Julie takes me around to another set of elevators and into the management offices on the upper floor. When we step through the door, someone looks up from her desk.
“I stopped by that cafe we like, and I brought you—oh!Who’s this?” The woman’s pitying expression makes me want to sink into the floor.
“Renee, meet Minerva. She’s Dante’s goddaughter.” Julie points to the wax paper bag and the smoothie, alone in a cardboard carrying tray, that sits on the edge of Renee’s desk. “Is that for me?”
“It’s a green goddess smoothie and a kouign-amann.” Renee peers at me with interest. She probably can’t believe that the Giovanettis are affiliated with someone you can smell from fifty yards away. To her credit, she takes my appearance in stride. “Should I have his assistant put his other appointments on hold?”
“Please do.” Julie scoops up the bag and the drink. She turns to me. “Minerva, I should warn you, he’s probably yelling at someone.”
“Or talking about ‘the magic.’” Renee makes air quotes. She and Julie both roll their eyes.
I’m taken aback by their attitude. Women don’t tease men like that in my world. In my world, everything said near a man has consequences. I’ve never heard my mother make fun of my father. Frankie can get away with being a brat, but the rest of us walk on eggshells, even when he’s not in the room.
“Just ignore him,” Renee says, her voice muted with sympathy.
“He loves the sound of his own voice,” Julie adds.
Ignore him?He’s a lifelong friend of my father’s. These are men who aren’t used to hearing the word no. Both women are watching me, though, so I bob my head in silent agreement.
“Come along, then.” Julie pushes through another door into Dante’s private office.
Dante Giovanetti is an imposing man, but age has softened the hard edges of his aura. His hair has gone almost entirely gray, and his posture is less intimidating, but he still wears the tailor-made dove-gray suits I remember from my childhood. A massive desk dominates the room, surrounded by pictures of Dante shaking hands with various people, and a massive giclee print of the Vegas Venom huddled around the Stanley Cup. Their last win was almost thirty years ago, and the Dante in the photo is much younger than the man seated before me now.
“Hey, sunshine. Got a situation.” Julie strides toward the desk.
Dante lifts his head. “If this is about the cappuccino machine again, I swear to Christ—”
Julie interrupts. “It’s about Minerva.”
The lines around Dante’s mouth ease when he sees me. “Well, well, well, look who finally came in from the VIP parking.”
Julie’s nostrils flare. “Wait. You knew she was out there?”
“Of course, I knew. I know everything. There’s CCTV out there, so I knew nobody was bothering her. And I knew she’d eventually come to me for help.”
I clear my throat, tired of being talked about rather than acknowledged directly. “To be clear, Julie brought me.”
Dante’s gaze traces down to the carrier clenched in my fist. “You and your rat. Right.”
“Kepler’s a ferret.”
“Minerva, please have a seat and put downKepler’scarrier.” Julie nods to one of the two available chairs. As soon as I’m seated, she passes me the bag and the beverage. “Have these. You look like you could use some real food.”
I take a slurp of the smoothie and almost groan with relief. Julie settles herself in the other chair, and the pair of them watch me tear into the buttery, flaky, sweet-bottomed pastry. It’s like a croissant, but better. I would happily eat ten of these.
I’m still brushing pastry flakes off my shirt when Dante asks, “So, still not going to marry that goon?”
Julie’s eyebrows shoot up. She must not have known about Luca.
I curl back into the chair, gripping the smoothie in both hands, and shake my head. “I can’t.”
“You could,” Dante corrects. “But you won’t. Because you don’t love him?”
“Because he’sawful.” My hands clench around the drink until the plastic cup crackles. “He’s worse than awful. I’d rather eat Tide Pods than marry him. That’s why my father told me to figure things out on my own. So I am. I’m trying. I promise I’m trying.”
“That’s enough.” Julie reaches for me. If my mother were saying those words, they’d be harsh and would probably be followed by a slap across the face. Julie, however, sounds sympathetic. She rubs my shoulder a few times. “If you don’t want to marry him, that’s good enough for us.”
I bite back a sob. “I’ve been trying to find a job, I promise, but nobody calls back. I’m weird. People think I’m weird. They don’t hire weird.”
