeak.
He watches me for a moment, then nods, as if satisfied with whatever he sees on my face. Then, he straightens.
“Good.” He turns and leaves.
Only then do I realize I've been holding my breath.
“Liv, you better get yourself together,” I mutter to myself, getting back to work.
I start shutting down my station at five forty-five. I take the revised profiles. I'll read them on the train. I'll read them at the kitchen table after Vito's in bed, in the small quiet of eleven o'clock with the lamp on and my cold tea beside me.
I will not be at seventy percent.
I will not give him reason to doubt it.
I say goodnight to Priya, who is still working. She raises a hand without looking up. I respect that.
At the elevator I press the button and wait.
I don't look back.
But I know, the way you know before you turn around, that he's watching from somewhere across the floor.
The elevator doors open.
I step in and give myself just until the doors close to banish all thoughts of his face so close to mine, his eyes on my lips, that dizzying scent of him.
The door closes, and I wait for the magic to happen.
I count to five.
One. Two… Then his eyes flash, almost physically, in my mind once more.
I nearly burst out laughing.