Page 11 of Pietro

My throat closes. Murphy family. Irish mob. The one that Declan was working against my father.

"What message would that be?" I keep my voice level, though my free hand grips the desk edge hard enough to hurt.

"He'll know when he sees tomorrow's shipment. Or what's left of it."

The line goes dead. I set the phone in its cradle, my hand steady, aware of Pietro's eyes on me.

"The Murphy family sends regards. They mentioned tomorrow's shipment."

Pietro's chair creaks as he leans back. "And?"

"That's all."

"You didn't sound scared." Not a question. An observation.

"Should I have?"

He stands, moves around the desk with that predatory grace that makes my survival instincts scream. But I hold my ground, meet his eyes. He stops inches away, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his irises, the exhaustion carved into the lines around his eyes.

"Most people would be terrified getting a threat from the Irish mob."

"I'm not most people. And I don’t have any clue about mobs." I must convince him.

"No." The word comes out soft, almost wondering. "You're not."

The air between us crackles with something that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the way his gaze drops to my mouth for a fraction of a second. Then he's moving back, the moment shattered.

"The accounting files are in the bottom drawer. Left side."

I find them, start cross-referencing with the invoices. The errors jump out immediately. Transposed numbers, missing decimal points, duplicate payments. Someone's either criminally incompetent or stealing. Within an hour, I've identified seventeen thousand dollars in overpayments from the last month alone.

"You need to see this."

Pietro looks up from whatever violence he's been planning on his laptop.

I bring the files to his desk, spread them out. "Here, here, and here. Overpayments to suppliers. This invoice was paid twice. This one has the decimal in the wrong place. You paid ten times the actual amount."

His jaw tightens as he scans the numbers. "How did we miss this?"

"Your previous secretaries probably didn't understand international shipping regulations. Or basic math."

A laugh escapes him. "You're saving me seventeen thousand in one morning and you negotiated for fifty-four thousand a year?"

"I'm worth more than I'm charging. Consider it an introductory rate."

He stares at me for a long moment. Then he's on his feet, disappearing through a side door I hadn't noticed. He returns with two cups of coffee, sets one on the corner of my makeshift workspace.

"Two sugars, no cream."

I blink. "How did you?—"

"I have eyes everywhere Nora."

Of course he does.

The coffee is perfect. We drink in silence, him at his fortress of a desk, me standing amid the organized chaos I'm slowly taming.

The rest of the morning blurs into a rhythm. Phone calls I handle with increasing confidence. Files that finally start making sense. Pietro watches everything, testing, measuring, waiting for me to crack. But I don't. Can't.