Catherine’s POV
I was yawning like I hadn’t slept in a week, because honestly, I hadn’t.
That kiss from the night before had wrecked me.
I’d lain awake in that stupid hotel bed replaying it until the sky went gray, and now here I was, slumped in a chair in the Novaris Marketing conference room, fighting to keep my eyes open while my brain ran on nothing but bad coffee and worse decisions.
“So, listen up, people.” The head of accounts, Mr.
Grayson, suddenly perked up, and the shift in his voice pulled me halfway back to consciousness.
“We landed something big this week.
Romano Group wants us to handle the financials for their new product launch.
I need everyone taking this seriously.
We’re going to close this deal.”
The room, which two seconds ago had been half-dead, exploded.
“Wait, *the* Romano Group?”
“We’re actually playing in that league now?”
“I heard their books are brutal.
Every number gets signed off by the CEO himself before anything moves.”
Even I sat up straighter at that.
We’d never touched a client that size before.
Not once.
Grayson raised a hand for quiet, scanning the room full of buzzing faces.
“Settle down.
The only reason this landed on our desk is because the firms they usually work with couldn’t give their CEO numbers he was willing to sign off on.”
“So I need every single one of you sharp.
I want the cleanest financial projections this office has ever produced.” He nodded at his assistant to start passing out folders.
“We nail this, and Romano could keep us on retainer for years.
And whoever helps carry this thing across the line—your bonus is going to be bigger than anything you’ve ever seen.”
I did the math in my head.
If our little no-name firm actually pulled Romano Group off, we’d have our name splashed across the whole industry overnight.
That was when a phone went off.
Loud.
Shrill.
Right in the middle of everything.
Every head in the room swung toward the sound.
Toward me.
Oh, God.
I scrambled for my bag, yanked the phone out, and stabbed *decline* like it had personally insulted me.
My exhaustion had officially left the building.
“Sorry—so sorry,” I said, forcing a laugh that fooled no one.
“Forgot to put it on silent.”
I switched it off with shaking fingers.
“Catherine.” Rebecca, my personal thorn since day one, jumped on it like she’d been waiting all morning.
“Even a kid knows to silence their phone in a meeting.
Good thing Romano’s people weren’t here today, or you’d have humiliated this entire firm.
You want to cover that loss?”
It won’t happen again.” I bit down every single thing I wanted to say and lowered my head like a good girl.
And then the phone buzzed again in my palm.
I didn’t even look at who it was.
Declined.
Held the power button.
Watched the screen die.
Grayson shot me a look that could curdle milk.
“Fine.
Don’t let it happen again.
Moving on.”
Lorenzo’s POV
Declined.
Again.
I set the phone face-down on the desk, slow and controlled, because the alternative was putting it through the window.
The city sprawled out forty floors below me, gray and indifferent, and none of it held my attention the way that dead dial tone did.
Nobody hung up on me.
Nobody in this city, in this country, had the nerve.
Men who owed me money took my calls at three in the morning with their hands shaking.
Rival families sent envoys and gifts and their own daughters just to earn a seat at my table.
And this woman had declined me.
Twice.
Over a kiss.
I didn’t know whether to be furious or impressed.
The intercom buzzed.
“Boss, Nicholas’s people confirmed the meeting for Thursday.
And the shipment through the harbor cleared.
Max’s name came up again on the debt ledger—want me to send someone?”
“Not yet.” I kept my eyes on the phone.
“Leave Max where he is.
He’s more useful desperate than dead.”
“Understood.” A pause.
“Anything else?”
I leaned back into the leather and tapped one finger against the armrest, even and slow, while that silent phone sat there mocking me.
“Leo.When a woman decides she’s angry with you and won’t take your calls—how does a man handle that?”
“Boss,” he said carefully, “in my line of work, I don’t exactly keep a girlfriend long enough to make one angry.”
That was the truth.
The men who worked for me didn’t get to keep soft things.
I’d taken that from them the same way it had been taken from me—early, and without asking.
Leo lived in the apartment beside mine and slept with a gun under the pillow.
He wasn’t building a life.
He was guarding one. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Then his brain caught up to the question, and his eyes went wide.
“*Boss.* Is this about Mrs.
Romano?”
“There was a misunderstanding,” I said flatly.
“That’s all.”
Leo cleared his throat, suddenly the expert.
“Boss, respectfully—men like us don’t fix things with words.
We fix them with leverage.
Give her something she can’t say no to.
A woman married to a man with your kind of reach, there’s nothing she wants that you can’t put in front of her by dinner.”
Leverage.
It was the only language I’d ever been taught.
You found what a person needed and you held it until they came to you.
I studied his suggestion for a long moment.
“And that works?”
“Every time I’ve seen it.” Then, quieter, “The problem is knowing what they actually want.
Get it wrong, and you’ve just shown them your hand for nothing.”
That was almost wise.
I filed it away and dismissed him with a look.
Then the intercom went silent, I picked up the phone and opened her WhatsApp.
Stared at that green screen longer than I’d stared at anything all day.
Leverage.
Fine.
But I already knew what Catherine didn’t want—she didn’t want to be managed.
She’d looked at me last night like she was reading every scar on my body and asking herself what kind of man I really was, and she hadn’t run.
She’d wiped shampoo off my jaw and let me back her into a wall and then watched me walk away without a single word of protest.
So I did something I hadn’t done in years.
Something with no angle in it at all.
*I’m sorry.
Last night, I crossed a line.*
I read it three times before I sent it.
It felt like handing someone a knife.
Then, because old habits die hard and I don’t know how to hand over anything without a weapon in the other hand, I sent a transfer right behind it.
Called it an apology.
Only after it went through did it occur to me that a woman who’d hang up on Lorenzo Romano twice might be exactly the kind of woman that money would insult.
I set the phone down.
Money fixes everything.
It always has.
She’d be thrilled.
Of course she would.
…Wouldn’t she?