Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Amanda
Iknow him immediately.
That is the embarrassing part.
Valentino Conti is not a man people almost recognize. He is a man your brain identifies first and asks questions about later.
He’s looking right at me, and when our eyes meet across the café, he does something I’ve never actually seen him do in all the years our paths have crossed at Sartori functions.
He smiles.
Then he stands.
Oh, this is happening.
I have a full three seconds to look at him as he weaves between the tiny café tables, and my brain, traitor that it is, uses every one of them. He's tall in a way that makes the room feel rearranged around him. Broad through the shoulders in a three-piece suit.
His eyes are the worst part. Dark and so beautiful.
I stand up before I've actually decided to.
"Conti," I say, and my voice comes out strange in my ears. "What are you doing here?"
And then, because apparently being alone in a country where I don't speak the language has lowered my self-preservation instincts by about ninety percent, I throw my arms around him.
I do not, as a rule, hug the men of the Sartori family. They're built like brick walls with terrible childhoods, and I'm reasonably sure any one of them could break my ribs by mistake while reaching for his coffee. I keep a polite distance. Cheek kisses if absolutely required. Air-kisses preferred.
But Valentino is THE Valentino, and my arms are around his neck before my common sense gets a word in.
He goes still.
Just for a beat. That weird, watchful stillness I've noticed before, like someone hitting pause on him. Then one of his hands, and Christ, his hand is enormous, settles briefly between my shoulder blades. Not a hug back, exactly. An acknowledgement.
I'm laughing when I pull away, because if I don't laugh I'm going to think about how my heart just stuttered, and we are not doing that.
"How is this even possible?" I ask, smoothing my hair out of habit, projecting casual. "Are you stalking me? Is this a stalking situation? Because if it is, I have to say, your technique is amazing. I have absolutely no notes."
His mouth twitches.
Barely. Just the corner, up and gone again, like he catches it too late.
"Sit, Signora White,” he says, gesturing to the seat across from him. His voice is exactly what I remember. “Before you cause a scene."
"I cause scenes?" I drop into the chair anyway and hook my bag over the back of it. "You’re the one looming in cafés like a Bond villain. People are going to think you’re poisoning my macchiato."
"If I poisoned you, you wouldn't have time to worry about what people think."
"That is so reassuring. Thank you. I feel incredibly safe right now."
He sits across from me, one hand resting easy on the table, the other on his thigh. I notice that he's positioned himself with his back to the wall and a clean line to the door. He probably can't sit any other way.
"So," he says. "Milan. Are you here to bankrupt yourself in the via Montenapoleone, or—"
"Oh my God, rude." I press a hand to my chest. "I work, Conti. I have a real job and everything. Pay stubs and a tax bracket."
"My apologies." He inclines his head, perfectly grave. The bastard. "Please. Educate me."
"Casa Aurelia." I let myself say it with a little flourish, because I earned every syllable of it. "The campaign. Two years of pitching, three creative directors, one absolutely deranged COO, and they finally said yes. I'm running the launch."
"Congratulations."
He says it simply but it strikes a small, hot place under my sternum I have spent a lot of time pretending isn't there.
I look down at the table and rearrange a sugar packet.
"Thank you," I say, and my voice is quieter than I'd like. I clear my throat. "What about you? Why are you here? Don't tell me Aria or Carmela sent you shopping. I refuse to believe it."
His mouth does that twitch again. He doesn't quite meet my eyes when he answers.
"Business," he says.
One word. A door closing. Discussion ended in the politest possible packaging.
And this is the reminder I keep forgetting around him. That this man, with his quiet voice, his dry little half-smile, and his hand that briefly touched my back like I was something breakable, is from a world I am not supposed to walk into.
The world where you don't ask follow-up questions.
I should not like him.
He's a man from the kind of life people write warning labels about. He's older, dangerous, completely unimpressed by the version of me that works on every other man I've ever met. My charm bounces off him like rain off a windshield.
"Business," I echo, lifting my coffee, raising one eyebrow over the rim. "Mock-formal, Conti. Very on-brand."
His eyes lift to mine then. Hold there a second too long.
"Drink your coffee, signora."
I do. And I do not think about the way his hand felt between my shoulder blades.
Valentino
Casa Aurelia. Of all the brands in all the cities. Coincidence.
I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in patterns. I believe in people walking into rooms they should not be in, and Vittoria’s best friend has just walked into mine.
"You’re quiet, Conti." She tilts her head. "More than usual, I mean. Should I be offended?"
"I’m listening."
"Mm. Sure you are."
She smiles like she knows I’m not, and the worst part is, she is only half wrong.
I am listening.
I am also noticing the line of her throat where her scarf has slipped, the small movement of her fingers against the cup, the way she sits with one leg crossed over the other like she has never had to think about where the exits are.
She has reason to know. She just doesn’t know it yet.
That is the problem.
I take a slow breath through my nose. Her perfume has citrus in it. Something bright under all that gray Milan rain.
It suits her.
I take my fucking eyes off her. Because looking at her like this is not what a man does with his cousin’s best friend. Not in any version of the world I am allowed to live in.
She is gorgeous. I can admit that to myself.
She is also the kind of woman who, in another life, with another name attached to mine, I might have let myself want.
But this is not another life.
She is Vittoria’s best friend.
End of sentence..
"Okay." Amanda leans forward, both elbows on the table, her smile sliding into something more direct. "Real question. Are you going to tell me what you're actually doing in Milan, or are we doing the whole 'business' thing until I die of boredom?"
"Business remains business, Amanda."
"Wow. Riveting." She rolls her eyes. "Conti, you've gotta give me something. I'm a marketing girl. We live for context."
"You don't need context."
"Said every cryptic Italian man ever."
Her phone buzzes against the table. She glances down, and in that half-second, I do something I didn't consciously decide to do.
I reach across the table and pick up her phone.
Her head comes up fast. The smile goes. Her hand hovers an inch above the wood, frozen.
"What the fuck?" Quiet. Not loud. Just real. The mask has cracked a little, and underneath it she's not playing.
"One minute."
I tilt the screen toward me. The notification slides away as I tap. She hasn't locked it. I open her contacts and type my own number.
I save it. V. Conti. Nothing more.
I set the phone back down between us, screen up, my number sitting there like a loaded gun.
"If you need anything." I keep my voice low. "Anything at all. Day, night. You call."
She blinks once.
"Valentino—"
“Buongiorno, Signora White.”
I push back from the table. The chair scrapes against the floor. I drop cash on the wood and leave before she can put a sentence together.
The door chimes behind me.
Across the street, the man is still there. He leans against the corner of a shuttered jeweler’s, hands in the pockets of his dark coat, his eyes on the café window where Amanda sits.
I cross the street slowly. Hands loose.
He sees me coming, and his weight shifts just enough to come off the wall.
“Mancini.”
“Conti.”
We stand a foot apart.
He is shorter than me by a head and careful enough to know exactly where he stands. I’ve worked with him three times. He’s good. Quiet. He does what Vittoria says.
I tip my chin toward the café. “Why are you watching her?”
My voice stays mild. The question is not.
Elio’s jaw moves once, a small tightening around the mouth. He looks at me, and I almost laugh.
I know that look. I’ve worn it. The look of a man who just watched a woman step into someone else’s attention and did not like how long she stayed there.
She is not his woman.
I know that the way I know most things in the Sartori world.
"Orders," he says. Even. Flat. "From Vittoria."
"Hm."
"Is there a problem, Conti?"
He gives me a careful, polite answer because I’m family to the people he works for, and because he’s smart enough not to turn this into a confrontation.
I hold his eyes a beat longer than necessary.
Long enough for him to understand I saw it.
"No problem." I adjust the cuff of my coat. "Keep your eyes on the street. Not the window."
Then I walk away.