HIRED BY THE DEVIL

Chapter Twenty: The Villa Pt 2

She pressed the bell once.

The door opened almost immediately.

Nanny Martha was small and warm and had the kind of face that made you feel in the first three seconds of looking at it that everything was going to be fine. Her hair was neatly tucked back, her apron already on, and the smile she gave Rosalina was so genuinely welcoming that Rosalina felt something unknot slowly in her chest that she hadn’t realised was knotted.

“You must be Rosalina,” Martha said warmly, stepping back to let her in. “Enzo told me you would be coming today. Come in, come in.”

Rosalina stepped inside.

The entrance hall was everything the outside had promised — high ceilings, dark stone floors that had been there longer than anyone currently walking on them, hallways that led somewhere important. The smell of something good drifting from deeper in the house. The quiet of a home that was entirely at ease with itself.

“I finally managed to get that stubborn boy to take a rest,” Martha added with a smile that contained decades of loving exasperation. “But of course he insisted on working from home.” She shook her head warmly. “That boy. He was born working I think.”

Rosalina smiled. “He does seem dedicated.”

“Dedicated.” Martha laughed softly. “That’s a kind word for it.” She gestured toward the living room. “Come and sit dear. I’ll go and get him for you.” She paused and looked at Rosalina properly — the warm assessing look of a woman who noticed everything and had strong feelings about what she saw. “You look so lovely.”

“Thank you,” Rosalina said, relieved that Martha had finally given her a moment to contribute to the conversation.

Martha disappeared up the staircase.

Rosalina set her laptop bag down and looked around.

The living room was enormous.

Not corporate enormous or cold enormous but the kind of enormous that happened when a space had been lived in long enough to become entirely itself. Deep sofas with cushions that had been sat against many times. A fireplace with a worn leather chair nearest to it — shaped by years of the same person sitting in the same spot. Bookshelves lined with real books, worn ones, the kind that had been read rather than arranged. Photographs along one wall that she didn’t let herself look at too long because that felt like something that required permission.

She was still taking it all in when Martha reappeared at the top of the staircase, moving back down with the unhurried efficiency of a woman on familiar ground.

“He’ll be down in a moment,” Martha said warmly, settling herself near the kitchen doorway. Then she looked at Rosalina with the comfortable ease of someone who saw no reason not to say what she was thinking. “What do you think of the house?”

“It’s beautiful,” Rosalina said honestly. “It’s — very grand. I wasn’t expecting it to feel so much like a home.”

Martha smiled — the deep satisfied smile of someone who had worked hard to make something exactly what it was and was glad it showed. “That’s because it is a home. Has been for a very long time.” She folded her hands comfortably. “Mr. Romano — Enzo’s father — he grew up in this villa. His own father built it.” A fond pause. “When Enzo took over the family business and moved back to Milan, Mr. Romano passed the villa to him. Said the eldest Salvatore should always have the family house.” She looked around the room with quiet affection. “Enzo didn’t change a single thing. Not one.”

Rosalina looked around the room again with that information sitting quietly in her chest.

The worn chair by the fireplace. The photographs on the wall. The books on the shelves that had been read by hands she would never know.

He hadn’t changed a single thing.

She filed that away carefully in the folder she was always adding to — the one she had labelled things that are not her business and kept opening anyway.

She was about to say something to Martha when something warm and wet touched her foot.

She looked down.

He was enormous.

A Cane Corso built like something from a different century — all dark colouring and muscle and quiet authority. He looked up at her from the floor with steady dark eyes that were assessing her the way everything in this house assessed things — carefully, without rush, making up its own mind.

Then he licked her foot.

Rosalina laughed.

A real laugh, surprised completely out of her. She crouched down and held out her hand and the dog pushed his great head into her palm like he had been waiting for exactly this and had simply been patient about it.

“You must be Bam,” she said warmly, scratching behind his ears. “Giorgio told me about you.”

Bam leaned into her hand and made a sound low in his chest that was entirely content.

She was still laughing and scratching behind his ears when she heard a sharp intake of breath from the staircase.

Martha stood halfway down with both hands pressed to her cheeks and an expression of complete astonishment on her face.

“Oh my goodness,” she breathed. “You must be really something special.” She shook her head slowly. “Bam is always harsh to strangers — always. He barks, he growls, he makes it very clear he does not want you near him.” Her eyes were wide. “And look at him.”

Rosalina looked at Bam, who was currently attempting to put his enormous head in her lap.

“I guess we just understood each other,” she said.

“I guess you did,” said a voice from the top of the staircase.

Low. Even. Entirely familiar.

And Rosalina looked up.

She had prepared herself for off duty Enzo.

She had told herself in the car on the way here that he was simply a person who existed outside of the office and that this was not remarkable and she was a professional and professionals did not stand in men’s living rooms noticing things like —

Dark joggers. A dark sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to the elbow, the tattoos along his forearms entirely visible in the morning light. Ugg slides on his feet with the unbothered ease of a man who was in his own home and had no intention of pretending otherwise. His hair not yet arranged into its usual precision. The faintest shadow along his jaw that the office version of him never permitted.

He looked nothing like the man behind the desk on the sixtieth floor.

He looked like himself. Actually, entirely himself. The version that existed when the building wasn’t waiting for him and there was nowhere to be and no one to perform precision for.

He was coming down the staircase with his hands in his pockets and those green eyes already on her and she was crouched on the floor of his living room with his dog’s enormous head in her lap and absolutely no dignified way to recover from any of this.

He reached the bottom of the staircase.

Looked at her.

Then at Bam, settled against her like he had known her his whole life.

Then back at her with an expression she had no existing folder for.

“Take a picture Miss Evans,” he said. “It will last longer.”

Rosalina stood up.

Looked at the floor.

“Good morning sir,” she said, in the perfectly composed voice of someone who had not been doing anything at all.

A pause.

“Morning.” His voice was the same as always — low, even — but something in it was different here. Looser. Like a coat worn open instead of buttoned. “Are you with your laptop?”

“Yes,” she said.

He looked at Bam, who had repositioned himself beside Rosalina’s feet with the settled certainty of someone who had made a decision and saw no reason to revisit it.

Enzo crouched — unhurried, easy — and ran both hands along Bam’s broad head with the gentle thoroughness of a man who meant it completely.

“My sweet boy,” he said quietly.

Bam’s tail moved.

Rosalina looked at the bookshelf.

“Breakfast is ready,” Martha announced from the kitchen doorway with the calm authority of a woman who considered this entirely non-negotiable. “Both of you. Dining room. Now.”

“I already ate,” Rosalina said quickly. “Thank you so much Martha I really—”

“A little more won’t hurt,” Martha said warmly, already moving. “Come.”

“I genuinely ate before I left the—”

“Miss Evans.”

She looked at Enzo.

He was looking back at her with that unreadable green gaze and something that was not quite amusement but lived very close to it.

“Just eat,” he said simply. “I don’t bite.”

Martha looked extremely satisfied with this and disappeared back toward the kitchen.

Rosalina picked up her laptop bag.

“After you sir,” she said.

And she follows right behind him.