Chapter Five: Matteo Salvatore
1106 Words
Tuesday arrived with rain.
Milan in the rain had a different quality — the stone darker, the streets quieter, the light doing something softer and more melancholy against the glass towers. Rosalina stood at the metro stop with her umbrella and thought that it was actually quite beautiful if you weren’t running late.
She was not running late.
She arrived at six fifty.
Giorgio was already there. She was beginning to suspect he lived on the sixtieth floor. She had not yet ruled it out.
“Morning,” she said.
“Morning.” He slid a revised schedule across the desk without preamble. “Conference call moved to eight thirty. Board minutes need to be distributed before ten. Mr. Salvatore also has a visitor expected around eleven — his brother.”
Rosalina looked up from the schedule. “His brother.”
“Matteo Salvatore.” Giorgio’s expression remained professionally neutral. “He visits occasionally. He is—” a small pause in which several things seemed to be considered and discarded — “less formal than Mr. Salvatore.”
“How much less formal?”
Giorgio looked at her over his glasses.
“You’ll see,” he said.
She had the conference call notes transcribed and distributed before nine thirty.
She had the board minutes formatted and sent before nine fifty.
She had Enzo’s eleven o’clock briefing prepared, his coffee on his desk, and two scheduling conflicts resolved before ten fifteen.
At ten forty-five she was on the phone with the finance department when the private elevator at the end of the corridor opened.
She registered it peripherally — the elevator, the sound of it, the change in the air of the corridor — and kept her attention on the call.
“Yes, I understand the figures need to be with me by Thursday at the latest. Mr. Salvatore will need time to review before Friday’s meeting so Thursday morning would be preferable to—”
“You must be the new one.”
She looked up.
He was leaning against the corridor wall with his hands in his pockets and a grin that suggested he found the world generally amusing and saw no reason to pretend otherwise. He looked like Enzo the way a sunny day looked like a storm — same raw material, entirely different weather. Dark hair, green eyes — lighter than Enzo’s, more mischievous — and the same tattoos running up his forearms. Younger. Easier. The kind of handsome that knew it was handsome and had decided to be charming about it rather than intimidating.
“One moment please,” she said into the phone with complete professionalism. Then to the young man: “I’ll be right with you.”
He looked delighted by this.
She finished the call, noted the Thursday deadline in the system, and stood.
“Rosalina Evans,” she said. “Mr. Salvatore’s PA.”
“Matteo Salvatore,” he said, pushing off the wall and extending his hand. His handshake was warm and easy. “Enzo’s better looking younger brother.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Matteo blinked. Then he laughed — surprised and genuine. “Oh I like you already.” He tilted his head toward the double doors. “Is he in a meeting?”
“He’s between calls. I’ll let him know you’re here.” She pressed the intercom. “Mr. Salvatore — your brother is here.”
A pause.
“Send him in.”
No warmth in the voice. No particular anything. Just the words.
Matteo caught her expression — whatever it was, she had apparently failed to keep it entirely professional — and leaned in slightly.
“He sounds like that on the intercom,” he said confidentially. “He sounds like that in person too. And at dinner. And at Christmas.” He straightened. “We’ve all made our peace with it.”
“That’s very healthy,” Rosalina said.
Matteo pointed at her. “I’m telling him you’re funny.”
“Please don’t.”
He was already pushing through the double doors.
She could hear them through the door.
Not the words — the walls were thick enough for that — but the quality of it. Matteo’s voice, animated and warm. And beneath it, quieter, something that might — if you were listening carefully and felt like being generous — be called ease.
She wasn’t listening.
She was absolutely working.
She was perhaps also listening slightly.
It was the same voice. The same low register. But something in it was different when it was talking to his brother. Looser, somehow. Like a coat worn open instead of buttoned.
He is not unkind, Clara had written. He is simply precise.
And beneath the precision — what?
She turned back to her screen.
That was not her question to answer.
Matteo came out forty minutes later looking satisfied in the way younger siblings look when they have successfully annoyed someone who loves them.
He stopped at her desk.
“He wants the Thursday meeting moved to Friday,” he said. “Something about the Milan property acquisition.”
She was already checking the system. “Friday at what time?”
“Two.”
“He has the Ferrara call at two fifteen.”
“Then two thirty.”
She made the change. “Done.”
Matteo watched her for a moment with those lighter green eyes.
“Can I ask you something?”
She looked up.
“Are you afraid of him?”
The question was direct and genuine. Not teasing. He actually wanted to know.
Rosalina considered it honestly the way she considered most things.
“No,” she said.
Matteo studied her. “Most people are.”
“I know.” She tilted her head slightly. “Does that seem like a problem to you?”
Something moved across his face — surprise, and then something warmer than that.
“No,” he said slowly. “Actually I think it might be exactly the opposite.”
He said goodbye with the ease of someone who fully intended to come back and took the private elevator down.
Rosalina sat for a moment in the quiet of the corridor.
Through the glass wall of his office she could see Enzo at his desk. He had his glasses on — she hadn’t known about the glasses, that was new information — and was reading something with the focused stillness of a man who had forgotten anyone else existed.
She looked away quickly.
Turned back to her screen.
Not her question to answer, she reminded herself.
She had work to do.
- Writer
