HIRED BY THE DEVIL

Chapter Nine: The Gala Pt 3

The tables were arranged in a wide arc around a central stage where items sat beneath soft lighting, each one catalogued and numbered. Rosalina found herself seated between Aiden and an empty chair that remained empty for most of the evening.

Aiden leaned toward her as the first item was presented — a painting, old and dark and clearly extraordinarily valuable.

“Everything tonight,” he said quietly, “goes directly to the orphanage. Every single euro.”

She looked at the room. At the men placing bids with the casual ease of people for whom large numbers were simply numbers.

“Everything?” she said.

“Everything.” He watched the bidding with easy attention. “No administration fees, no percentage taken for costs. The full amount. Every year.”

She absorbed this.

“Whose idea was that?”

Aiden glanced at her sideways. Then he tilted his head — barely, in the direction of the man in black at the other end of the table who was reviewing something on his phone with his usual focused stillness.

She looked at Enzo.

The man who said fine when he meant something more. Who delivered four words of praise to the top of a page. Who had never once, in six days, done anything she would have described as warm.

Who had apparently decided that a room full of powerful men bidding on expensive items should result in every single euro going to children who had nothing.

She looked back at the stage.

She didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

But something small and quiet shifted in her chest that she decided immediately not to examine.

The auction was midway through its third item when she felt rather than saw the shift beside Enzo.

Gabriella had moved. Quietly, deliberately, she crossed the room and bent low beside Enzo’s chair — close enough that her dark hair brushed his shoulder — and said something directly into his ear. Low. Private. For him only.

Enzo’s expression didn’t change. He listened. Said one word in response. And Gabriella straightened, smoothed her gown, and returned to her seat with the composed satisfaction of someone who had accomplished exactly what they came to do.

Rosalina looked back at the stage.

None of your business, she told herself. Entirely none of your business.

She watched the next item come up for auction.

The evening ended at eleven.

The room was beginning to thin — men in quiet conversation moving toward exits, staff collecting glasses. Rosalina gathered her clutch and found Enzo already making his way toward her with the unhurried efficiency of someone who had decided the evening was concluded.

“Jeremy is outside,” he said. “He’ll take you home.”

“Actually—” Aiden appeared at her other side with a smile that was all warmth and absolutely no apology — “I’ll take her. It’s no trouble at all.”

“No,” Enzo said.

“It’s genuinely on my way—”

“No.”

Matteo materialised from somewhere to her left, hands in pockets, the picture of casual helpfulness. “I don’t mind. I’m heading that direction anyway—”

“No.” Enzo’s voice was the same as it always was — low, even, requiring no volume to be completely final. His eyes moved to Rosalina. “Miss Evans. Jeremy will drop you off.” A brief pause. “See you Monday.”

He turned and walked away before anyone could say anything further.

Aiden looked at Rosalina with an expression that was caught somewhere between amusement and something more thoughtful.

“Monday then,” he said warmly. “It was genuinely lovely to meet you Rosalina Evans.”

“You too,” she said. And meant it.

Matteo gave her a smile that contained several things he had clearly decided not to say out loud. “The green was the right choice,” he said simply, and wandered off after his brother.

Jeremy was exactly where he said he would be.

She settled into the back of the Mercedes and watched the venue entrance through the window as Jeremy pulled smoothly away from the kerb.

She saw them without meaning to.

Enzo, standing just outside the entrance with his jacket still perfectly in place and his hands in his pockets — and Gabriella beside him, close, saying something that made her look up at him with those dark eyes that held everything he didn’t ask for and didn’t return.

They were not touching. But the way she stood near him said everything about what she wanted and nothing about whether she would get it.

Rosalina looked away.

None of my business, she told herself. Completely and entirely none of my business. Whatever that is. Whatever she is to him. He is my employer. She is — whatever she is. His. Probably. That’s his business and not mine and I have no opinion about it whatsoever.

She was quiet for a moment.

None whatsoever.

Milan moved past the window in the dark — lit and beautiful and completely indifferent to the small complicated thing happening in the back of a black Mercedes.

She leaned her head against the glass.

It had been a strange evening. A beautiful, confusing, slightly unsettling evening full of things she didn’t have names for yet. Men who bid on paintings so orphaned children could have something. A dog she hadn’t met yet but had been told about. Green eyes that she found completely, thoroughly unique and was absolutely not thinking about.

Jeremy drove.

The city went by.

The night ended exactly as it had begun — quietly, and with more questions than answers.

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