Page 33 of Ricardo

Only when the house disappears behind the trees do I let my shoulders drop.

My phone is in my hand before I realize I have reached for it.

There are no missed calls. No messages from Dante. No work emergency from Mario’s office. Nothing from anyone who has any idea what just happened in that house.

I should be relieved.

Instead, I stare at the dark screen and swallow against the tightness in my throat.

Then I lock the phone, set it in my lap, and look out the window as the car carries me away from my parents’ house.

Chapter Four

Ricardo

By 7:30, the office is quiet enough that I hear the air system kicking on and off.

During the day, this floor has its own kind of noise. Phones behind closed doors. Shoes on polished tile. Low voices in the hall. The elevator opening and closing. Assistants moving between offices with folders, coffee, messages, contracts, and whatever else keeps an empire like this running.

At night, Conti Enterprises becomes something else.

The lights stay on, but they’re dim, and it seems the energy changes. The glass walls reflect more than they reveal. The offices along the corridor look desolate in their emptiness. Chicago stretches beyond the windows in hard lines and scattered light, and the building feels less like a place where people work and more like a place where bad decisions are made long after reasonable men have gone home.

I am not a reasonable man, which is why I am still at my desk with two contracts, a revised financing proposal, and a pounding headache that has settled behind my right eye.

Mario left hours ago. Victoria had an appointment for the baby, and Mario, who treats schedules almost religiously, did not dare be late for that. He walked past my office with his jacket over one arm and his phone already in his hand, looking faintly annoyed that the rest of the world dared need him at the same time Victoria did.

I told him to go.

He told me not to touch the Reeves documents until morning.

I touched the Reeves documents ten minutes later.

The problem is not the documents. The problem is the third cup of coffee I should not want and absolutely intend to have. I stare at the last page of the proposal for another thirty seconds, then give up, push back from my desk, and stand.

Mario keeps better coffee outside his office than what we keep in the communal kitchen. He also keeps an espresso machine that looks like it requires a degree, but I know how to use it. My brother does not tolerate bad coffee, bad tailoring, or men who waste his time. Of the three, bad coffee may offend him most.

I leave my office and step into the hall.

The floor seems empty.

A few security lights glow near the elevator bank. One desk lamp burns behind frosted glass at the far end, but that office belongs to a man who forgets to turn it off at least twice a week. Lorenzo’s door is closed, the light beneath it gone. Mario’s office suite should be empty, too.

I walk toward it without hurry, loosening another button of my shirt as I go.

Then I hear a small sound from the sitting area outside Mario’s office.

I stop.

At first, I think it is the machine. A hiss, perhaps. A drip. Some mechanical complaint from one of Mario’s expensive toys.

Then I hear a woman’s voice, clearly frustrated.

“Come on. You little—”

I lift my brows and smile.

She is still here.