Two months.
It had been exactly two months since Rosalina Evans had walked into the Salvatore Group headquarters with her spine straight and her heart doing something unreasonable and her best friend's voice in her head saying just be exactly who you are.
Two months of black coffee and specific silences and four word praise delivered to the top of pages. Two months of Giorgio and his glasses and Matteo arriving unannounced with pastries and Aiden causing gentle chaos wherever he stood. Two months of learning the rhythms of the sixtieth floor until they felt, almost without her noticing, like her own.
Two months of Enzo Salvatore.
She was still deciding what to do with that last part.
Her phone rang at six forty on Tuesday morning while she was still in bed staring at the ceiling doing her usual three seconds of lying still before the day started with her.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Miss Evans." Giorgio's voice was its usual efficient self, unbothered by the hour. "Mr. Salvatore won't be coming into the office today. He'll be working from home and he needs you at the villa. Bring your laptop and the Ferrara files. Jeremy will be at your door at eight thirty."
She sat up.
"The villa," she said.
"Yes."
"His villa."
"That is the one he lives in," Giorgio said, with the patience of a man who had answered stranger questions. "Eight thirty Miss Evans. Don't be late."
He ended the call.
Rosalina sat in the quiet of her bedroom for exactly five seconds.
Then she got up and went to get ready.
She had decided on dark trousers and a cream blouse — professional but not overdressed, because she was going to a man's home and there was a version of overdressed that sent messages she had no intention of sending — when Betty appeared in her doorway with the expression of someone who had been awake for exactly long enough to be dangerous.
"Where are you going?" Betty said. "It's Tuesday."
"Work."
"You're doing your hair."
"I always do my hair."
"You're doing it differently." Betty leaned against the doorframe with her arms folded and the slow smile of a woman assembling information. "Where is work today?"
Rosalina clipped the last section of her hair into place and looked at her reflection.
"His house," she said. In the tone of someone making a purely factual observation about weather or road conditions.
Betty's arms unfolded.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Whose house?"
"He's working from home. He needs files. Giorgio called."
"ROSALINA."
"It's a professional visit Betty."
"TO HIS HOUSE."
"To his home office. Which is in his house. Which is a place where work happens."
Betty pointed at her. "You are doing your hair differently."
"I am doing my hair the same way I always—"
"DIFFERENTLY."
From down the corridor Brian's voice floated toward them with the timing of someone who had been listening since the beginning. "Just let her go Betty."
"You stay out of this!" Betty called back. Then to Rosalina, lower: "You're going to his house. His actual house. Where he lives. Where there is no Giorgio as a buffer and no glass wall between you and—"
"Betty." Rosalina turned from the mirror and picked up her laptop bag. "It is work. I am going to work. At a different location."
Betty looked at her for a long moment.
"Mm," she said.
"That's not a response."
"It's everything I need to say," Betty said. "Text me when you get there."
Jeremy arrived at eight twenty-eight.
He was exactly as he always was — unhurried, silver haired, with the calm face and quiet eyes of a man who had been doing this long enough that nothing surprised him. He opened the rear door of the black Mercedes the moment she stepped outside and said good morning Miss Evans with the same warm professionalism he always used and gave absolutely no indication that today was anything other than a normal Tuesday.
Rosalina appreciated this enormously.
The drive took forty minutes.
She watched Milan move past the window — the city giving way gradually to wider roads and older trees and the kind of quiet that existed on the edges of things, where the noise of the centre couldn't quite reach. The morning light was pale and clean and did something soft to everything it touched.
She reviewed the Ferrara files on her laptop and did not think about where she was going.
She thought about it twice.
Then the gates appeared.
They were exactly as she might have imagined — iron and heavy and entirely serious about themselves, the kind of gates that said without any ambiguity that the person who lived here had decided a long time ago exactly who was and was not welcome. Security personnel stood at intervals along the perimeter — unhurried, methodical, the way men moved when vigilance was simply a habit and not a performance.
She counted four of them before the car had fully passed through the gates.
Then she counted two more along the eastern wall.
Then the villa appeared and she stopped counting.
It rose from the grounds the way old things rose — like it had always been there and simply expected the world to arrange itself accordingly. Stone walls and dark wood and high windows that caught the morning light and held it. Ivy creeping along one side. Gardens that were beautiful without trying. The kind of house that had been lived in across generations and intended to continue.
It was, in the simplest possible terms, extraordinary.
Rosalina looked at it through the window and thought about the small apartment with the two bedrooms and the third burner that didn't work and the windows that let in more noise than light.
She thought about Brian at the kitchen table with his apple slices.
She turned back to her files.
Jeremy pulled smoothly up to the front entrance and opened her door.
"I'll be here whenever you need me Miss Evans," he said.
"Thank you Jeremy," she said.
She straightened her spine — the old habit, the one she no longer noticed — picked up her laptop bag and walked to the door.
She pressed the bell once.
The door opened almost immediately.
Nanny Martha was small and warm and had the kind of face that made you feel in the first three seconds of looking at it that everything was going to be fine. Her hair was neatly tucked back, her apron already on, and the smile she gave Rosalina was so genuinely welcoming that Rosalina felt something unknot slowly in her chest that she hadn't realised was knotted.
"You must be Rosalina," Martha said warmly, stepping back to let her in. "Enzo told me you would be coming today. Come in, come in."
Rosalina stepped inside.
The entrance hall was everything the outside had promised — high ceilings, dark stone floors that had been there longer than anyone currently walking on them, hallways that led somewhere important. The smell of something good drifting from deeper in the house. The quiet of a home that was entirely at ease with itself.
"I finally managed to get that stubborn boy to take a rest," Martha added with a smile that contained decades of loving exasperation. "But of course he insisted on working from home." She shook her head warmly. "That boy. He was born working I think."
Rosalina smiled. "He does seem dedicated."
"Dedicated." Martha laughed softly. "That's a kind word for it." She gestured toward the living room. "Come and sit dear. I'll go and get him for you." She paused and looked at Rosalina properly — the warm assessing look of a woman who noticed everything and had strong feelings about what she saw. "You look so lovely."
"Thank you," Rosalina said, relieved that Martha had finally given her a moment to contribute to the conversation.
Martha disappeared up the staircase.
Rosalina set her laptop bag down and looked around.
The living room was enormous.
Not corporate enormous or cold enormous but the kind of enormous that happened when a space had been lived in long enough to become entirely itself. Deep sofas with cushions that had been sat against many times. A fireplace with a worn leather chair nearest to it — shaped by years of the same person sitting in the same spot. Bookshelves lined with real books, worn ones, the kind that had been read rather than arranged. Photographs along one wall that she didn't let herself look at too long because that felt like something that required permission.
She was still taking it all in when Martha reappeared at the top of the staircase, moving back down with the unhurried efficiency of a woman on familiar ground.
"He'll be down in a moment," Martha said warmly, settling herself near the kitchen doorway. Then she looked at Rosalina with the comfortable ease of someone who saw no reason not to say what she was thinking. "What do you think of the house?"
"It's beautiful," Rosalina said honestly. "It's — very grand. I wasn't expecting it to feel so much like a home."
Martha smiled — the deep satisfied smile of someone who had worked hard to make something exactly what it was and was glad it showed. "That's because it is a home. Has been for a very long time." She folded her hands comfortably. "Mr. Romano — Enzo's father — he grew up in this villa. His own father built it." A fond pause. "When Enzo took over the family business and moved back to Milan, Mr. Romano passed the villa to him. Said the eldest Salvatore should always have the family house." She looked around the room with quiet affection. "Enzo didn't change a single thing. Not one."
Rosalina looked around the room again with that information sitting quietly in her chest.
The worn chair by the fireplace. The photographs on the wall. The books on the shelves that had been read by hands she would never know.
He hadn't changed a single thing.
She filed that away carefully in the folder she was always adding to — the one she had labelled things that are not her business and kept opening anyway.
She was about to say something to Martha when something warm and wet touched her foot.
She looked down.
He was enormous.
A Cane Corso built like something from a different century — all dark colouring and muscle and quiet authority. He looked up at her from the floor with steady dark eyes that were assessing her the way everything in this house assessed things — carefully, without rush, making up its own mind.
Then he licked her foot.
Rosalina laughed.
A real laugh, surprised completely out of her. She crouched down and held out her hand and the dog pushed his great head into her palm like he had been waiting for exactly this and had simply been patient about it.
"You must be Bam," she said warmly, scratching behind his ears. "Giorgio told me about you."
Bam leaned into her hand and made a sound low in his chest that was entirely content.
She was still laughing and scratching behind his ears when she heard a sharp intake of breath from the staircase.
Martha stood halfway down with both hands pressed to her cheeks and an expression of complete astonishment on her face.
"Oh my goodness," she breathed. "You must be really something special." She shook her head slowly. "Bam is always harsh to strangers — always. He barks, he growls, he makes it very clear he does not want you near him." Her eyes were wide. "And look at him."
Rosalina looked at Bam, who was currently attempting to put his enormous head in her lap.
"I guess we just understood each other," she said.
"I guess you did," said a voice from the top of the staircase.
Low. Even. Entirely familiar.
And Rosalina looked up.
She had prepared herself for off duty Enzo.
She had told herself in the car on the way here that he was simply a person who existed outside of the office and that this was not remarkable and she was a professional and professionals did not stand in men's living rooms noticing things like —
Dark joggers. A dark sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to the elbow, the tattoos along his forearms entirely visible in the morning light. Ugg slides on his feet with the unbothered ease of a man who was in his own home and had no intention of pretending otherwise. His hair not yet arranged into its usual precision. The faintest shadow along his jaw that the office version of him never permitted.
He looked nothing like the man behind the desk on the sixtieth floor.
He looked like himself. Actually, entirely himself. The version that existed when the building wasn't waiting for him and there was nowhere to be and no one to perform precision for.
He was coming down the staircase with his hands in his pockets and those green eyes already on her and she was crouched on the floor of his living room with his dog's enormous head in her lap and absolutely no dignified way to recover from any of this.
He reached the bottom of the staircase.
Looked at her.
Then at Bam, settled against her like he had known her his whole life.
Then back at her with an expression she had no existing folder for.
"Take a picture Miss Evans," he said. "It will last longer."
Rosalina stood up.
Looked at the floor.
"Good morning sir," she said, in the perfectly composed voice of someone who had not been doing anything at all.
A pause.
"Morning." His voice was the same as always — low, even — but something in it was different here. Looser. Like a coat worn open instead of buttoned. "Are you with your laptop?"
"Yes," she said.
He looked at Bam, who had repositioned himself beside Rosalina's feet with the settled certainty of someone who had made a decision and saw no reason to revisit it.
Enzo crouched — unhurried, easy — and ran both hands along Bam's broad head with the gentle thoroughness of a man who meant it completely.
"My sweet boy," he said quietly.
Bam's tail moved.
Rosalina looked at the bookshelf.
"Breakfast is ready," Martha announced from the kitchen doorway with the calm authority of a woman who considered this entirely non-negotiable. "Both of you. Dining room. Now."
"I already ate," Rosalina said quickly. "Thank you so much Martha I really—"
"A little more won't hurt," Martha said warmly, already moving. "Come."
"I genuinely ate before I left the—"
"Miss Evans."
She looked at Enzo.
He was looking back at her with that unreadable green gaze and something that was not quite amusement but lived very close to it.
"Just eat," he said simply. "I don't bite."
Martha looked extremely satisfied with this and disappeared back toward the kitchen.
Rosalina picked up her laptop bag.
"After you sir," she said.
The dining room was warm and bright and Martha had set the table with the comfortable efficiency of someone who had been doing this for decades and found genuine satisfaction in every part of it.
Bam settled beside Rosalina's chair before she had fully sat down.
She looked at him. He looked at her. She gave him a small piece of her toast.
Around the table two members of the household staff moved quietly — collecting things, refilling things — and both of them, within thirty seconds of watching Bam plant himself beside the new guest and accept food from her hand with complete devotion, had found reasons to glance over. Their expressions ranged from mild surprise to something considerably more interested than that.
Enzo ate across from her in the comfortable silence of a man in his own home with nowhere to be for exactly this long. He drank his coffee — black, no sugar, the same as always — and read something on his phone with his usual focused attention.
Rosalina ate her toast and fed Bam and did not look at the staff looking at her.
It was a very strange Tuesday morning.
It was also — she filed this away carefully and did not examine it — not entirely unpleasant.
The home office was on the ground floor at the end of the east corridor.
It was large and dark-walled and organised with the same precision as his office on the sixtieth floor — documents in their place, nothing unnecessary, a desk positioned so that the grounds were always visible through the window. Different from the office but unmistakably his. The same quality of deliberate order. The same sense of a man who knew exactly where everything was and why.
They worked well.
That was the thing she had learned about working with Enzo Salvatore — once the rhythm was established it moved with almost effortless efficiency. She anticipated, he directed, documents passed between them with the clean ease of two people who had learned each other's pace without either of them deciding to.
An hour in he looked up from the contract in front of him.
"The projection breakdown on page nine," he said. "Show me on your screen."
She turned her laptop toward him.
He leaned in to look.
This was the moment she had not entirely prepared for — not because it was remarkable, objectively it was two professionals looking at a screen together — but because the home office was smaller than his office on the sixtieth floor, and the desk was smaller than his desk at work, and when he leaned in the distance between them became —
Closer than necessary.
She could see the tattoos along his forearm properly from here. Dark and precise, disappearing beneath the pushed-up sleeve of his sweatshirt. His hair this close had that same blue-black quality it had in candlelight. He smelled like coffee and something clean and entirely his own and she was absolutely looking at the screen.
"The Q4 variance," she said. Her voice came out steady. She was quietly proud of that.
"Here." He reached across and pointed at a figure. His hand was close to hers on the keyboard. Not touching. Just — close. The way things became close when space ran out and neither person moved away from it.
She looked at the figure.
"The eleven percent drop," she said. "It's seasonal. It corrects itself every Q1 without any intervention."
He was quiet for a moment.
She was very aware of how quiet it was.
"You pulled the historical data," he said.
"Last night," she said. "I thought it might come up."
Another pause. The specific kind. Occupied.
She could feel the moment his attention shifted — from the screen to her — without looking at him directly. She had learned to feel that. It was a particular quality of stillness that happened when Enzo Salvatore stopped thinking about the work and started thinking about something else entirely.
"It's consistent," he said finally. "Across four years."
"Five," she said. "I went back five."
He looked at her.
At close range. Those green eyes doing what they always did at close range — layered and still and entirely too much to look at directly for more than a moment without something happening in her chest that she had no intention of documenting.
She looked at the screen.
He straightened.
The room exhaled.
His phone rang.
He looked at the screen, said excuse me in the low even voice of a man who meant it as an actual apology — which was new, she noted, filed it immediately — and stepped out into the corridor.
Rosalina sat for exactly three seconds in the quiet of the home office.
Then she took a long slow breath and looked out of the window at the grounds.
Professional, she told herself firmly. Entirely and completely professional.
She was going to need just a moment.
He came back in seven minutes.
She had used them well — composure fully restored, documents reorganised, a note added to the projection file that had everything to do with being useful and nothing whatsoever to do with recovering herself.
He stood in the doorway for a moment before crossing back to the desk.
"Miss Evans."
She looked up.
"I have to travel to Spain tomorrow." He said it with his usual directness, no buildup. "A conference meeting. Two days." He looked at her steadily. "You'll be attending as my PA. Jeremy will collect you first thing tomorrow morning and bring you to the hangar."
She looked at him.
"The hangar," she said.
"My jet." Stated simply. The way you stated facts that required no further explanation.
She held that for one second.
"Understood," she said.
"Pack for two nights. Bring the full Ferrara breakdown — there's a dinner with the Barcelona team on the second evening and I'll need everything prepared."
"I'll have it all ready tonight."
He nodded once and looked back at his documents.
Rosalina turned back to her screen.
Spain, she thought.
His jet.
Two days.
She typed a note into the Ferrara file with the focused composure of a woman who was absolutely not thinking about any of that.
The rest of the day passed the way productive days passed — quickly and without incident, if you didn't count the moment at three fifteen when Bam abandoned his position by the fireplace and came to sit directly on her feet under the desk. She didn't count that. She had decided not to.
At five thirty she closed her laptop and gathered her things.
Enzo was still working. He was always still working.
She straightened her papers and was reaching for her bag when Martha appeared in the home office doorway with the warm persistence of a woman who had been planning this moment since approximately lunchtime.
"Rosa dear," she said gently. "You haven't had dinner. Stay — I've made more than enough and it would make me so happy to—"
"Martha." Enzo looked up from his desk.
Martha looked at him calmly.
"Don't force it," he said. Not unkindly. Simply final, the way he was final about things. "She has to get home."
Martha considered this. Then she looked at Rosalina with warm eyes that were filing something away rather than letting anything go.
"Alright," she said quietly. Then she crossed to Rosalina and took both her hands warmly in hers. "Rosa dear. Goodnight. You take care of yourself on your way home." A gentle squeeze. "I hope to see you more often."
Something warm moved through Rosalina's chest.
"Thank you Martha," she said quietly. "You've been so kind."
Martha smiled — the full deep smile of a woman who had made her assessment and was entirely happy with it — and went back toward the kitchen.
Rosalina picked up her laptop bag.
Bam padded after her all the way to the entrance hall and sat beside her feet while she put on her coat — steady and certain and completely unbothered about what anyone thought of his loyalties.
She heard footsteps behind her.
She turned.
Enzo stood in the entrance hall with his hands in the pockets of his dark joggers — unhurried, as though seeing her to the door was simply the next thing that happened and needed no explanation.
"Goodnight Miss Evans," he said. "Jeremy will drop you home and collect you tomorrow morning." A pause — small, deliberate. "Pack some sweaters. It's cold in Spain at the moment."
She looked at him.
At the easy stillness of him in his own home. At the green eyes that gave nothing away and had somehow, across two months, started giving just enough that she noticed.
"Alright sir," she said. "Goodnight."
She walked out into the cool evening air.
Jeremy was exactly where he always was.
The apartment was warm and loud and smelled like Betty had been cooking again.
Rosalina pushed open the door and had approximately three seconds before Betty looked up from the stove, read her face with the complete accuracy of someone who had known her for a very long time, and put down her wooden spoon.
"Well?" Betty said.
"I'm going to Spain tomorrow," Rosalina said.
The wooden spoon hit the counter.
"SPAIN."
"Work trip. Two days. Conference meeting."
"ON HIS JET?"
"It's how he travels Betty."
Brian appeared in the kitchen doorway with his controller in his hand and his eyebrows somewhere near his hairline. "You're going to Spain?"
"For work."
"On a private jet?"
"Brian—"
"That's actually so cool Rosie."
"It is work," she said firmly, to both of them at once.
Betty pointed at her. "You are going to Spain. On a private jet. With the most handsome man in Milan who has the green eyes and the tattoos and the—"
"He runs legitimate companies—"
"ROSALINA."
"It. Is. Work."
Betty looked at Brian.
Brian looked at Betty.
"She's going there to work," Brian said, very seriously.
"Completely just work," Betty agreed, with equal seriousness.
"Stop it both of you," Rosalina said.
They both smiled at exactly the same time.
She gave up.
Betty helped her pack.
She was efficient about it — practical and focused, pulling things from the wardrobe with the energy of someone who had a clear vision and intended to execute it properly. Two good work outfits. One dinner outfit, because there was a dinner and Betty had feelings about this that she expressed entirely through careful folding. Comfortable shoes. Her good coat.
And sweaters.
Betty picked up the first one and folded it with deliberate slowness.
"He told you to pack sweaters," she said. Conversationally. As though this was just something she was mentioning.
"He told me about the weather conditions of a work trip destination."
"He thought about whether you would be cold."
"Betty—"
"I'm just noting it," she said serenely. "Not saying anything. Just noting."
Rosalina said nothing.
Betty folded the second sweater.
"Noted," she added quietly, and smiled at the bag.
Brian appeared in the doorway in his pyjamas with his book tucked under his arm and his easy face entirely unbothered by the world.
"Have fun," he said.
"I'm going there to work," Rosalina said.
"Sure." He crossed over and kissed her cheek with the casual warmth of a twelve year old who had decided to be the mature one about this. "Have fun Rosie."
She watched him pad back towards the other room — unhurried, easy, the colour in his face good tonight. Really good.
She was going to fix it. She was going to give him everything he needed.
This job. This strange, demanding, impossible job with its private jets and its specific silences and the man who told her to pack sweaters because he had thought about whether she would be cold in Spain.
She was going to make every single day of it count.
"Okay," Betty said, zipping the bag with quiet satisfaction. "You're ready."
Rosalina looked at her packed bag. At the sweaters folded neatly on top.
She thought about the villa and the worn leather chair and the photographs on the wall and the dog who had chosen her without being asked.
She thought about green eyes at close range and a voice that said excuse me like it cost something.
"Ready," she said quietly.
And somewhere underneath all the professionalism and the composure and the two months of carefully filing things under irrelevant —
She was almost certain she meant it.
*******