Chapter 10
Ten
Massimo
Sloane is in my kitchen wearing my Harvard t-shirt and a pair of black shorts that barely qualify as clothing, her blonde hair loose and damp from a shower, her bare feet padding across the hardwood while she opens and closes cabinets like she's conducting an inventory of my life.
The faint scent of her shampoo drifts through the kitchen every time she moves, something floral and warm that has already started replacing the smell of leather and whiskey I've been breathing for eight years.
"You have fourteen bottles of whiskey and zero snacks." She pulls open another cabinet and peers inside, the hinges squeaking in the quiet penthouse. "Not even crackers, Massimo. Who lives like this?"
"A man who eats at restaurants."
"A man who eats alone at restaurants." She finds a box of stale water crackers behind the Macallan and holds it up with two fingers like evidence. "These expired four months ago."
"I've been busy."
"Busy dying of scurvy, apparently." She tosses the box in the trash, and I lean against the island and watch her move through my kitchen with the ease of a woman who has already decided this space belongs to her.
She's been here less than two hours and she's rearranged the coffee mugs, criticized my lack of throw pillows, and informed me that my bathroom needs plants.
My bathroom needs plants. I've lived in this penthouse for eight years and it never occurred to me that the bathroom needed anything other than a shower and a toilet.
I take a pull of ice water now because apparently I drink too much and let the coolness settle into my chest. She looks up and catches me watching her, the evening light from the windows casting long amber shadows across the island between us.
"What?"
"Nothing." Everything. She's in my kitchen. She's in my shirt. Her name is on our marriage contract and my ring will be on her finger by the end of the week and I still can't believe any of this is real.
My intercom buzzes. I check the screen. Kon's face fills the frame, Onyx tucked beside him with her dark hair and sharp eyes already scanning the camera like she's looking for evidence of something.
Of course. Word travels fast in this family. Luca probably told Kon who told Onyx who told Kon they were coming over whether anyone invited them or not.
"Company," I tell Sloane. "Kon and Onyx."
Her eyes go wide. "Onyx is here? Right now?" She looks down at my t-shirt and the shorts and her bare face. "I’m a wreck."
"You’re beautiful."
"You’ve had your eyes on my ass for the past two hours." She's already moving toward the bedroom. "Stall them. Give me five minutes."
"You don't need five minutes. You look—"
"Five minutes, Massimo."
I buzz them up.
Kon walks in first. He fills the doorway with his six-four frame. His dark eyes sweep the penthouse in two seconds flat, cataloging my leather folio I left on the kitchen counter, Sloane’s bag on the coffee table, and her overnight bag by the sofa. He takes in everything and says nothing.
Onyx steps past him, blue eyes sharp, her gaze landing on every detail Kon just filed away. The difference is Onyx has questions and zero intention of keeping them to herself.
"Massimo." She says my name with a sharpness of a bullwhip. Her writer's brain doesn’t miss a detail either. "Where is she?"
"Changing."
"Changing into what? She's been here two hours. What was she wearing before?"
"Onyx." Kon's voice is low, quiet, the single word carrying enough weight to pause her momentum. She glances at him. He shakes his head once. She narrows her eyes but lets it go. For now.
I pour us all drinks and forget about the ice water. Maybe that works for other people, but life is way too stressful at the moment.
The whiskey glugs into Kon's glass, amber catching the low light.
He takes it with a nod and settles into the wingback by the window, his broad frame making the leather creak as he leans back.
I pour wine for Onyx, who takes it without sitting because standing gives her a tactical advantage in conversations and she knows it.
Sloane emerges from the bedroom in jeans and a cream sweater with her hair brushed and a coat of cherry lipstick that I know she applied in under sixty seconds because I could hear her rummaging through her bag while I answered the door.
"Hey." She reaches for Onyx and they fold into each other, arms tight, foreheads close, a conversation happening in the embrace that doesn't include words. When they pull apart, Onyx holds Sloane at arm's length and studies her face with an intensity that would make most people uncomfortable.
Sloane doesn't flinch. "Before you ask, yes this is real. Yes it happened fast. No I am not being held against my will, although the man's cabinets are a humanitarian crisis."
"She's been here two hours and she's already redecorating," I add.
"Good. This place needs it." Onyx squeezes Sloane's hands and turns to me with a look that says this conversation is not over, we are simply pausing it because I love her and I want her to be happy and if you hurt her I will end you.
I receive the message.
Kon catches my eye over the rim of his glass.
He doesn't speak which is normal for the Russian.
The slight nod he gives me carries twenty years of brotherhood and something that looks a lot like recognition.
He's been where I am. He bought Onyx at an auction to save her and fell in love with her while trying to keep her alive.
He knows what it looks like when a man drafts a contract with his head and signs it with his heart.
The four of us settle into a rhythm that feels easier than it should.
Sloane and Onyx on the sofa with wine, heads together, speaking in the rapid shorthand of best friends while the city glows through the windows behind them.
Kon and I by the window with whiskey, saying little because neither of us has ever needed many words to communicate.
"Lorenzo Ferraro." Kon says the name without inflection. Testing. Luca must have filled him in on everything. Good. I don’t feel like rehashing.
"Handled."
"Harrison?"
"Complicated."
He nods. Takes a slow pull of whiskey. "Onyx will want the full story. She won't stop until she has it."
"I know."
"Sloane will tell her when she's ready."
"I know that too."
Kon rotates his glass between his fingers, the amber liquid catching the low light. "You're sure about this, brother?"
"Da." I use his word deliberately and the corner of his mouth pulls.
"Then we have your back. Whatever comes."
They leave after an hour. Onyx hugs Sloane one more time, whispers something in her ear that makes Sloane laugh and press her forehead against Onyx's shoulder, and I watch from the kitchen and feel something in my chest I haven't felt in years.
Warmth. My penthouse has people in it who care about each other and the silence after they leave is different from the silence I'm used to.
I'm clearing the glasses, rinsing Onyx's wine from the crystal under warm water, when the intercom buzzes again. I check the screen. The lobby desk.
"Mr. Santoro, a package was left at the front desk for Ms. Whitmore. No return address. Should I send it up?"
I glance at Sloane. She shakes her head. She's not expecting anything. “Who knows I’m here? I mean besides your brothers and Onyx?” The confusion on her face mirrors mine. She’s right.
"Send it up."
The box arrives in the elevator. Small, matte black, no card, no return address. Expensive packaging wrapped in stiff black paper with sharp creases, the kind you get from high-end boutiques where the presentation costs more than the contents.
Sloane opens it at the island. She peels back the tissue paper and her hands go still.
A silk slipper sits inside, cradled in ivory tissue. Cream-colored, delicate, a ballet flat with a pointed toe and a thin satin ribbon threaded along the edge. The silk catches the kitchen light with a faint sheen and I can smell it from where I stand, the faint scent of cedar and clean cotton.
Her closet.
"That's from my apartment." Her voice comes out thin, stripped of everything that was warm in it five seconds ago. "From my closet."
The air in the penthouse shifts. The warmth from the last hour, the laughter, the wine, Onyx's voice and Kon's steady presence, all of it drains from the room and what replaces it is cold and sharp and quiet.
My body goes still. Every muscle locks, my pulse drops low and heavy, and the sound of my own breathing fills my ears. My fingers curl against the granite and I feel the cold stone bite into my fingertips.
I don’t need to read a name card to know who did this. Lorenzo was in her apartment. In her closet. He touched her things. He ran his hands through her personal space and selected something intimate, something she wears against her bare skin, and he packaged it and sent it to my door.
"He was in my apartment, Massimo." Sloane's voice is steady but her hands are shaking, a fine tremor that runs through her fingers and up her wrists.
She holds the slipper by the toe, pinched between two fingers, her arm extended away from her body.
"He was in my closet. He touched my clothes.
In order for him to find my ballet slippers, he had to know where to look. I keep these–"
She grips her stomach.
“I keep them on a shelf next to my lingerie. The rat bastard probably had his hand all over my things.”
Itake the slipper from her hand. The silk is cool and thin between my fingers, weightless, carrying the faint cedar scent of her closet and something else underneath, a cologne I don't recognize.
Heavy. Expensive. Lorenzo's scent on her things.
I set it on the counter. My molars grind.
The pressure climbs from my jaw to my temples.
“I knew we should have packed all your things and brought them over tonight.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Not with hired help.”
I reach for my phone. Dial Luca. He picks up on the first ring.