HIRED BY THE DEVIL

Chapter Seventeen: The Dinner Pt 2

The dinner was everything a Salvatore dinner always was.

Loud and warm and full of conversations happening simultaneously that somehow never crashed into each other — Alfredo telling a story about the Spain branch that had Matteo crying with laughter, Theresa catching Aiden stealing from her plate and delivering a look that could have stopped traffic, Adrian eating with his usual quiet focus while absorbing everything around him with those calm grey-green eyes that missed nothing.

Romano watched his wife the way he had watched her for all these years — with the particular attention of a man who had never once stopped finding her remarkable. When she reached for the bread he passed it before she asked. When she laughed at something Matteo said he smiled not at the joke but at her laughing.

Enzo noticed. He always noticed.

Alfredo leaned across toward Enzo with easy warmth. “The acquisition — Luca told me it resolved well.”

“Well enough,” Enzo said. “The non-disclosure claim is solid.”

“Your instincts on that were right from the beginning.” Alfredo said it simply, the way he said things — no performance, just genuine. “Your father said the same thing.”

“My father said I should have moved faster,” Enzo said.

“Your father says everyone should move faster.” Alfredo smiled. “He said that about me for twenty years and I turned out fine.”

“Debatable,” Romano said from the head of the table, without looking up from his plate.

The table laughed.

It was Adrian who said it.

Not loudly. Not with any particular setup. Just the way Adrian did things — quietly, between one moment and the next, as though it had simply occurred to him and he saw no reason not to say it out loud.

He set down his fork. Looked at the table generally. Said:

“Enzo has a new PA.”

A beat.

“She’s quite feisty, I think.”

Another beat. Smaller.

“I think I like her.”

The table went still for exactly one second.

Then — from Matteo and Aiden, simultaneously, with the coordinated energy of two people who had been siblings and cousins long enough to occasionally share one brain:

“OHHHHHH.”

They turned to each other. Then back to Adrian. Then to each other again.

“Our sweet Adrian,” Matteo said, with a enormous grin.

“Never likes anyone,” Aiden finished, the same grin on his face.

“Never,” Matteo confirmed.

“Not once,” Aiden agreed.

“In his entire life,” Matteo added.

Adrian picked his fork back up and continued eating. He did not deny a single word.

Nonna Emilia was already leaning forward. “Tell me about this girl.”

“Her name is Rosalina,” Aiden said, straightening up with the energy of a man who had been waiting for exactly this moment and intended to do it justice. “She’s blonde. Golden eyes. She walked into that Gala in an emerald green dress and the entire room—” he paused for effect— “noticed.”

“She told me he was a normal person,” Luca added, from across the table.

“She told Enzo he was wrong,” Matteo said happily. “On her third day.”

“She looked at Adrian like he was worth looking at,” Aiden continued, hand on heart. “Which — no offence — most people don’t manage.”

“She’s very good at her job,” Giorgio had not been invited to this dinner and therefore could not confirm this, but everyone at this table had heard enough to understand it was true.

“She sounds wonderful,” Sophia said warmly, looking at her son.

“Aiden,” Enzo said.

“Yes?”

“Stop talking.”

“I’m just—”

“Stop.”

“She sounds like she has a good heart,” Nonna Emilia said thoughtfully, ignoring this entirely.

“Enzo,” Romano said.

Romano looked at his son. Then at Aiden. Then back at his son.

“Let him finish,” Romano said simply.

Enzo looked at his father.

Romano looked back with the calm unbothered expression of a man who had made his decision and was comfortable with it.

Aiden beamed.

“She’s not afraid of him,” Aiden continued, with the satisfaction of someone who had been given permission by the most senior person in the room. “Most people are. She’s just — not. She looks at him like he’s a person and gets on with it.”

The table was quiet for a moment.

Nonna Emilia smiled. The small, certain smile of a woman who had already made up her mind.

“I think I will like her,” she said warmly. “Since my sweet Adrian likes her.” She patted Adrian’s hand beside her. “My Adrian has good taste.”

Adrian looked at his grandmother.

“Thank you Nonna,” he said quietly.

Matteo made a sound.

Aiden pressed his lips together.

Enzo looked at the ceiling.

It was Sophia who raised it.

Not abruptly. Not with any pressure in her voice. Just the way she raised things she cared about — gently, warmly, at the right moment when the table had settled into the comfortable ease of people who had eaten well and were in no hurry to go anywhere.

She looked at her son first. Then at Luca beside him.

“The board,” she said softly. “I heard.”

The table shifted slightly. Not uncomfortably — just attentively. The way a family shifted when something real was being said.

“Mum,” Enzo said.

“I’m not pressuring you.” Her voice was warm and completely steady. “I just want you to know that I understand why they said it. A family — a real one, built on love — it changes things. It changed everything for your father and me.” She glanced at Romano, briefly, the way she always glanced at him. “I’m not saying the board is right about how they said it. I’m saying what they’re pointing at — that isn’t nothing.”

Romano covered her hand with his on the table.

Just that. Nothing else. But it said everything.

“And Luca,” Sophia added gently, with the same warm tone, “you as well. You’re not getting any younger either, my love.”

Luca opened his mouth.

“Aunt —” he started.

“I’m just saying,” she said sweetly.

“I know what you’re just saying.”

“Good.” She smiled.

Enzo looked at his mother. At the warmth in her face that had never once, in twenty seven years, been anything other than completely real.

“Mum,” he said, more gently this time. “I’ll get married. I will. Just — not yet. Not because a board told me to. When it’s right.”

Sophia looked at him for a long moment.

Then she nodded once — the nod of a woman filing this away rather than letting it go.

“When it’s right,” she agreed quietly.

Nonna Emilia set down her wine glass.

“Sophia,” she said, with the brisk certainty of a woman who had been managing this family since before anyone at this table was born. “Leave it with me. I will talk to both of them.” She looked at Enzo. Then at Luca. “In my own time. In my own way.”

“Mama—” Romano started.

“Romano.” She looked at her son.

Romano closed his mouth.

Alfredo made a sound into his napkin.

Theresa patted her husband’s arm.

“Yes Nonna,” Enzo said.

“Good boy,” she said warmly, and picked up her wine again as though the matter was entirely settled — which, in Nonna Emilia’s world, it now was.

The evening ended slowly, the way good evenings did.

The table cleared gradually, conversations moving from the dining room to the sitting room, to the doorway, to the cool night air outside where Romano and Alfredo stood with their glasses and talked the way brothers talked when there was nothing to prove and nowhere to be.

Sophia kissed Enzo’s cheek at the door and held his face in her hands for just a moment — the same way Nonna Emilia had, at the beginning of the evening.

“You’re happy?” she asked quietly. Just for him.

“I’m fine Mum.”

She looked at him.

“I’m good,” he said, more honestly. “I’m good.”

She smiled — warm and believing and entirely his mother — and let him go.

Nonna Emilia was last. She was always last.

She took both his hands at the door and looked up at him with those sharp bright eyes.

“You come for lunch on Wednesday,” she said. “Just you and me. None of these others.”

“OI,” Matteo said from behind them.

“Wednesday Nonna,” Enzo said.

She patted his hands once. Released them. And went back inside with the unhurried dignity of a woman who had said everything she needed to say.

Luca fell into step beside Enzo as they walked back to where Jeremy was waiting, the night cool and quiet around them.

“A very great evening,” Luca said.

“Yes,” Enzo said.

A pause.

“The Salvatore’s are something else,” Luca said. Not for the first time. The way you said something you meant every time.

“I know,” Enzo said.

Jeremy opened the car door.

They got in.

The villa lights stayed warm in the dark behind them all the way down the drive.