When she reached my desk, she stopped.
I wondered briefly if this was another practiced move, or if she was improvising now. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. But I felt it—the pull in my chest, the irritation mixing dangerously with something I refused to name. Something I had no business feeling at all.
And yet there it was.
I arched a brow. “Satisfied?”
She shrugged, tipping her head, still smiling. “Guess we’ll see. He’s going to look for a match.”
A muscle in my jaw ticked.
“He’s taking suggestions,” she added. “I told him to pick someone my age this time. Cillian was a bit old for me.”
Something about that sentence made my fingers flex against the desk.
I didn’t like thinking about her and Cillian together. Didn’t like picturing his hands on her—rough, greedy, taking what he wanted because he knew she wouldn’t say no. Or worse, imagining her willingly giving herself over to him, letting him believe he’d won her with charm instead of a checkbook.
“Most men pushing fifty usually are,” I said evenly. “Didn’t seem to bother you when you married him.”
“We all make sacrifices, Marco. Some of us marry them, others just work for them.”
Before I could say anything, she lifted her purse higher onto her shoulder and stepped back.
“See you around,abogado.”
CHAPTER 18
VALENTINA
The first guy Max tried to set me up with worked in finance.
Of course he did.
There wasn’t much to the guy. His name was ordinary. Ryan. He was clean-cut and Ivy League. He seemed like the kind of guy who had a Peloton in his apartment and liked podcasts about the collapse of cryptocurrency.
He smiled so much I wondered if something was wrong with him—or worse, me. Was there something on my face, or was it just fun to be a bore?
I didn’t care much for him, but he did take me to an overpriced steakhouse. I fully intended to eat my way through his pockets as payment for having to listen to him.
“So I started in investment banking, but, you know, that world is cutthroat. I needed something more sustainable.” He took a sip of his drink. “Real-estate investing is where it’s at. That’s the move. Asset-backed security.”
“That so?” I said, leaning my chin in my palm, bored out of my damn mind.
“Absolutely.” He seemed oblivious to my blatant disinterest. “Diversification, risk management—it’s all about making your money work for you.”
I hummed. “Sounds thrilling.”
He grinned. “You joke, but it really is. You should get into it.”
“I’ll think about it.”
And by “think about it,” I meant I’d rather walk barefoot over broken glass than willingly listen to another minute of this guy’s finance TED Talk.
He smiled again. It was starting to creep me out. Did finance bros learn to smile like that, wide and constant, to make up for the gaping hole where their personality should’ve been?
My gaze drifted from my plate over to his. The guy had ordered a salad. At a steakhouse. Who did that? He’d come to a place famous for prime cuts, juicy steaks, and he’d willingly picked kale off the menu?
Sasha probably did that too.
