April
"Don Dante." He said it like it was a title, not just a name. "And you are?"
After you. I expected force. I got manners.
He stopped at the glass-walled alcove. The not-a-door. His men, behind them, returned to their cards with heroic commitment to plausible deniability.
He pulled out a chair.
"Sit."
April sat. Dante settled across from her and immediately pulled out his phone. Started typing.
April watched him for three seconds. Then: "You told me to come to your office so I could watch you text?"
He didn't look up. Finished whatever he was sending. Then set the phone on the table between them, screen down. Now she had his full focus.
This is the weirdest customer service I’ve ever received.
“We negotiate properly," he added, as if she'd suggested otherwise.
"This feels like the prelude to a merger," April said.
"I would be remiss," Dante continued, settling into his chair with grace, "if I did not acknowledge that you have walked into a room full of men who answer to me, and done so without hesitation. That speaks to either courage or calculation."
He paused.
"I suspect both."
A hint of amusement touched his mouth.
He looked at his men. "Eyes on cards, gentlemen." No one looked up. No one acknowledged him. They simply obeyed.
Then he looked back at April. "Eyes on me."
His eyes were dark. Focused. Eye contact that felt like a challenge and a test and possibly a threat, all wrapped in expensive politeness.
April exhaled through her nose. "You're dramatic." But she enjoyed it.
"Eyes on me—if you're staying."
"I'm staying."
Approval moved through his eyes.
"You walked into my den," he said, voice low, precise. "Asked me for a favor. Offered yourself as payment."
"I didn't—"
April started to stand. Dante's gestured to stop and she froze.
"One does not leave a negotiation before terms are settled, that would be... discourteous."
"You did," he continued simply, like it wasn't an accusation, just a fact. "Maybe you didn't mean to. But you did. I want to make clear that the favor's a gift, you don't owe me anything."
April leaned back in the chair, letting herself look unimpressed on principle. "Great. Because I'm not paying for tacos with my soul."
A soft sound escaped Dante—almost a laugh, swallowed before it could become one.
April arched a brow. "So if the prank is free, what are we doing here?"
"Clarifying the terms of what you offered."
"This is just a proposition with more steps."
"Correct."
She'd spent the whole day being the thing in the room that didn't quite register.
Background frequency. Easily talked over, easily managed, easily redirected toward whatever the men around her had already decided.
It hadn't even felt remarkable until right now, sitting across from a man who kept trying to actually hear her.
Somewhere between the taco coupons and the negotiation she'd developed a Pavlovian response to being taken seriously, and now it was warm in here and she was still sitting and he was still waiting and—
"This is insane." April said, and she couldn't tell if she meant him or herself.
"And yet you're still sitting."
"You say that like it's evidence."
"It is."
He was actually listening. That shouldn’t feel revolutionary.
It did.
She tilted her head, studying him the way she'd study a contract with too much fine print.
The silver at his temples that made him look like he'd earned every year of whatever he'd done to get here.
The jawline that could probably cut glass if he turned his head too fast. Shoulders that suggested his suit wasn't doing any heavy lifting—just providing a professional wrapper for something considerably more dangerous.
His hands, resting on the table. Broad palms. Long fingers. No rings. Hands that looked like they knew exactly how much pressure to apply to get what they wanted.
He was still waiting. That shouldn’t be this attractive.
"Okay. Then we're negotiating the terms of the extra."
Dante's gaze dipped to her mouth. Then back up. "Yes."
She let the silence sit, the bass seeping through the glass like a low, rhythmic warning.
April leaned forward just enough to let the light catch the emerald silk.
"The prank is free. So really, you're the one propositioning me.
And I've realized something today." She gave a small, lethal smile. "I'm expensive."
The bass outside thudded through the glass while Dante waited, patient as a threat. April could see his chest rise and fall. Controlled. Like even his breathing was a negotiation tactic.
"Name your price."
Name your price.
The same tone. The same calm assumption that he’d set the frame and she’d answer inside it.
If she let him define the terms, she’d disappear into them.
Not tonight.
"I'm the boss."