HIRED BY THE DEVIL

Chapter Four: Brian, Betty

The first day ended at seven forty-five p.m.

Rosalina had not expected to leave before eight so she considered this a victory.

She shut down her computer, straightened her desk until everything was exactly where it had been when she arrived — she had a feeling Enzo Salvatore noticed things being out of place even when he wasn’t looking — gathered her bag and coat and said goodnight to Giorgio who was still typing with the dedication of a man who had made peace with late evenings.

“Does he always stay this late?” she asked quietly, nodding toward the closed double doors.

Giorgio looked up. “He’s usually here until ten.”

“Every day?”

“Every day.”

Rosalina looked at the closed doors for a moment.

She thought about what kind of person stayed in an office until ten every night. What they were running toward or what they were running from. Then she reminded herself that her job was to manage his schedule not psychoanalyse it and said goodnight again.

The elevator came.

She stepped in and let the sixtieth floor go.

The metro home was crowded and loud and smelled like the end of a working day.

Rosalina stood in the middle of it and felt something unknot slowly in her chest.

She had done it. One full day inside the Salvatore Group headquarters. She had updated projections and made coffee and managed four separate scheduling conflicts and sat in on a briefing as note taker and fielded eleven phone calls and learned the names of six department heads and eaten lunch at her desk because there hadn’t been time for anything else.

And at the end of it Enzo Salvatore had said good work to the top of a page.

She was going to count that.

She was absolutely going to count that.

The apartment was warm and loud and smelled like Betty had been cooking.

Rosalina pushed open the door to find Brian at the kitchen table doing homework with the focused expression he wore when he was pretending to do homework but was actually thinking about football, and Betty at the stove stirring something that smelled like it had onions and optimism in it.

“SHE LIVES!” Betty announced without turning around.

“I live,” Rosalina agreed, dropping her bag by the door and toeing off her heels with the relief of someone releasing two small prisoners.

Brian looked up. “How was the scary building?”

“Tall,” she said. “And cold. And very serious about itself.”

“How was the scary boss?”

She thought about green eyes. About good work said to a page. About Luca Anderson laughing in the corridor like she had said something genuinely funny.

“Precise,” she said.

Brian considered this. “Is that good or bad?”

“Undecided.” She crossed to him and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Did you eat the actual breakfast this morning or just crackers?”

“I had crackers and an egg.”

“That’s almost a meal.”

“It was a very good egg.”

Betty finally turned from the stove, pointing her wooden spoon at Rosalina with the energy of someone who had been waiting all day for this conversation. She was beautiful in the loud warm way she had always been beautiful — dark skin, natural hair piled high, eyes that missed nothing and judged almost everything with affection.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me everything. Was he handsome? Because the internet says he’s handsome but the internet also said that about three men who turned out to be deeply average so I have trust issues.”

Rosalina sat down at the kitchen table and stole a piece of bread from the basket in the middle.

“He’s my employer Betty.”

“That’s not a no.”

“That’s a professional boundary.”

“ROSALINA.”

Brian made a face. “I don’t want to hear this part.”

“Then go finish your homework in your room,” Betty said without looking at him. To Rosalina: “Was he handsome.”

Rosalina ate her bread.

Betty waited.

“He has green eyes,” Rosalina said finally, in the voice of someone making a purely factual observation about weather or architecture.

Betty’s wooden spoon hit the counter.

“GREEN EYES?”

“It’s not—”

“On a dark haired Italian mafia man—”

“He runs legitimate companies—”

“WITH TATTOOS—”

“Betty.”

“Rosalina Maria Evans I applied for that job for a REASON and the reason is becoming clearer every second—”

“You applied for that job,” Rosalina said firmly, “because I needed the salary. Which I now have. Because I got the job. Which is what matters.” She pointed at the stove. “Your onions are burning.”

Betty turned around.

They were not burning.

“That was a lie,” Betty said.

“It made you stop talking.”

Brian, from behind his homework, made a sound that was definitely a laugh disguised as a cough.

Rosalina stole more bread and felt, for the first time since the alarm went off at five thirty, entirely like herself.

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