In Love With My Ex's Cousin

CHAPTER TEN

Luca

The layouts arrived while he was still at the office.

Luca opened the file at 8:16, standing rather than sitting, the city was already dark beyond the glass. He went through the drawings once without stopping. Then he went through them again more slowly, the way he read a contract when the language looked clean and he wanted to know where it would fail.

The living space was restrained. Storage closed. The kitchen functional without pretending to be loved. The office faced away from the river. That last choice surprised him only because it was correct. Most people assumed a view was the point. She had treated the view as a distraction.

He sent the short reply he had already decided on.

Received. I’ll review tonight. Keep the evening light check on the schedule.

Then he closed the file and finished the work that actually belonged to the evening. A holding structure. A revised clause. Two signatures his assistant had flagged before leaving. At nine he went home.

The penthouse received him the same way it always did: low light, clear surfaces, no evidence of a day except the jacket he put over a chair. He heated food he did not taste particularly, washed the plate, and only then opened the drawings again at the dining table he almost never used.

This time he made notes.

The office layout could stay.

The bedroom needed more storage than she had allowed for.

The living room seating faced the windows too directly. He had said he wanted quiet. Quiet did not mean sitting inside a view all night.

None of it was personal. It was use.

He typed the notes into a message, read them back, and deleted a sentence that sounded like preference rather than instruction. What remained was brief enough to be useful.

Office approved. Add storage in the primary bedroom. Turn the main seating away from the windows. Evening light check still required before window treatments.

He sent it at 10:21 and left the phone on the table.

Friday began earlier than it needed to.

By seven he was in the car. By seven-forty he was in a meeting that should have been an email. Adrian sat across from him and said very little until the other men had gone.

“Sunday,” Adrian said.

“I know.”

“She’ll ask why you look like you haven’t slept.”

“I sleep.”

Adrian’s mouth moved, not quite a smile. “Not the point. Matteo’s mother notices gaps. She fills them with questions.”

“Then she can ask whether I’m eating.”

“She will.” Adrian picked up his pen, then set it down again. “Have you decided what you say if the project comes up?”

“It won’t.”

“That’s not a decision. That’s a hope.”

Luca looked at the agenda still open on the table. “If it comes up, I hired a designer. The work is underway. That’s the whole answer.”

Adrian watched him for a moment longer, then let it go. He was good at that: pushing just far enough to leave the warning behind, then returning to the day as if the warning had been administrative.

The rest of Friday was ordinary in the way Luca preferred. Calls. A problem in logistics that sounded larger than it was. A lunch he took at his desk because leaving the building would have turned the hour into a performance. Elena’s reply to his notes came just after two.

Understood. I’ll revise the seating and bedroom storage and bring updated drawings to the light check. I’ll send two evening times tomorrow.

He read it once.

Saturday, six-thirty.

Her confirmation arrived four minutes later.

Saturday, six-thirty.

No questions. No attempt to soften the exchange. He put the phone down and went back to the logistics file.

At four, Matteo sent a photograph of a restaurant table set for two and a message underneath.

You would hate this place. Too many candles. Sunday will be worse. Wear something that makes Mother think you have a pulse.

Luca did not answer immediately. He finished the paragraph he was reading, signed off on a shipment change, and only then typed back.

I’ll be there.

Matteo replied with a single word.

Miracle.

The ease of it landed less lightly than Matteo intended. Not because Luca felt guilty. Guilt required a breach, and he had not crossed one. He had hired someone competent. He had kept the history off the table. That was still true.

It was also true that Sunday dinner was a room in which truth had a habit of arriving sideways.

He left the office at seven, later than he had meant to, and went home to change before a call with Singapore that could not be moved. The penthouse felt unchanged. He noticed that more often lately, not as dissatisfaction, only as fact. Rooms that never altered began to look like a decision postponed.

The new apartment was supposed to correct that.

He stood at the window with the phone in his hand and did not look toward the river. There was no reason to. Saturday was already set. The light check would take what it took. He would approve or reject the window treatments on the basis of glare and privacy, not on the basis of who was standing in the room with a notebook.

That was the standard he intended to keep.

After the call he showered, laid out clothes for the morning, and sat long enough to answer two emails that would otherwise wait until Monday and then become urgent. One was from legal. One was from his assistant confirming the Sunday driver.

He paused at that last one.

A driver to Matteo’s mother’s house meant there would be no convenient excuse to leave early unless he manufactured one. He did not manufacture excuses. He stayed the required time, answered the required questions, and left when the evening had completed itself.

He confirmed the car.

Then he turned off the lamp in the living room and went to bed with Friday still sitting neatly behind him: revisions requested, Saturday scheduled, Sunday unavoidable.

None of it required interpretation.

He slept on that, not because it was comfortable.

Because it was still the only version of the week he was willing to use.