It is too bitter now.
Or maybe that is just me.
I'm itching to get back to work, and it's even more upsetting that Antonio came back with my laptop and my briefcase from the casino with the expectation that I would be able to work here.
But I can't work just anywhere. I have the board, staff, investors, meetings, management. I need real access, not virtual.
I let my gaze drift over to Adrian and see his flick to me then away again.
Still nothing from him.
No look that lasts too long. No acknowledgment of the night before. No sign that he remembers the way his hand felt inmy hair or the way his mouth moved against mine or the way everything in me went hot and reckless and stupid for a few terrifying seconds.
Good.
That is good.
That is exactly what I wanted.
Probably.
So why do I hate it?
A half hour later, I sit in front of my laptop in my childhood bedroom, unable to focus. My frustration is mounting, and I'm about ready to burst.
The room is exactly the same and completely different.
Same pale walls. Same built-in shelves. Same window seat where I used to sit with textbooks balanced on my knees and pretend I was studying while actually listening for my brothers coming home.
Not because I wanted to hang out with them or anything. No, I was too old for that by the time I was fourteen. Or at least I thought I was.
I can admit now that it was because I wanted to know when they were home, so I could finally relax. Too many of my family members walked out the door one day and never came back. Lucia, Papà, and then Mama. One of them never walked back through.
I let my eyes drift around the room. Same dresser. Same mirror. Same ridiculous little chip in the wood near the closet door from when I threw a shoe at Vito when I was sixteen and missed his head by a full two feet.
Different because I am twenty-five years old now, and I do not live here anymore.
Different because my briefcase is open on the desk with casino reports spread across it, and my laptop is connected to a secure remote portal that keeps lagging at exactly the wrong moments.
Different because Adrian is in the room next to mine again.
Or he was. I do not know where he is now, because I am not tracking him.
I am absolutely not tracking him.
I refresh the portal for the third time and glare at the loading wheel as if I can intimidate it into obedience.
It keeps spinning.
“Wonderful,” I mutter.
This is what Papà thinks working from home looks like. Sit in a bedroom, open a laptop, answer emails, stay safe.
As if The Regent Club is a spreadsheet and not a living, breathing organism with moving parts that need constant attention. As if I can manage a casino floor from my childhood desk while everyone downstairs whispers about security rotations and dead men in stairwells.
I open my email.
The board wants an emergency meeting.
