Adriana Costa was beautiful, tall and slender with curves in the right places, her chest full and face card, lethal as hell. She was every man's dream, her dark long hair cascaded down her back elegantly, her skin bright and spotless. She was gorgeous and elegant.
Alessandro looked at Adriana for a long moment without saying anything.
Ofcourse Adriana was used to that. She had always been used to that, all his silence and measured looks, the way Alessandro DeLuca took his time with everything including deciding whether a conversation was worth having.
Adriana had spent three years learning how to exist inside those silences without feeling small and she still hadn't fully managed it but she was better at pretending than she used to be.
She sat down in the chair across from his desk without being invited, crossing her legs, and looked at him with that seductive gaze she had perfected over the years.
Alessandro leaned back in his chair. "How did you hear?"
"I hear everything Alessandro, you know that darling." She set her gloves on the edge of his desk neatly. "Giovanni Rossi's daughter is living in your house. That is not the kind of thing that stays quiet. Honestly I wonder how many people in the underworld know this."
"It has stayed quiet Adriana."
"From everyone except me baby boo." She tilted her head slightly. "I still have friends in your dark dark world. People talk."
Alessandro said nothing but furrowed his brows. Seems Dante is spreading things already.
Adriana looked around the office slowly, taking in the small changes, cataloguing what was different and what was the same.
She had been coming to this office for four years. She knew it almost as well as her own apartment.
Four years.
She had given this man four years of her life and she had done it with full knowledge of who he was and what he was capable of and what he was never going to be able to give her, she had stayed anyway because Adriana Costa did not walk away from things she had decided she wanted.
Until he had made it impossible not to.
That had been eight months ago.
She looked back at him now with a smile.
They had met at a function in Rome, one of those evenings full of people who were all pretending to be less dangerous than they were knowing fully well 80% of them were from the mob world and knew each other. She had known who he was before she crossed the room to where he was.
Everyone knew who Alessandro DeLuca was. She had crossed the room anyway because Adriana had never been particularly interested in doing dangerous things.
He had looked at her with a smug expression assessing her from head to toe noting how gorgeous she was, and then he said something dry and she had laughed genuinely, that had been the beginning of it.
Alessandro was not a simple man and she was not a simple woman and what they had was built on two people who understood each other completely, who spoke the same language, who never had to explain themselves to each other.
What they had was also built on understanding which was mutually maintained, that it would never become anything more than what it was. After all Alessandro was a NO-LOVE type of man.
She had been fine with that.
For a long time she had genuinely been fine with that.
Then eight months ago she realized she wasn't anymore and she told him, he had looked at her and laughed saying nothing and that made it all clear… she was being delusional if she though she could make Alessandro DeLuca change his rules.
She had walked out of this office and not come back.
Until today.
"Her name is Elena" Adriana finally said.
"I know her name. So what?"
"Everyone is saying you're keeping her here because she witnessed… something." She paused. "Is that true darling?"
"Don't you dare call me that and it's nothing you should concern yourself with."
Adriana looked at him carefully. Alessandro had always been an exceptional liar when it was needed. Smooth lying, never overselling it, never adding unnecessary detail to give it away. She had watched him lie to dangerous men across negotiating tables and never once seen them catch it, it was quite a remarkable skill.
She had caught on to it just now.
"Alessandro." She kept her voice steady even though her heart was palpitating with anxiety.
"I have known you for four years. I know the difference between you managing a situation and you—" she stopped trying to choose her next words carefully. "She is Giovanni Rossi's daughter. She is not from this world. She does not understand what you are or what this life costs and the moment she does she will run from it, from you entirely and you will have complicated everything for nothing darling."
Alessandro looked at her without expression and lifted his brows. The audacity of this woman was insane, what made her think she had the right to give him advice.
"I'm telling you this as someone who knows you" she said. "Not as—" she gestured vaguely between them, "whatever you think this is. As someone who actually knows you."
"And what is it you think you know Adriana? Go ahead and tell me." He asked with amusement.
"That you have never once in your life let anyone close to the extent they stay in your house…" she said quietly. "And whatever is happening with this girl is already different from that and you haven't even admitted it to yourself yet. I know that!" Adriana was at the verge of tears because how could a total stranger have so much access to him that he even kept her in his home meanwhile when she had something serious with him, he didn't even let her stay for more than a night and the next day she's sent on her way. That alone made her want to cry.
The office was very quiet.
Alessandro picked up his pen and looked at the papers on his desk before speaking, "thank you for coming Adriana" in a tone that meant the conversation was more than over. She had certainly crossed a line.
She looked at him for a long moment as her chest rose and fell.
Then she picked up her gloves and stood up smoothing her coat and walked to the door before looking at him one last time from the doorway.
"I just don't want to watch you make a mistake Alessandro!" she said as her voice cracked slightly, she blinked back tears while looking at him.
"I never make mistakes."
She almost smiled at that. "No" she said softly, "you just make decisions and live with the cost of them." She paused before licking her red lips slightly. "Make sure you know what this one costs before you make it."
Then she was stormed out, her heels clicking hard on the floor.
Alessandro sat in the quiet of his office for a long time after that staring at nothing in particular.
He thought about what she had said.
Then he picked up his pen and went back to work.
Upstairs, somewhere above him, he could hear Elena moving around in her room.
He put the pen down.
Picked it up again and was about to drop it back on the desk but he was upset, he was stressed, there was a lot of weight on him right now and he needed to vent. He threw the pen at the wall close by and growled before looking down and rubbing his temples.
"What the fuckkkkk!!" He cursed in irritation.