Chapter 3 - Cinnamon Rolls and Dangerous Smiles
The bookstore was three floors of narrow aisles, handwritten recommendation cards and old wood floors that creaked beneath Mateo’s shoes.
Elena immediately disappeared into fiction.
Mateo followed.
“You’re hovering.”
“I’m standing.”
“Very intensely.”
She pulled a hardcover from a shelf.
“You read?”
“Of course.”
“Business books don’t count.”
“I read history.”
“That’s somehow exactly what I expected.”
“What do you read?”
“Anything that gives me an excuse to ignore reality.”
Mateo watched her skim the back cover.
“You do that often?”
“Ignoring reality?”
“Yes.”
“Only when reality is annoying.”
She looked pointedly at him.
He almost laughed.
Again.
The fact that she kept getting close to making him do it disturbed him more than most threats.
Elena selected three books.
Then four.
Then five.
Mateo took them from her arms without being asked.
She blinked.
“Look at you.”
“What?”
“Carrying something.”
“I carry things.”
“Emotional burdens don’t count.”
Mateo gave her a long look.
Elena grinned and kept walking.
By noon, he had carried books, a paper shopping bag, her coat for eight minutes because she had become too warm, and a box containing two ceramic mugs she insisted were “too cute to leave behind.”
He had also received seventeen unread messages.
He ignored sixteen.
The seventeenth came from Luca.
Need to speak. Security issue.
Mateo stopped walking.
Elena noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s your third nothing today.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Nope.”
“I need two minutes.”
She held out her hand.
Mateo stared.
“Phone.”
“Elena.”
“You agreed to one day.”
“There are limits.”
“I know. Reasonable and legal.”
“This qualifies as neither.”
She folded her arms.
Mateo looked at Luca’s message again.
Security issue.
A responsible man would call.
The man Mateo had been for twenty years would already be in the car.
Instead he typed:
Handle it. Contact me only if critical.
Then he put the phone away.
Elena looked surprised.
“You actually did it?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“Don’t make this significant.”
“Too late.”
They ate lunch at a tiny Italian restaurant Elena loved.
Mateo criticized the wine list.
Elena called him a snob.
He told her the word snob was frequently used by people with low standards.
She told him that sentence proved her point.
When the waiter recognized Mateo, the young man’s hands began shaking.
Elena noticed.
After he walked away, she leaned toward Mateo.
“What was that?”
“What?”
“He looked terrified.”
“Maybe he’s nervous.”
“He almost dropped the water bottle.”
“It happens.”
“Does everyone react like that around you?”
“No.”
The restaurant manager appeared thirty seconds later.
He looked worse than the waiter.
“Mr. Romano. We didn’t know you were coming.”
Mateo’s voice became colder without intention.
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“Of course. Anything you need—anything at all—”
“We’re fine.”
“Yes, sir.”
The manager vanished.
Elena stared.
Mateo picked up his water.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Pretend that wasn’t weird.”
“He knows me.”
“Apparently.”
“Romano Holdings owns part of the building.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“That explains some of it.”
“Some?”
“He looked like you could have him thrown into the East River.”
Mateo took a drink.
Elena’s eyes widened.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You really do look like a mafia boss.”
Mateo slowly lowered the glass.
She laughed.
He wanted to tell her.
For one irrational second, he wanted to put every card on the table.
He wanted to say that her joke was closer to reality than she imagined.
That Daniel Carter had once stood in Mateo’s office.
That there were questions surrounding her father’s death.
That Mateo had spent eight years believing the danger ended with Daniel.
Instead he said, “You watch too many movies.”
“I work with stories. Occupational hazard.”
His phone vibrated again.
Mateo ignored it.
Elena smiled.
“Progress.”
But ten blocks away, Luca Ferraro was staring at security footage from the bakery.
A gray sedan appeared in one camera.
The same vehicle appeared again outside the bookstore.
Then again near the restaurant.
Luca called Mateo.
No answer.
He called again.
Mateo declined.
Luca swore softly.
An analyst beside him asked, “Should we deploy?”
Luca enlarged the sedan’s license plate.
Fake registration.
His expression hardened.
“Quietly.”
“Boss said no visible security.”
“I don’t care.”
Luca pointed at the screen.
“Find that car.”
---
By late afternoon, Elena had dragged Mateo into a vintage record shop, a public garden and a department store where she insisted on buying a birthday gift for her mother.
Mateo carried everything.
“You’re enjoying this,” Elena said.
“No.”
“You are.”
“I’m tolerating it.”
“You smiled twenty minutes ago.”
“That was involuntary.”
“That still counts.”
They stopped outside a jewelry counter.
Elena admired a delicate silver necklace.
Mateo noticed.
She immediately stepped away.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You had a rich-person thought.”
“That isn’t a thing.”
“You were about to buy it.”
“No.”
“You absolutely were.”
Mateo looked at the necklace.
“I was evaluating the workmanship.”
Elena burst out laughing.
“You are unbelievable.”
His phone buzzed again.
This time it was Adrienne.
Everything okay? Victor called me asking whether the bet happened. Weird.
Mateo stared at the message.
Victor.
Every trace of warmth disappeared.
Elena noticed immediately.
“What happened?”
Mateo called Adrienne.
She answered on the first ring.
“What did Victor want?”
“Hello to you too.”
“Adrienne.”
Her teasing stopped.
“He asked if you went through with the bet.”
“How did he know about it?”
Silence.
“I might have mentioned it at dinner Wednesday.”
“To whom?”
“Several people.”
“Names.”
“Mateo—”
“Names.”
Adrienne listed them.
Six people.
Victor Sanz was one of them.
Mateo looked across the street.
A gray sedan pulled away from the curb.
His blood turned cold.
Elena followed his gaze.
“Friend of yours?”
Mateo was already calling Luca.
This time Luca answered immediately.
“We have a problem.”
“I know.”
Mateo’s voice lowered.
“Bring the car.”
Elena frowned.
“I thought our day wasn’t over.”
Mateo looked at her.
For the first time since morning, he was not looking at the funny woman who had stolen his watch.
He was looking at Daniel Carter’s daughter.
A woman who might have unknowingly spent twelve hours walking through the center of a trap.
“No,” Mateo said quietly.
May you like
“It isn’t.”
---
