Page 109 of Effortless

“Nobody’s victim, huh?”

“Nope. I made my choices.”

“And you’re still here doing this,” Tom noted.

Lou shrugged a single shoulder, and pushed off the desk. “I guess you could say the dream is still very much well and alive for me in some ways. Like maybe if I keep working at it, somebody will see me as something other than that poor kid from the Heights that needed money to have water and heat.”

Tom gave his friend a smile, but said nothing. Someone already did see Lou as more than that because Lou had seen someone else as more than a rich pretty boy.

Him, that was.

Tom was going to get his friend the button.

No matter what.

He’d do that for Lou.

Somehow.

The phone on the desk rang, interrupting their conversation from going any further. Another guy from the crew stepped into the office at the same time Tom picked up the call. He waved for Lou to handle the guy—as he was already going to do—while Tom turned his back to the two men exchanging cash in the office.

“Rossi here,” Tom said.

“Son, are you busy?”

Tom relaxed a bit at his father’s voice. “Not really. What do you need, Dad?”

“You should make your way over to the mansion as soon as you can. Someone’s waiting here to see you, Tommaso.”

He stiffened.

“Who?”

“Someone I think you want to see.”

Tom’s throat constricted, and his heart raced. He didn’t have any fucking reason to believe it was Camilla waiting for him. She still hadn’t called. It had been over a month since he last talked to her. He gave her space hoping that she would figure her shit out and contact him.

Yet, here he was.

Still very much alone.

“Who?” Tom asked again.

“You were right about her,” his father said. “What you told me about her the first time, I mean. She’s very … different. In a good way, mind you.”

Camilla.

“Don’t let that woman out of your sight.”

His father chuckled. “Right now, your mother is plying her with apple pie, and a promise to show her the library. Your sisters just got home from school, and are giving her the first degree. She’s not going anywhere.”

He heard his father’s unspoken words loud and clear.

Take your time if you need to.

Tommas had known—even though Tom refused to talk to his father about it—that something was bothering his son. That something was wrong, and had been since he got back from New York the second time. Over and over again, his father pushed to know what it was. He asked him about Camilla. He questioned why Tom threw himself into work when he had barely got through the day before without wanting to blow someone’s head off. He even suspected his father made a phone call to Calisto Donati just in case he could get information there.

Still, Tom had kept his issues private.