In Love With My Ex's Cousin

CHAPTER TWENTY

Luca

Tuesday did not require him at Riverside.

That was the arrangement. Elena would meet the installer on Wednesday. The desk had access. The short tracks were a workshop problem, not a reason for him to stand in an empty room at eight-thirty in the morning.

He went to the office at seven-fifty and stayed there.

The Singapore delay had become a revised date and a paragraph of language that still tried to call the delay prudence. He stripped the paragraph, sent it back, and took the next meeting without raising his voice. People listened anyway. They usually did.

At ten Matteo called.

“The chair is in Mother’s corner and she hates it,” Matteo said. “Which means we put it in the correct place.”

“Good.”

“Don’t be dry. Sunday didn’t kill you.” A pause. “Come down to the lobby. I’m here.”

Luca looked at the time. “I have a call at ten-fifteen.”

“Then you have fourteen minutes to tell me to go away in person. I’m already in the building.”

He went down because Matteo in the lobby was worse than Matteo on the phone. The ground floor of Moretti Holdings was glass and pale stone and a security desk that knew Matteo’s face well enough not to stop him. Matteo stood near the doors with two coffees, as if coffee could still pass for an apology.

He held one out. Luca did not take it.

“I’m not here about the firm,” Matteo said. “I’m here because you look like a man who thinks one outing fulfills a yearly quota.”

“It does.”

Matteo laughed, then stopped. “Adrian said the installer is this week.”

Luca kept his face still. “Adrian talks too much.”

“Adrian talks just enough. Curtains, Luca. You’re putting curtains in a house you don’t live in. That’s either progress or a cry for help.”

“It’s a renovation.”

“So you keep saying.” Matteo glanced at the lifts, then back. “I still want the name of the firm. Not today. I’m not unhinged. I just don’t like being given the leftover list.”

“You were given firms that can take your office.”

“I was given a substitute.” Matteo’s smile returned, thinner. “Anyway. I’m late for someone who likes me more than you do. Eat something. You look like the coffee is doing all the work.”

He left the second cup on the ledge and went out into the street. Luca went back upstairs and did not take the cup with him.

Adrian appeared at noon, saw Luca’s expression, and held up a hand.

“I mentioned an installer. I did not mention a designer. Before you start.”

“Don’t mention the apartment to him at all.”

“Then stop buying apartments and expecting the family not to notice.” Adrian set a folder on the desk. “Sign the logistics page. I’m going to lunch with someone who isn’t you.”

The afternoon was ordinary. A contract. A problem in transport that sounded larger than it was. His assistant asked whether he wanted the Wednesday morning blocked. He said no. Riverside was covered.

At five he read Elena’s last message again only because it was in the same thread as the quote.

Wednesday, eight-thirty. I’ll meet them on site.

He had already answered. There was nothing to add.

He left at seven, later than he had told himself he would. The penthouse received him the same way it always did. He cooked eggs because there was nothing else he was willing to wait for, ate at the counter, and stood at the window with the river a dark line he did not follow all the way east.

Wednesday would begin without him.

That was still the correct decision. The tracks were short. The designer and the installer could solve a measurement. His presence would not make the workshop cut faster.

And if he went, Matteo would eventually learn that he had gone, and a renovation would start to look like attendance.

Luca washed the plate, laid out a shirt for the morning, and went through the first two meetings of Wednesday until they were fixed in order. Then he turned off the lamp.

He slept.

In the morning he would go to the office, not the river. If something else went wrong with the windows, she would say so. That was the job.

He intended to leave it there.