She Mistakenly Called the Mafia Boss Hot—Then He Walked to Her Desk and Said, “Say It Again”

That was when I understood I had already lost something important and was unlikely to recover it soon.

Matteo appeared in the break room twice that day.

The first time, I was filling a water bottle when he entered to make an espresso using the expensive machine no member of the administrative peasantry dared touch.

He did not look at me.

He prepared the espresso and left.

The pressure in the room had changed the way air changes before a storm, and water overflowed across my hand because I had forgotten I possessed one.

The 2nd time, he was standing in the hallway.

He was not precisely waiting for me. He appeared to be studying the plant in an enormous corner vase as though it had committed a financial crime and I merely happened to pass.

“Miss Bennett.”

“Mr. DeLuca.”

“Breakfast?”

“Yes.”

“The Brewline?”

“What about it?”

“Is it adequate?”

I looked at him.

He looked at the plant.

“Adequate,” I repeated. “Are you asking whether the coffee that mysteriously appears on my desk every morning is adequate?”

“I am.”

“What happens if I say no?”

He finally turned his eyes toward me.

The hallway light angled across the line of his jaw. As the rigorous professional I remained, I mentally filed the image for use during future emergencies.

“I’ll change the order,” Matteo said.

He walked away without waiting for a response.

Mari nearly dropped her telephone when I told her that night.

“He asked whether the coffee was adequate?”

“Yes.”

“Adequate, Chloe?”

“Yes.”

“That man is going to kill you with pleasure and sadness at the same time.”

“Mari, I’m only describing what happened.”

On Friday, I went to lunch with 3 coworkers at a discreet Italian restaurant 2 blocks from the company.

There was house wine, a salad that cost as much as my grandmother’s rent, and lukewarm conversation about year-end bonuses.

The operations director from the hospitality division, a man named Beckett who talked too much and smelled like airport cologne, sat beside me.

He discovered there was a precise spot near my elbow where he could place his hand to emphasize a sentence.

He touched it while emphasizing the 1st sentence.

He touched it again for the 2nd.

I moved my arm with all the diplomacy student debt could teach.

During the 3rd sentence, he placed his hand there again.

Matteo passed the restaurant entrance.

His presence was not on any schedule. It made no sense.

The door opened, and he entered with Lorenzo Ricci behind him.

Lorenzo wore a black suit and the expression of a locked vault. He had been Matteo’s shadow for so long that no one seemed to remember a time when he had not been there.

They crossed the dining room toward a reserved table in the rear.

Matteo passed our table, stopped, and looked at Beckett’s hand on my arm.

“Beckett,” he said in a voice that was low and almost friendly, “Miss Bennett works for me.”

Beckett removed his hand with the speed of someone pulling it from a flame.

“Mr. DeLuca, I—”

“Enjoy your lunch.”

Matteo continued toward the rear table without looking back.

As Lorenzo followed, he registered my expression for half a second.

It was neither friendly nor hostile.

It was a notation.

Beckett did not finish lunch.

He invented an urgent telephone call and left after paying the bill for all 4 of us with the company card, which was probably the modern definition of fleeing.

The following Monday, Human Resources announced that Beckett had requested a transfer to the logistics division in Houston for personal reasons.

“Houston,” Mari repeated that evening, standing in our kitchen with a sauce spoon in her hand. “He sent a man to Houston.”

“He didn’t send him.”

“He sent him.”

“Chloe, Houston.”

“Mari—”

“Houston.”

By Friday night, I could no longer tolerate the uncertainty.

I had received 5 Brewline coffees, encountered Matteo in 3 separate parts of the company where he had no reason to be, and heard Greta whisper that 2 captains from the import division had been quietly removed.

The company was boiling.

So was I.

I decided to enter Matteo’s office and ask him directly.

I crossed the executive floor carrying an empty folder. My excuse was a report no one had requested.

I knocked on the tinted glass with the knuckle of my middle finger.

“Come in,” Matteo said from the other side.

I opened the door.

His office was an extension of him: pale marble, glass walls overlooking the city, and a turntable on a side shelf with stacks of vinyl records aligned with careful precision.

The room smelled like expensive leather and an unidentified wood.

Matteo stood behind his desk without his jacket. The sleeves of his white shirt had been rolled to the elbows.

For the first time, I saw what the suit had concealed.

There was a fresh cut across his left eyebrow and a small bandage he had clearly attempted to hide. A purple mark ran along his forearm and disappeared beneath his shirt.

I stopped inside the doorway.

“Miss Bennett.”

“I brought a report.”

“On what?”

“The quarter.”

“The quarter that ended in March?”

“Yes.”

“It was consolidated in April.”

“Yes.”

“And this report became necessary at 7:30 on a Friday evening?”

“Yes.”

I closed the door because cowardice, as previously established, was expensive.

Matteo looked at me without speaking for 1 long second.

He moved to the desk and placed his fingertips along its edge. Low office light moved across the bandage above his eyebrow as though attempting to offend me personally.

“Ask,” he said.

“What?”

“The question you came here to ask.”

I swallowed.

“The coffees.”

“What about them?”

“They’re from you.”

“They are.”

“Why?”

He leaned forward slightly.

His shirt tightened across one shoulder, and I saw the bruising extend farther up his arm.

“That isn’t an answer,” I said.

“It’s the only one I have.”

“Beckett requested a transfer.”

“You know it wasn’t for personal reasons.”

“I know.”

He tilted his head by a fraction.

“You know too.”

I took 2 steps farther into the office.

He remained behind the desk, but I saw that he had stopped breathing.

So had I.

The empty folder shook in my hand. I placed it on the desk to conceal the movement.

“Mr. DeLuca.”

“Matteo.”

“Mr. DeLuca,” I repeated, because at that hour, inside that office, Matteo was a trap. “What do you want?”

He looked at me in a way no man had ever looked at me.

There was no haste or promise, only the cold confirmation of something decided without my consultation.

“I want you to stop pretending this makes you uncomfortable when we both know it doesn’t.”

“It does make me uncomfortable.”

“Lie better.”

“I’m extremely bad at lying.”

“I know.”

He came around the desk.

He did not touch me.

He stopped exactly 3 steps away, as though he had measured the distance with an engineer’s ruler.

Neither of us breathed properly for a period my memory refused to calculate.

I saw the bruise move beneath his skin when he tightened his hand. I saw the cut above his eyebrow, too recent for a man who supposedly spent his days inside conference rooms.

I saw exhaustion beneath his eyes that had nothing to do with quarterly balances.

“Who did that to your eyebrow?”

“Work.”

“What kind of work leaves a mark there?”

“Mine.”

“You’re a CEO.”

“I am.”

“CEOs don’t get hit.”

He watched me for another second.

Something in his face altered. It did not soften, exactly. It surrendered by 1 millimeter, like someone agreeing to leave a door slightly open without committing to walking through it.

“Go home, Chloe.”

“Mr. DeLuca—”

“Go home.”

“Are you all right?”

The question escaped before I could stop it.

He blinked once.

I realized then that no one on that floor had probably asked him that question in years.

“Go home,” he repeated more quietly. “The driver will take you.”

“I use the train.”

“Not tonight.”

I left with the empty folder still trembling in my hand.

I crossed the marble corridor, descended 47 floors, and entered a black car waiting in the garage without my having requested one.

The driver did not speak.

Neither did I.

As the city passed behind the tinted glass, I replayed the bandage above Matteo’s eyebrow, the purple mark along his arm, and the quiet repetition of go home.

I gripped the strap of my purse until my fingers hurt.

The driver’s silence carried the unmistakable quality of a man under orders not to ask questions.

For some reason, that frightened me most.

Mari opened the apartment door before I could retrieve my key.

“Tell me everything.”

Standing in the kitchen with my coat still on, I told her about the bandage, the bruise, the 3 steps, the order to go home, and the black car waiting in the garage.

For the first time that week, Mari became quiet.

“Babe,” she said after a moment, “you know what that means.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. That man is injured, and he sent you home in an armored car.”

“It wasn’t armored.”

“It was black, armored, had tinted windows, and was driven by a man who didn’t speak. All cars like that are armored.”

I sat on the kitchen bench and looked at the ceiling.

I thought about the bandage, the bruised forearm, the 3 steps, and the way Matteo had breathed when I asked whether he was all right.

My telephone vibrated on the counter.

The number was unknown.

Mari wants to drag you to the gallery tomorrow. Go. I’ll be there.

Mari read the message over my shoulder.

“He has your number?”

“He’s my employer.”

“He has your personal number?”

“He’s my employer.”

“How did he know I wanted to take you to the gallery?”

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

“I swear I didn’t tell anyone,” she said. “I only mentioned it to Greta from accounting at the Brewline this morning, and she—”

I closed my eyes.

“Greta tells everyone everything.”

“Greta tells everyone everything,” Mari agreed quietly.

I looked at the screen again.

The message contained only a single M. There was no period, full signature, or explanation.

Standing in our Lincoln Park kitchen beneath the yellow light of a cheap bulb, the letter seemed like the most elegant warning in the world.

“Are you going?” Mari asked.

I thought about the cut above Matteo’s eyebrow, the bruising on his arm, and the distance of 3 measured steps.

“I’m going.”

Saturday sunlight poured through the windows of our Lincoln Park apartment while Mari stood before the living-room mirror adjusting a green dress that appeared to have been sewn by the devil for the specific purpose of disturbing someone else’s peace.

“Get up,” she said without looking at me. “We’re going to the gallery.”

I was wrapped in a gray blanket on the couch, staring at the ceiling and attempting to remember when Mondays had become the most dangerous event in my adult life.

It had been 5 days since I had nearly been fired, and the echo of Matteo telling me to say it again remained fresh in the memory of the entire executive floor.

“I’m not going,” I said, pulling the blanket to my chin. “I’ll remain here, become mold, and eventually be studied by scientists.”

Mari crossed the room, seized a corner of the blanket, and pulled.

Cold air reached me at once, together with the smell of reheated coffee and the floral perfume she had sprayed on her wrist.

“You’re going because I worked 2 shifts at the Brewline to buy you a decent beer afterward. It’s a new gallery in River North. There will be free champagne, art no one understands, and men wearing white shirts. Get up.”

Resistance to Mari was useless.

Twenty minutes later, I was in the passenger seat of her car with half-dried hair, poorly applied lipstick, and a short black dress she had forced into my hands without permitting argument.

The gallery stood on a quiet side street behind Hubbard. Its facade was gray brick, and the tinted glass entrance carried no sign, only the number 1147 etched into the metal.

Mari parked and looked at me with the smile that usually preceded regret.

“Do you know what I love about this place?”

“What?”

“No one asks what you do for a living.”

We entered.

The main hall was a long corridor with white walls and pale marble floors. Discreet security officers stood in the corners like sculptures. Waiters moved among the guests carrying silver trays.

Everyone spoke in voices too quiet to be comfortable.

I took a glass of champagne simply to have something in my hand.

Mari disappeared around the 1st corner, carried away by an acquaintance, and I stood before an enormous canvas painted black over black, attempting to determine whether it was art or merely expensive carelessness.

A man in a suit passed and said, “Fascinating, isn’t it?”