Athena
“Miss Gonzalez? My schedule?” Luciano demanded as we strutted towards the elevator. Today had to be one of the busiest days in Moretti Industries. It was barely noon and I’d had to sit through two meetings, made a conference call to some cancer patient in Ohio on Luciano’s behalf, and interviewed two new workers in the design department.
It was crazy. I could gave sworn that when I was allowed to work for him as his PA, I hadn’t expected it would be so fucking tasking. Heck if you had asked me two weeks ago, I’d have said the only hard thing about the job was that I couldn’t kill Luciano when I wanted to so fucking bad.
However right now, as I panted right behind him reading out his schedule like it was the holy grail, the last thing on my mind was killing me. I needed rest. I needed to sit my ass on a damn lounge chair and stretch my limbs. My body ached all over and while of course, I could endure it, I didn’t want to.
Heck the more I thought about it, the more I was beginning to think I shouldn’t have to endure it either.
We stepped into the elevator and I heard Luciano exhale. Glancing up at him, I saw that his face remained stoic and severe, but his posture was a bit slouched. He was exhausted too. He did a good job of hiding it though. Anyone who stepped on the elevator would think he looked the same as normal, but the more I looked at him, the more I could see the bags under his eyes, the weariness in his severe coffee-brown eyes, and the way his right shoulder stood lower than the left.
“We could take a break?” I suggested, not thinking about my words and their implications before they slipped out of my mouth.
“What?” He asked, an incredulous look on his face as if no one had ever suggested that he could rest. His eyes narrowed and ran leisurely down my body. “Are you tired, Miss Gonzalez?”
“No,” I lied through my teeth and sniffed haughtily. “But you are -”
“I am not,” he denied as well, a stiffness in his tone of voice.
“Hilarious,” I scoffed under my breath and fixed my gaze on the elevator door.
“Hilarious? Pray what exactly do you find hilarious?” He demanded. He sounded a bit agitated that I had to glance at him to see if he was okay. The Luciano I had come to know rarely let his emotions show.
“That you’re trying to hide you’re tired,” I said simply and smirked when his brows raised. “Oh don’t worry, I would never ruin your bad boy image by telling everyone you slouched in the elevator,”
Aggravated by my teasing, he growled and slammed a fist into the elevator buttons, bringing the carriage to a halt.
“Oh, my God! What did you do?!” I gasped, rushing to view the damaged buttons.
“What do you mean I slouched?” He spat instead, stalking towards me.
“You care about that right now?” I hissed, rolling my eyes, and tried to fish my phone out of my bag. We were stuck in the fucking elevator because the idiot damaged the controls! Quite impressive how he did so with just a punch but still, we were stuck. And the more time we spent in the enclosed space, the stronger the urge to get rid of him.
“I would like to know, Raven, what gave you the impression that I slouched,” He was unrelentless.
I ignored him, whipping out my phone, and searched for the security’s number. Before I could dial it, however, my phone got snatched out of my hands and tossed against the elevator wall.
“You bastard!” I screeched watching the device fall apart. “That’s the second phone you’ve destroyed in a month!”
“I detest being ignored,” He spat with a disgruntled look on his face.
My face morphed into one of disbelief. “Are you bull-shitting me right now?” I demanded. “You detest when I look at you, you detest when I ignore you. What the hell is your fucking problem?!”
“What the hell is your problem?!” He fired back, lunging forward until we stared angrily at each other, breathing furiously.
Why the hell was he mad at me? I wasn’t the one who damaged the buttons. I had simply suggested that we rest a bit and if he didn’t fucking like it, there was no need to vent out his anger on me!
“Stay away from me!” He spat.
“Too fucking late!” I screamed, blind with fury. “We’re stuck here because you decided to be an asshole and break the controls. You also broke my phone so now I can’t call the damn security guard! You’re rude, obnoxious, and all in your fucking world that you can’t see past your fucking Nose! I might as well gut you in the damn neck!”
By the time I had calmed down, Luciano stared at me like I had grown two heads. Shit, I had a broken character. Raven was supposed to be nice and charming and sweet. Instead, I replied tartly and even threatened to kill him.
The Mafia Lord narrowed his eyes, withdrawing behind his mask of calm and coolness. He stepped away from me, cleared his throat, and walked to the farthest corner of the elevator. I waited in anticipation of what he would do, half expecting him to whip out a gun and blow my brains off.
When nothing happened for the first five minutes, I exhaled and leaned against the solid elevator door behind me. At least he didn’t seem to take my words seriously. For a while, we stood there in silence until he spoke up.
“I suppose there’s nothing we can do,” he said wistfully, eyeing the buttons he had slammed. If I were him, I’d feel pretty stupid and I could imagine that was exactly how he felt.
“Maybe you could punch it again,” I suggested and he sighed.
“No, I’d rather not,” Luciano murmured, leaning his head against the wall behind him and closing his eyes.
“Sir-”
“Please be quiet Miss Gonzalez,” he said, sighing deeply. “I’d like to close my eyes for a bit.”
I bit my lip and nodded. I was right, he was tired. I doubted it was from being a CEO. I had been his PA for the past weeks and even I didn’t feel as tired as he looked.
Something was going on underneath. I recalled the bags I had noticed under his eyes. He had also drank four cups of coffee during all his meetings as if he was struggling to stay awake.
Something jingled in my head. That meant he was running the mafia at night. The crime rate had spiked up these past few days. Drug trafficking and the smuggling of illegal poppies have been sighted in several spots in the cities and somehow, half of all the culprits were linked to the mafia. Luciano had to be behind it all definitely.
But how was he going out of the penthouse? Everyone I had posted to watch him had the same report, he was never seen leaving the building. He was organizing his gang somehow, I just couldn’t figure out how yet.
“You have keen eyes, Miss Gonzalez,” he spoke so suddenly, it startled me out of my thoughts. “No one would have noticed me leaning on my right leg.”
I shrugged. It meant nothing. I was trained to look for clues, to notice what everyone else may be blind to. And I was damn good at it. But of course, I couldn’t tell him all of that, so I stuck with a giggle and ran a free strand of hair behind my ear.
He gave me a look that told me my giggle annoyed him and I almost stuck out my tongue. Almost.
Luciano must have noticed it, however, because a deep rumble from his chest told me he was chuckling.
Chuckling!
I never heard him laugh in good humor. Most of the times he had laughed in my presence, he had sounded cruel, cold, and harsh. But now, there was mirth swirling in those eyes and for the first time, I was taken aback by how startling they were.
A buzz interrupted whatever he would have said, it came from the slightly damaged elevator buttons. Luciano breezed past me to press the buzz button. It was from the security guard’s office. As he answered their questions and ordered them to ‘get their asses down and get him out of the fucking elevator’, his words not mine, I wondered if this meant I was finally rubbing off on him.
Perhaps I was.
When we finally stepped out of the elevator into the fresh air, I nearly passed out in relief.
“What’s next now Miss Gonzalez?” He asked and everything about his voice and demeanor told me everything I needed to know.
Perhaps I wasn’t.