“Does the whole world have to revolve around you?”
I freed one hand and rapped my knuckles against the polished mahogany of his desk.
“Cut the talk that has nothing to do with the arrangement. A hundred and seventy thousand. What's your plan?”
His eyes were bloodshot.
“If honoring the connect means we bleed money, then we cut the connect loose.”
I let out a cold laugh.
“Do you even remember how many bottles we shared, how many nights we sat up till dawn to bring that tributary into the fold in the first place?”
“And it isn't only this one arrangement. We have other pacts running with them. If we walk, how many more hundred-and-seventy-thousand losses are we staring down?”
“Lorenzo, have you completely lost your mind?”
He shot me an impatient glance, muttering “so small” under his breath,
and then,
pulled a bank card from inside his jacket and flung it across at my face.
“It's just a hundred and seventy thousand. I'll cover it for her. Happy now?”
My cheek stung, but I was eerily calm.
The boy from the old neighborhood who once thought a twelve-dollar plate of fried rice was too rich for his blood,
now tossing a hundred and seventy thousand across the desk without blinking.
He'd already forgotten how many people's livelihoods sat in our hands.
This was never just about the money.
Or maybe he knew. He just didn't care.
Since he didn't care about a hundred and seventy thousand,
what about a hundred times that?
I wanted to see if he'd be just as indifferent then.
I met my oldest friend, Francesca Moretti, for afternoon coffee at a quiet table in her father's club.
She hadn't even finished cursing Lorenzo's name when a message came in from Renata.
“Adriana, get back to the office now.”
The moment I reached the door of my own office,
I saw Gemma directing two crew members to haul out my desk.
Pacts, documents, the whole record of it, scattered across the floor.
Years of work, built up piece by piece.
Who the hell did she think she was?
“Put everything down. Now.”
I closed the distance in three strides and slapped Gemma across the face.
“Who told you to touch my things?”
Gemma clutched her cheek, but her eyes were defiant.
“Lorenzo said you lost a major arrangement and you don't deserve this office anymore. He wants you working out in the open floor with the rest of the crew.”
He must have heard the commotion.
Lorenzo came in.
He took one look at the mess on the floor, and something flickered behind his eyes.
“Gemma, I told you to give her word. Who said you could move her things?”
Gemma lowered her hand, baring the red print on her cheek, and looked up at him with wide, wounded eyes. Her fingers drifted to her lower lip, and the tears welled right on cue.
He caved instantly.
“Adriana, this was my call. If you want to take it out on someone, take it out on me.”
“But rules are rules. Gemma passed along our tribute figures, fine, but it was someone on your crew who put them in her hands. You bear direct responsibility.”
He sighed, settling both hands on my shoulders.
“I heard you booked a ticket home.”
“I can't go back with you, though.”
“Why don't you use it as a reason to take a few days, go see the old quarter, hm?”
I shook his hands off me.
“Who asked you to come? I'm going home because——”
He scoffed. “To find a husband?”
“Drop the act. Gemma already told me. There's no old code in your neighborhood about a woman having to come back and marry before thirty.”
Gemma chimed in. “Adriana, don't hold it against me for telling him. I just couldn't stand by and watch you lie to him anymore.”
I looked her over, calm and measured. The room had gone quiet, the crew on the floor suddenly very busy with nothing.
A designer suit. Chanel at her ears. A Louis Vuitton on her arm.
None of it matched what the Family paid her,
and all of it was a far cry from the girl I'd first met in the old neighborhood.
Back then, she'd wept with gratitude because I'd vouched for her, covered her way in.
I bought her first decent set of clothes.
I walked her in myself the day she opened her first account.
