*Giovani*
“We’ve repaired all bridges for our operations in Eastern Europe, which ans we can finally start shipping in the volus we were working with before Dmitri,” Gabriele said. “In terms of the expansion into the Middle East—”
A furious, pounding knock sounded on the door, and both of our heads whipped in that direction. I dropped the folder containing the data on our holdings. Gabriele placed a hand on the gun at his waist, and I ran my finger over the panic button I’d recently had installed on the bottom of my desk that would call all the guards in the compound to my location. I hadn’t had one previously because I didn’t like acknowledging that I might not be able to handle every threat that made its way to my office.
After a mont of knocking, the knob turned and the door swung inward. Gabriele’s gun was out of his holster before I could blink, but I hesitated a mont on the button. It was lucky I waited because the door revealed a panting, wild-eyed Alessandro.
Gabriele holstered his gun and waved the boy in. Despite his usual desire to seem as professional and capable as my second, Alessandro dropped bonelessly into one of the leather chairs in front of my desk and caught his breath.
Gabriele, with a slight frown, closed the door behind him.
My heartbeat, which remained perilously steady when I thought I was under attack, sped out of control. What could have induced Alessandro to burst in like this, clearly exhausted? He had reported attack after attack with the sa cool deanor during Dmitri’s reign of terror. Had sothing worse happened?
Sothing personal?
Only years of training myself to present a strong front when facing my n prevented from tapping my fingers anxiously on my desk as he caught his breath.
“Sorry,” he wheezed. “I know this is your standing weekly review. I was out with a friend at that café a few blocks down. It seed silly to take a car, but then I had to run ho.”
Gabriele crossed his arms. Alessandro had beco vital to the organization, but I knew my old friend was thinking he still lacked the necessary polish of a true right hand.
I nodded. “And why did you run?”
“Elena,” he gasped out.
My stomach flipped. I grabbed my phone in one hand and circled the button under my desk once more with the other. Had sothing happened to her, or was she the problem? Was Olivia safe?
Gabriele handed Alessandro a glass of water, and he chugged it gratefully. When he put the empty glass on my desk, his breathing steadied, and his words ca a little more evenly.
“It’s bad, but it’s not call-in-the-cavalry bad,” he said first.
I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and dropped my phone to my desk.
Gabriele snorted. “If you felt the need to burst in during a weekly eting, I think the Don will decide what cavalry is needed.”
Alessandro swallowed. “I started hanging out with a couple of guys at the card café, playing scopa. I needed so friends outside the business. It turns out one of those guys, Leo, is friends with Elena’s roommate, and he said she told him that Elena was moving into so kind of high-security palace soon. The roommate’s just worried about being fucked for rent, but I knew I needed to tell you.”
My head spun. We hadn’t told Elena she could move in. We hadn’t even talked to her about it since that initial conversation. I found it hard to believe she would distort such a simple interaction so wildly.
“Alright,” I said slowly. “How certain are you that you can trust this Leo?”
Alessandro shrugged. “He’s not in the family business. I had them all checked out. I don’t know why he would lie.” He gripped the arms of the chair. “But isn’t this a red flag that she’s telling her friends she’s an even bigger part of your life than she is?”
I sighed. After our successful-transfer dinner, Olivia had confided in that Alessandro didn’t trust Elena, but that Dahlia thought it might be jealousy. Then, he repeated the sa concerns to in this very office. He’d obviously never liked the woman.
“I will look into this further,” I said, trying to infuse enough finality into my tone that he would get the hint.
He didn’t. He leaned forward and said, “Look into it further? She’s bad news, Gio. I’m trying to look out for everyone’s best interests, and no one will let !”
I stood, towering over him. “Thank you for your diligence in this matter. Your concerns are misplaced. Leave, and stop interrupting a eting you knew about when you busted into your Don’s office with such violence that you were almost shot.”
Alessandro’s mouth fell open, but he stood and stomped out of the room without another word. I sat back down, and Gabriele beheld evenly.
“I know what you sound like when you don’t want to think about sothing,” he said. “Do you believe him?”
I dropped my head into my hands. I didn’t want to believe him. If he spoke the truth, he was right, that was a red flag. I didn’t like my location being publicized at all, much less to a group of random twenty-sothings. Beyond that, it ant Elena assud she would get her way. Olivia might be all for having her move in, but my nagging hesitations about safety and privacy crystallized around this single nugget of doubt.
“I don’t know,” I said finally. “Dahlia thinks he might be jealous of Elena, but you and I are well-acquainted with his reaction to jealousy.”
Gabriele scoffed. “More than... but I wouldn’t say I saw those signs now. He looked frustrated not to be listened to rather than furious at coming in second. And no punches were thrown.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Then I see no other reason for him to lie. He does his due diligence, and I believe he had these card friends checked out.” I sighed. “But if this information is accurate....”
Gabriele nodded. “You don’t wish to believe him.”
I chuckled bitterly. “You can say that again. She’s carrying my baby. I don’t want to find out anything new about her. I barely wanted her as involved in our lives as she is now.”
“I vouched for Elena myself. I hardly wish to be proven wrong in a matter this dire,” Gabriele agreed.
Silently, I moved to the cainet where I kept my alcohol and poured each of us a glass of top-shelf whiskey. Gabriele accepted his glass, and I leaned against the front of my desk, destroying the barrier between boss and subordinate.
I had so many emotions flying around in my head, I didn’t want the panic button within reach. If there was one thing I knew for certain, it was that having Elena rounded up by the maximum number of guys I could summon wouldn’t do anything for our relationship.
Our relationship–did I have a relationship with Elena, really? Olivia did, certainly, and Dahlia. I tried to greet her when she was around and tried to plan events for her to be involved in when it seed fitting. But that hardly constituted a relationship. Most of the ti, I felt like I was having a baby with my wife, and we’d outsourced the tricky parts. But that didn’t protect the baby in her stomach–my baby.
“What I will say,” Gabriele began, “is that I have survived this life on my instincts. We all do. Mine told Elena was alright. Alessandro’s say the opposite. One of us must be wrong, but the question remains. What are your instincts telling you?”
I sipped the whiskey, feeling it burn down the line of my throat and hoping it would provide with enough answers to go to sleep tonight.
As always, there was no clarity at the bottom of a glass, just hazier frustration.
“My instincts are... garbled,” I admitted. “She makes Olivia so happy.”
Gabriele shook his head. “Stop being married for a mont. You got here because your instincts were honed more sharply than anyone else’s. There is an answer inside you that you don’t want to see.”
I groaned. I didn’t want to be Don Valentino at this mont. I wanted to be a worried husband, trying to do his best by his wife. I wanted the stakes to lessen, and to have a baby with the love of my life without everything spinning off the rails.
I decided I was going to trust and believe in Elena for Olivia’s sake. I already had this conflict, and I had settled it in favor of my wife and our baby. Why couldn’t that have been enough?
Gabriele’s eyes burned into , and I took a step back from my own thoughts. From a distance, they looked deliriously self-pitying. I was Don Valentino and a loving husband at the sa ti, always. Only with both skill sets could I get out of this ss.
And goddammit, I was going to get Olivia, the baby, and I out of this ss, whatever it took.
I downed the rest of the glass. Gabriele raised an eyebrow, but I savored the sting. Then, I stood and retook my seat behind my desk.
“Rerun Elena’s background.”
Gabriele’s mouth opened slightly. “We’ve already turned over every rock I could think of—”
“Turn them again,” I said. “You asked to think with my head rather than my heart, and I’m telling you to rerun the check.”
He snapped his mouth shut and nodded. “I’ll have the results as soon as possible.”
“Good.” I lifted the folder once more and peered at him over the top of it. “The Middle East?”
Gabriele knocked back the rest of his whiskey without so much as a wince and returned to his normal position, taking up the flow of our weekly review with nearly robotic ease.
I tried to keep my mind on the briefing, but it wandered back to Elena within monts.
Should I tell Olivia what I learned? I’d promised to tell her everything I thought about the baby, but I couldn’t help rembering the look on her face when I said I thought Elena shouldn’t move in. She’d tied her emotions up too tightly with the surrogate to have reasonable conversations about my concerns anymore.
Part of wanted to just sweep her away on so retreat until she forgot all about Elena and we could talk like we were on the sa team once more, but even if I could feel safe leaving my baby without either of their parents, she would never go. I had to solve these problems here.
Another, smaller part of just wanted to be able to trust Olivia and let Elena into my heart. I hated disagreeing with her, hated seeing her upset.
But what if we’d missed sothing about Elena?
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