The interview room on the fifty-ninth floor was everything the lobby promised.
Long. Precise. A glass wall overlooking Milan that on any other day Rosalina might have found breathtaking. Today she barely glanced at it.
Three people sat behind the table.
A woman in her fifties with silver hair and reading glasses — HR director, Rosalina guessed. A younger man with a tablet who hadn't looked up since she entered. And a third person, middle aged, who was already studying her with the careful attention of someone whose job was to find problems.
Clara had shown her to the door, squeezed her arm once — a small warm gesture that Rosalina was more grateful for than she could say — and left.
Now it was just her and the panel and the extraordinary view of Milan she was pretending not to need.
"Miss Evans." The silver haired woman gestured to the single chair across the table. "Please sit. I'm Signora Ferretti, Head of Human Resources. This is Mr. Romano from operations and Miss Conti from executive administration."
"Thank you." Rosalina sat. Folded her hands. Smiled.
Signora Ferretti opened a folder. "Your CV is impressive for your age. You managed your own household from nineteen, worked three jobs simultaneously through your final year of university, graduated with honours." She looked up. "You are clearly not afraid of hard work."
"No," Rosalina said simply. "I'm not."
"This position is unlike standard PA roles," Mr. Romano said, finally looking up from his tablet. "Mr. Salvatore runs multiple operations simultaneously. The pace is relentless. The hours are long. Discretion is not a preference — it is an absolute requirement. Nothing that happens inside this company or this family leaves these walls. Ever."
Rosalina held his gaze steadily. "I understand completely."
"Do you?" Miss Conti leaned forward slightly. "Because we have had assistants leave within the first week. Not because they lacked skill. Because they underestimated what this environment requires."
The room was very quiet.
Rosalina thought about Brian. About the hospital bills stacked neatly in the drawer she tried not to open too often. About her mother's voice telling her she was too expressive, too loud, too much.
She thought about how she had learned to be exactly enough anyway.
"I don't underestimate easily," she said. "And I don't quit."
Something moved across Signora Ferretti's face. Not quite a smile but close enough.
The questions continued for forty minutes. Scheduling conflicts. Crisis management scenarios. Confidentiality situations. How would she handle a cancelled international meeting with twenty minutes notice? How would she prioritise three simultaneous urgent requests? Had she ever worked for a high pressure executive before?
Rosalina answered everything honestly. Some answers were perfect. Some were imperfect and she said so, explaining what she would do differently. She did not pretend to be flawless.
Clara had told her to be exactly who she was.
So she was.
When Signora Ferretti finally closed her folder and looked up there was a pause that lasted just long enough to make Rosalina's heart rate do something unreasonable.
"Miss Evans," she said. "Please wait outside. We won't be long."
She waited on a chair in the corridor and looked at Milan through the floor to ceiling windows.
Sixty floors of glass and steel and the city spread out below like something that had been arranged specifically to be looked at. The Duomo in the distance. The grid of streets. The life happening far below that had no idea she was up here trying not to visibly panic.
Brian, she thought. Just think about Brian.
The door opened.
"Miss Evans." Signora Ferretti stood in the doorway. "Welcome to Salvatore Group. You start Monday."
Rosalina's breath left her body all at once.
She stood. Shook the woman's hand. Said thank you with a voice that came out steadier than she had any right to expect.
It was only in the elevator — alone, rising toward the sixtieth floor where Clara was taking her to be formally introduced to Mr. Salvatore — that she pressed her back against the wall and allowed herself exactly five seconds of complete private joy.
She had done it.
Brian was going to be okay.
She straightened up before the doors opened.
The sixtieth floor was different from everything below it.
Quieter. The air itself seemed to change — heavier somehow, more deliberate. The corridor was wide and dark panelled and at the end of it sat a single desk where a young man was typing with focused efficiency.
Clara spoke to him briefly then turned to Rosalina.
"Mr. Salvatore will see you now." Her voice was warm but her eyes carried a small specific message. Remember what I told you.
Rosalina remembered.
Don't take the silences personally. Be exactly who you are.
The young man pressed a button. The large double doors at the end of the corridor opened silently.
Rosalina walked in.
The office was enormous.
One entire wall was glass — sixty floors of Milan spread out beyond it like Enzo Salvatore had simply decided to own the view along with everything else. The furniture was dark and precise. A sitting area to the left. Bookshelves that actually had books on them — real ones, worn ones. A bar cart with crystal glasses catching the afternoon light.
And behind the desk at the centre of it all — him.
He was on the phone.
He did not look up when she entered.
Rosalina stood near the door and waited. She used the time to breathe and to notice things because noticing things was what she did whether she wanted to or not.
He was younger than she had expected. That was the first thing. She had imagined someone older — the weight of everything she had read about the Salvatore name had translated in her mind into someone with grey at his temples and a face carved by decades.
But he was young. Twenty-seven at most. Dark haired, the kind of dark that was almost blue-black in the afternoon light. Broad shouldered in a suit that fit him the way expensive things fit people who were made for them. Tattoos visible at his collar and along the back of his left hand where it rested on the desk.
Then he looked up.
And Rosalina Evans, who was not easily startled by anything, felt her next breath arrive slightly late.
His eyes were green.
Not the ordinary green that appeared in catalogues and colour charts. Something rarer than that — deep and still and layered, the kind of green you found in old Italian paintings where the artist had clearly been trying to capture something just beyond the reach of paint. Framed by dark lashes that had absolutely no business existing on a face that was already doing too much.
He was, in the simplest possible terms, the most handsome man she had ever seen in her life.
He was also looking at her with an expression that suggested he found the concept of her presence mildly inconvenient.
He said something brief into the phone in Italian and ended the call.
Silence.
"Miss Evans." His voice was low. Not loud. The kind of voice that had learned it didn't need volume to command a room.
"Yes." She kept her voice steady. "Thank you for the opportunity Mr. Salvatore. I won't disappoint you."
He looked at her for a moment with those impossible green eyes — the way you look at something you haven't decided about yet.
"See that you don't." He glanced back down at the papers on his desk. "Clara will brief you on everything you need to know before Monday. You may go."
Just like that. Dismissed. As though she had already stopped being interesting — if she had ever started.
Rosalina nodded once, turned, and walked back toward the door with her spine straight and her face composed.
She was almost through it when his voice came again.
"Miss Evans."
She turned.
He hadn't looked up.
"Monday. Seven a.m. I don't repeat myself on punctuality."
"Understood," she said.
She walked out.
The doors closed silently behind her.
In the elevator going down Clara looked at her carefully. "How did it go?"
Rosalina thought about green eyes that gave nothing away. About a voice that didn't need to be loud. About the particular quality of being looked at like a variable in an equation that hadn't been solved yet.
"Fine," she said.
Clara smiled like she knew exactly what fine meant.
"You'll be alright," she said quietly. "I have a feeling about you."
The elevator descended.
Rosalina looked at her own reflection in the mirrored doors and made herself a quiet promise.
Whatever this man was — ruthless, cold, impossible — she was going to do this job perfectly.
Brian was counting on her.
That was all that mattered.
*******