"You're doing it exceptionally well. That's worth acknowledging." I returned to my desk, settling into my chair like a throne. "Same time next week. We'll review the strategy then."
He left without responding.
I sat alone in my office and thought about the way he'd reacted when I touched him. The way his pupils had dilated. The way he'd held himself so carefully still, like any movement might shatter whatever control he was clinging to.
Emilio Rossi was attracted to me. Hated himself for it, probably. But attraction was attraction, regardless of how inconvenient or inappropriate.
I could work with that.
I pulled up the background check my investigator had compiled. Read through it again, this time looking for different details. Where Emilio went when he wasn't working. Who he talked to. What he did with the hours between professional obligations.
He went home to his shitty studio apartment. Ate takeout. Worked late. Occasionally met friends for drinks but never stayed long. He was lonely and trying to hide it. Isolated by choice and circumstance.
Perfect.
My phone buzzed. Matteo asking how the meeting went. I ignored it and opened my laptop instead. Pulled up Emilio's financial records—the ones my people had acquired through means he'd probably consider illegal.
Student loans: $180,000. Credit card debt: $12,000. Divorce settlement: $30,000 paid, $20,000 still owed. Monthly income: barely enough to cover expenses.
He was drowning. One emergency away from bankruptcy. And I was his lifeline.
I made a note to have one of my shell companies pay off his smallest credit card. Make it look like a balance transfer he'd forgotten about. See if he noticed. See what he did if he did notice.
I was going to corrupt Emilio Rossi. Not quickly—that would be crude and ineffective. Slowly. Carefully. With preciseapplications of money and power and attention. Until he looked at me and saw not a monster but a solution. Not a client but something more complicated.
Until he chose me. Not because he had to, but because I'd shaped him into someone who wanted to.
The game had started in that courtroom. Emilio just didn't know it yet.
I returned to my work, reviewing the embezzlement evidence with half my attention while the other half remained fixed on the memory of Emilio's sharp intake of breath when I'd touched his tie.
This was going to be interesting.
And I had always appreciated a challenge worth my time.
CHAPTER 3: EMILIO
THE PARKING GARAGEwas half-empty at 3:30 PM. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Somewhere in the distance, an engine turned over and failed to catch. I sat behind the wheel of my Honda with my briefcase on the passenger seat and my heart trying to punch through my ribcage.
I know everything about you, Emilio.
Sandro Vitale had said it so casually. Like having my entire life investigated was simply due diligence. Like knowing about my divorce and my debt and my desperation was just good business practice.
That makes you useful to me. But it also makes you vulnerable.
I'd run. That's what I'd done. Gathered my things and fled his office like a coward, and he'd let me go with that small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Like he'd expected it. Like watching me retreat was exactly the reaction he'd wanted.
My tie felt too tight. The same tie he'd straightened with those long fingers, leaning into my space until I could smell his cologne—something expensive and subtle that probably cost more per bottle than my rent. Cedar and leather and something darker I couldn't name.
I loosened the knot and tried to breathe normally.
This was fine. This was just a client meeting. Establishing ground rules. Getting information for the defense. Everything had been perfectly professional except for the part wherehe'd touched me and I'd stopped breathing like some virginal protagonist in a Victorian novel.
Except for the part where I'd wanted him to touch me again.
"Fuck," I said to my empty car.
I drove home on autopilot, navigating rush hour traffic without really seeing it. My apartment building looked even more depressing than usual in the afternoon light. Peeling paint on the exterior. A broken window on the second floor that the landlord kept promising to fix. The kind of place you lived when you had no other options.
