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It was rather like knowing there was a wild bear in the building with the door unlocked.
Luca wandered out every now and then, snarling and sniping, giving his orders and then retreating. The phones were ringing red hot and with Evelyn out, Emma rang the deli and had some sandwiches sent up for her own lunch. Luca had snapped, when she’d asked him, that he didn’t want anything.
‘What’s in them?’ He peered at her lunch and selected the smoked salmon and cream cheese without a word, but Emma was used to him now, and the second he slammed the door of his office she opened her drawer and pulled out her own smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches, smiling at her own foresight as she picked up the phone.
She wasn’t smiling now—the sandwich like sawdust in her mouth as she faced a new challenge, wondering if she should ring Evelyn and check, completely unsure what to do.
‘Luca…’ she swallowed the mouthful of water she had quickly taken ‘…it’s your mother on the phone.’
‘I’ll call her later,’ came the curt reply.
Which she relayed, to no avail.
‘Luca…’ She felt as if she were pressing the demolition button as she pressed the intercom again.
‘What?’
‘She’s crying. I don’t know if something’s happened…’
When he swore in Italian, Emma held her breath, hardly letting it out when she saw the red light on and realised he had taken the call, wondering if she had done the right thing. The thick door to his office meant she could hear nothing and Emma paced up and down, staring at the red light, knowing they were talking, wondering if she should go in and apologise afterwards, berating herself for not checking with Evelyn what she should do in these circumstances. And then, after an interminable time, the red light went off.
She waited a moment for his angry summons but, worse than that, there was only silence and a closed door.
She knocked—as he insisted she did.
And knocked again, ignoring that he didn’t answer—deciding to ‘practise some of the assertion this job demands’. Taking a deep breath, she walked in. Afterwards, she fervently wished she hadn’t, but by then it was already too late.
* * *
He couldn’t stand it—he just couldn’t stand it!
For weeks Daniela had been ringing, every day, then every hour, and now and then his mother too.
And now had come the tears.
The pleading.
‘Familia, Luca.’
He hated familia!
‘Just this—all I ask of you, all I have done for you, all I have suffered for you!’
For him?
Always his mother twisted things—and she was twisting them now, telling him she had suffered for him, that she had taken the beatings, the hell, the agony—for him.
And now, supposedly, he had to repay the favour.
He hated this!
There was a rip of anger in him, this fury that sixteen years living away from home had only slightly dimmed, because it was always there, churning beneath the surface. His vast office was tiny, too small to contain his fury, his loathing, his hate.
Then he became distantly aware that his mobile was ringing.
Ma.
Ma.
