Chapter Eight #2
We stayed like that, the three of us, in a silence that had weight and temperature and the density of a room where something was about to happen, and everyone in it knew exactly what that something was.
The door opened approximately thirty seconds later.
Theo walked in like a man who had not, approximately forty-five seconds ago, had a Roman emperor applied to the side of his head with sufficient force to rearrange his afternoon plans.
His voice came first, easy and warm. “Ari. Perfect timing. I was hoping to catch you.”
From under the desk, my field of vision was limited to boots, lower legs, and the view of a room from knee-height down.
Theo’s shoes were pristine Italian leather, the kind that had never met a puddle they couldn’t avoid.
Ari’s boots were scuffed at the toes, the leather worn soft in the places where a man’s weight settled when he stood still for too long.
The lighter clicked.
I knew that sound. The fast rhythmic click—open, shut, open, shut—the tempo that preceded someone’s very bad day.
Ari’s hand was doing that thing where the lighter moved without his conscious input, the way a pianist’s fingers found the keys when the muscle memory was older than the thought behind it.
Open. Shut. Open. Shut.
“Your neck,” Ari said. Quiet. The kind of quiet that made the air in the room feel thinner.
A pause. Theo’s shoes shifted slightly. The expensive leather squeaked against hardwood, a small sound that carried in the quiet. “What about it?”
“You have a scratch. Four inches. Above the collar.”
Another pause. Longer this time. I could picture Theo’s hand moving to his neck, fingers finding the mark he hadn’t noticed because adrenaline is a hell of a drug and marble against skull tends to prioritize certain sensory inputs over others.
“It’s nothing,” Theo said. His voice had developed a faint edge, the particular edge of a man who had just realized he was standing on thinner ice than he’d calculated. “I caught it on a doorframe. The palazzo’s hallways weren’t built for modern proportions.”
“The palazzo,” Ari said. The lighter kept clicking. Open, shut, open. “You keep using that word.”
“It’s a family property.”
“It’s my property.”
The silence that followed had weight. The kind of weight that pressed against the underside of the desk where I was sitting with my knees to my chin and my laptop bag clutched to my chest like it contained state secrets, which, given what was on the hard drive, it technically did.
“Everything in this family belongs to me.” Ari’s voice stayed low, measured. “The palazzo. The estate outside Livorno. Every account. Every asset. Every room you have ever stood in and assumed was partly yours.”
Theo’s shoes shifted again. The leather squeaked. A nervous tell. I filed it under “useful information about people who grab my arms” and made a mental note to never be in a room with him again without a larger paperweight.
“You have a right to the quarterly dividends,” Ari continued. “Nothing else. Not the books. Not the staff. Not the man working at the desk in the east study.”
My heart did something. A quick, traitorous jump that started somewhere behind my sternum and radiated outward before I could stop it. The man working at the desk. Me. I was a desk man now. I had achieved desk status.
This was either a promotion or a demotion and I was too busy not breathing to decide which.
“If you cannot demonstrate basic respect for that arrangement,” Ari said, “you can lose the dividends too.”
Theo’s voice climbed. I heard it happen—the upward lilt of a man whose composure was developing structural issues. “You can’t just—that’s not how this works. I’m blood. I’m Romano blood. My father built—”
“Your father managed what Geno broke.” Ari’s voice dropped lower. Quieter. The kind of quiet that made Theo’s climbing volume sound desperate by comparison. “I rebuilt it. With my hands. With men I chose. Not with blood. With loyalty.”
The contrast was something you could feel even from under a desk. Theo’s expensive suit, the manicured hands I could see gripping the edge of something—the desk, maybe, or his own composure—and the scratch on his neck he still hadn’t fully registered.
Ari’s rolled sleeves, the denim vest with its hidden knife pockets just visible at the edge of my limited sightline, the absolute stillness of a man who had already made a decision and was simply filling in the paperwork.
The lighter clicked. Open, shut, open.
“I want you out of the palazzo,” Ari said. “Tonight. Leon will arrange transport. You can collect your things from the estate tomorrow, under supervision.”
“This is—” Theo started. Stopped. Started again, his voice tighter now, the polished charm cracking around the edges. “My mother will hear about this.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Theo stormed out. I heard it—boots on hardwood, the door opening, expensive leather taking corners too fast because the man wearing it was currently operating several standard deviations outside his comfort zone.
The door closed. Not slammed. Closed with the controlled precision of someone who understood that slamming doors was for people who had run out of better options, and Theo Romano, whatever his faults, had not yet reached that milestone.
Ari’s voice, lower now, directed at Leon. “Put someone on him. Change the locks. Here and at the estate. His access is revoked until further notice. I want it done tonight.”
Leon’s boots moved. Toward the door. The sound of them was efficient, unhurried, the sound of a man who had just received an order he had no questions about. The door opened. Closed. The latch caught with a soft click that sounded final.
More silence.
Then Ari’s hand appeared under the desk. Large. Rough. The knuckles scarred in a way that suggested they’d seen more disagreement than agreement over the years. The silver ring caught what little light made it under the desk, black onyx dark against his skin.
I looked at the hand. The hand did not move. It waited, palm up, fingers slightly curled.
I took it.
His fingers closed around mine, and then he lifted.
One motion. Smooth. The kind of smooth that came from abnormal strength applied with abnormal control, and my entire body registered how easy it was—the weightlessness of being moved by someone for whom my hundred and fifteen pounds represented a arithmetic problem he had already solved.
I landed in his lap.
Not perched. Not arranged. Landed, like something that had been retrieved and deposited. His thighs were warm under mine. Solid. The denim of his jeans rough against the bare skin of my legs where the capri pants had ridden up.
One of his arms settled around my waist—not gripping, resting, the weight of a limb that had decided where it belonged and was now implementing that decision without commentary.
His other hand went to work.
Fast. Thorough. The same scan he used on everything that mattered—eyes moving over my face, my throat, down to my arms where Theo’s fingers had left red marks that were already darkening into something that would bruise by morning.
His fingertips traced the edge of the torn collar, the fabric ripped at the neck where Theo had grabbed it, and something in his expression went very cold.
Not the controlled cool I was used to. Something colder. Something that lived in the neighborhood of rage without quite arriving there, the kind of cold that preceded action rather than replacing it.
His jaw was tight. The scar on his cheekbone stood pale against skin that had gone a shade darker with whatever was happening behind those eyes.
His thumb brushed the edge of the bruise forming on my forearm—once, lightly, the touch of a man cataloguing damage with the precision of someone who would remember every mark.
“Theo will never touch you again,” he said.
Quiet. Flat. Not a promise. A statement of fact from someone who arranged facts for a living, who looked at the world and saw a series of problems that could be solved with the correct application of force, and who had just decided that a problem had reached the end of its allowable lifespan.
I believed him.
This is worth noting because I don’t believe most people.
I have a professionally calibrated distrust of human statements, especially the ones that sound like promises, and yet when Aristoteles Romano looked at the bruises on my arms and said those five words in that rough tone, my brain registered them as infrastructure rather than sentiment.
Solid. Load-bearing. The kind of thing you could build on.
His hand was still on my waist. His thumb moved in small, absent circles against the thin cotton of my T-shirt.
Under the desk, my bare feet dangled. Turquoise sparkles catching what little light made it into the shadow beneath Ari’s chair.
The torn collar hung open at my throat, exposing more skin than it was designed to, and the red marks on my arms were doing their thing—throbbing gently, reminding me that they existed, that Theo’s fingers had been there, that the marble bust had been an appropriate response by any civilized standard.
Ari’s chest was warm against my side. I could feel his heartbeat through the thin cotton of his shirt—steady, slower than mine.
Apparently, his cardiovascular system had not received the memo that we were currently sitting in his lap with my bruises and his rage and the lighter clicking quietly on the desk beside us.
Open. Shut. Open.
The sound was different now. Slower. More deliberate.
I stayed where I was. His lap was warm. His arm around my waist was heavy in the way that things that belong there are heavy, and I did not examine that comparison too closely because examination would require vocabulary I did not currently possess.
Also because my adrenal system was in the process of crashing and the warmth was considerably more appealing than the alternative.
The lighter clicked one more time. Held. Snapped shut. Then his hand found the back of my head, and everything got simpler.