by Sofia Tate
I disregard his question because I have no time for his bullshit. This is distracting me from my own work. Like I fucking need this.
“Why would someone tell me to tell you to think twice?” I demand right back.
He stares at me passively, no sign of anxiety or recognition crossing his face. The problem is, that’s his poker face, and I should know because I’ve mastered it myself thanks to genetics.
“How the hell should I know? And what are you talking about?”
“Someone just called my office telling me to pass on that message to you. Tell me what that person meant, Dad,” I demand of him again, this time not hiding my impatience.
“I have no clue,” he stresses, his eyes unwavering.
I take a deep breath and exhale, completely frustrated.
“There’s nothing going on,” he replies, rubbing the back of his neck with his right hand. And there it is. His tell. He’s lying straight to my face.
My face starts to heat when I point my finger at him. “And that right there, Dad, is why I know something is going on with you!”
A thought hits me like a streak of goddamn lightning. Ian Parker. The Bulldog never got back to me about what he found.
“This isn’t over,” I warn him.
Without waiting for my father’s reply, I thunder out of my father’s office back down to mine. “Get Ian Parker in my office right now!” I order Eleanor as I slam my door behind me.
Within two minutes, I’m sitting behind my desk, with Ian standing on my carpet.
“Did you talk to Dominic about the mix-up on the quarterly report?” I ask him pointedly.
“Yes, sir. He said it was a mistake, but…”
Ian starts fidgeting, his eyes shifting down to the carpet.
“What? Spit it out,” I demand.
He looks back up at me. “When I pointed out the discrepancy, he acted suspiciously. It was as if he was feigning surprise, like he was just pretending.”
“You should’ve told me this right after you confronted him,” I reprimand him.
“I know, sir,” he replies sheepishly. “I was wrong not to do that. I’m very sorry.”
I nod my head. “I appreciate that. Keep me informed if anything else develops.”
“Yes, Mr. Berkeley.”
Once he leaves, I sit back in my chair. I sigh in exasperation.
What the fuck is going on? Dominic is the key to all this. And he’s going to give me a straight answer.
As I rise to my feet to go down to Dominic’s office, the intercom buzzes with Eleanor’s voice. “Sir, Charles is waiting downstairs.”
I check my watch. Fuck. I need to head uptown for my business lunch at Le Cirque with a potential client.
As Charles speeds up the FDR along the East River, I pull out my cell to leave a message for Dominic. “Dominic, this is Davison. We need to speak as soon as possible. Be in my office at four o’clock. Don’t be late.”
Once I end the call, I remove my iPod from my jacket breast pocket. I connect it to the dock I had custom-installed in the Maybach after Allegra bought the player for me. Sade’s smooth voice comes over the speakers, launching into the trifecta she downloaded for me, the one that she told me about when we said good-bye on the jet—“The Sweetest Taboo,” “Kiss of Life,” and the one that resonates with me the most, “Nothing Can Come Between Us.” I imagine her sitting next to me, her intoxicating scent filling the car, her lilting voice raising my spirit, her gentle touch calming me, her soft lips on mine, kissing me gently at first, then becoming more insistent as our desire grows until the need to have my cock inside her drives me wild as she straddles my lap, taking me into her…
My head falls back on the headrest as I sigh in frustration.
Torture. Absolute, unmitigated fucking torture.
* * *
I check my watch. 4:15. My CFO is fifteen minutes late.
“Sir, Mr. Craig is here,” Eleanor’s voice announces over the intercom.
About fucking time.
“Send him in.”
Dominic Craig, the CFO of Berkeley Holdings, walks his portly body through my office door, a smirk on his face.
“You summoned me?” he asks snidely, about to plant himself in a chair across from my desk.
The fucking balls on this jerk.
“Don’t bother sitting down. And yes, I summoned you. I’m your fucking CEO, so check that attitude of yours right now.”
I have to curb my impulse to laugh at the sight of his toupee, which is sitting on the top of his bald head, slightly askew. His suits are starting to fit snugly around his body.
He remains standing and takes a deep breath. “Fine. What’s going on?”
“Something’s come to my attention. There seems to be a mix-up of the numbers on the latest quarterly report,” I tell him, watching his reaction. “Why would that be?”
“How the hell should I know?” he spits back at me.
“You should know because you’re the goddamn CFO,” I remind him.
“Who told you…” he starts. “Oh, wait, it was that lackey Ian Parker, wasn’t it? Why did he report to you first?”
“Seeing as I’m the CEO of the company, I thought it would be glaringly obvious why he came to me first.” I pause, then lean forward in my chair. “So, having said that, tell me, Dominic. Why did the confusion happen?”
“Human error, that’s all,” he replies dismissively.
“Right, but why did it take Ian coming to me and not you to bring this to my attention?”
A strange look comes over his face, almost as if he knows he’s about to lie and has to believe the lie himself so I will in turn. “It slipped my mind.”
I can tell instantly it’s just a smoke screen. “I see.”
“Anything else?” he asks impatiently.
“No, that’s all.”
I watch him walk out, and a gut feeling overtakes me. He was sussing me out. He wanted to see what I knew so he could report to someone else. And something tells me it’s my father.
* * *
Allegra
“No! No! No!”
La Diva’s voice bounces off the high frescoed ceilings as it reverberates throughout the opulent room in her villa that’s used as a rehearsal space. Her trusted accompanist on the piano, an older woman named Leonora, suddenly stops playing.
I sigh, dropping my head to the floor.
What does this woman want from me?
I know I’m lucky, even blessed, to be where I am right now, training under La Diva. But at this moment, I’d give anything to be waking up next to Davison, feeling his arms around me, his hot breath on my neck, his deep voice rumbling in my ear, his cock—
“Allegra!”
The frustration in her voice rattles me.
“Focus! You are not singing Mimi! You are singing Musetta! She is outgoing. She likes to flirt. She is coquettish. She is not dying from tuberculosis!”
When I first arrived, La Diva and I worked on perfecting the role of Mimi in La Bohème, which we both decided would be the ideal signature role for me. But now, she wanted me to practice singing the role of Musetta, a singer who has an on-and-off relationship with Marcello, a struggling poet, and when she first appears in Act II, she is dating Alcindoro, a wealthy, older man who buys her anything she wants. She has a famous aria that she sings to Marcello to try to get him back, known as “Musetta’s Waltz.” I’d always thought of her as the Ado Annie of opera, the character from Oklahoma! who strings along two men without a care in the world.
I swallow in my throat. “I don’t know…non lo so…”
“Che? What?” she demands.
“I’ve never strung men along. I’ve never been outgoing. I—”
“Basta! Enough!” she shouts. “Cara, it’s not just about the voice. You are singing, but you are also acting.”
I look up, trying to keep the tears of exasperation from falling down my cheeks, my dampened eyes visible to my teacher. I watch as she walks
over to Leonora, whispers in her ear, then comes over to me as the other woman leaves the room.
La Diva’s warm, wrinkled hand clasps mine. “Come with me.”
In a fiery red silk caftan with matching silk pants and high heels, La Diva leads me to an upholstered love seat in a far corner of the room and sits us both down.
“Allegra, I know that you have been through so much pain, and you can use that for Mimi.”
I nod as she continues.
“But with Musetta, I can see that her character is not something you can relate to, or so you think.”
“Exactly. I can’t. It’s not in my nature…” I ramble, gesturing with my hands as if I were trying to find the right words to explain myself.
She holds up her hand, her palm facing me. “Stop. Your ragazzo, Davison. He is very handsome.”
“Sì.” I smile slightly at the thought of my love. “Molto bello.”
“How did you first meet?”
I grin widely as I recall that moment. “He came to the restaurant where I work to retrieve a glove he’d lost.”
“And how did you feel when you first saw him? Talked to him?”
“I was very attracted to him. But it wasn’t just because he’s handsome. The second we started talking to each other, it was as if a match had been lit between us. A spark was ignited. I recognized something in him, something deep and soulful. And from that moment on, as much as I tried to ignore my feelings for him, I craved him.”
“So you didn’t have to, how do you say, string him along. And from what I could tell from our time together, he’s probably made you more confident, more sure of yourself.”
I nod in agreement, smiling. “Yes, you could definitely say that.”
“Bene. Then use that confidence when you are Musetta. Yes, you and your ragazzo are together. Insieme. But surely there are times when you take the lead?”
I laugh nervously at her supposition, slightly taken aback. La Diva is known for her colorful history, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Yes, I have taken the lead at times, Signora,” I admit.
She looks relieved, clamping a hand over her chest. “Grazie! From one Italian woman to another, you had me worried there for a moment.”
I laugh at her reaction.
“So, knowing that, use that image when you sing Musetta. You are seducing Marcello, enchanting him.” She glances at the gold watch on her wrist. “I think that’s enough for this morning. Use your free time to practice. I’ll see you later and we’ll pick up where we left off.”
La Diva rises to her feet and walks out, with a scented cloud of Shalimar remaining in the air. I let my head fall back onto my seat, closing my eyes and sighing aloud in exhaustion.
“She’s called La Diva for a reason.”
An American accent forces me to open my eyes, not just because I didn’t see the man enter the room, but also for its familiarity, a voice I hadn’t heard in three years.
When I raise my head, a tall, lean man is standing a few feet from me. My eyes widen, and my mouth drops in shock.
Matteo Garibaldi is standing in front of me.
Dressed in a white T-shirt, worn jeans, and soccer shoes, his straight black hair flops over his forehead, just like it did the entire time we dated on and off in college.
“Hello, Allegra,” he says to me, his pale blue eyes boring into me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask, my voice raspy after singing all morning.
A mischievous smile crosses his face. “La Diva is my aunt on my mom’s side. I’m her assistant for the summer.”
Mystery solved.
My ex-boyfriend is here for the entire month.
Fabulous.
Chapter Nine
Davison
The digital clock on my nightstand reads 5:01. I’m lying on my bed leaning back against the pillows in a pair of boxer shorts. My laptop is on and fully charged. Now I’m just waiting for Allegra’s call. With the six-hour time difference between New York and Milan, I don’t want her staying up at night waiting to reach me at a decent hour on my side of the Atlantic. So whenever we Skype, I leave my office at four thirty and have Charles drive me home to make it in time for her call at five.
A ringing sound starts beeping from my computer. I smile and click to answer her.
A few seconds pass…
There she is, my heart leaps out of my damn chest, and everything is fucking right in my world.
“Hey, baby.”
Her eyes light up as she smiles back at me. As far as I can tell, the only thing she’s got on is my Harvard sweatshirt, the one I always wear. Without telling me, she snagged it from my closet before she left for Italy. In its place, I found the other sweatshirt she always wears when she stays over at my apartment. It was sneaky of her, but it worked, because when I need to be close to her, I wear it, her delicious scent attached to it, which temporarily dissipates the torture of missing her.
“Hi,” she says quietly. “How are you, Harvard?”
I smile back at her. “Better now that I can see your gorgeous face and hear your angelic voice. How was your day?”
“Long. La Diva kicked my ass today.”
“More so than usual?”
“Yeah,” she sighs. “I couldn’t get into Musetta.”
“From La Bohème?”
She shuts her eyes, nodding her head.
“What’s going on, Venus?”
Her dark brown eyes open, softened and slightly moistened.
“I love that you know what opera Musetta is from and I didn’t have to explain it to you.”
“What can I say? My mother raised me right,” I joke, trying to cheer her up.
It doesn’t really work. She gives me a small smile and a nod, then looks away from the screen.
“Allegra, talk to me. What’s wrong?”
Still not facing me, she sighs. “I just miss you like crazy, Davison. I miss waking up to your face and having breakfast with you. I miss having you pick me up after work, especially when we take the scenic route with stoplights.”
I grin widely. “Venus, show me those beautiful brown eyes of yours.”
She finally turns back to the screen to look at me. Her eyes are still wet and her mouth is downturned.
“I miss all of that too, especially the stoplights. I really miss them,” I tell her, hoping like hell she’ll smile back at me.
Yes!
A wicked grin crosses her face, and I’m rewarded with her eyes shining brightly back at me.
She leans closer to the computer and whispers, “So, tell me, then, Mr. Berkeley, what do you miss most? This?”
Before I have a chance to ask what she meant by that, she pulls off the sweatshirt, revealing her voluptuous tits, with their rose-colored nipples pointing back at me. My cock hardens instantly at the sight of them.
“Oh yeah, baby,” I groan. “I miss those beauties a fucking ton.”
“That’s nice to hear,” she purrs. Then she leans back, hooks her panties with her thumbs, and pulls them down. She spreads her legs wide-open, and I can see her pussy, wet and glistening in the light.
“Hang on, baby. Don’t start without me,” I ask of her as I lift myself to yank off my boxers.
When I look back at the screen, she’s massaging the outer lips of her gorgeous cunt, fingering it with her right hand while kneading her left breast with the other.
“I miss you so much, Davison,” she whispers.
My knees fall to the sides as I open my legs far enough so she can see me as I’m stroking my hard cock, watching as my exquisite girlfriend pleasures herself. “I know. Imagine that’s me touching you, pinching your nipples, massaging your succulent tits. You look so fucking hot right now, baby.”
She starts to moan as she plunges a finger into her pussy, looking for that sweet spot that makes her scream in ecstasy when I suckle it with my mouth.
“Open your eyes, Allegra.”
She looks at me, her eyes
hooded with arousal and desire.
“Do you see this?” I ask her as I continue pumping my cock. “This is all for you, my love. Right now, your lush mouth is sucking on it, nice and hard just the way I like it, your warm tongue swirling around the tip so softly.”
I can see her fingers speeding up as they plunge over and over into her pussy, her breast clamped tightly in her other hand as she rolls the nipple between her fingers.
“I’m so close,” she pants.
I speed up working my dick. “You are a sex goddess, baby. My sex goddess. God, I wish like fuck I could taste you right now.”
We’re now working at the same pace, anxious for our mutual release.
“Come for me now,” I command her.
Her head falls back as she shouts my name at the top of her lungs, which pushes me to the edge as my orgasm shatters me, a white ribbon of cum spurting from the tip of my cock.
My head tilts up on my pillow, gasping for air. When I start breathing normally again, I sit up to see my beautiful love waiting for me with a huge smile on her face.
“That was amazing,” she says in a sated, ethereal voice.
I reach over for the wet towel I always leave next to me to clean myself off. “I’d have to agree, Venus. After you took off my sweatshirt—”
“My sweatshirt.”
“We’ll discuss ownership rights regarding my wardrobe when you return. What I was going to say was that I barely had enough strength to restrain myself from just getting on with it when I asked about your day. And then you took it off and I thought, Thank fucking God.” I laugh.
She laughs in return. “I know. And it’s totally fine with me because you made me smile, the first time I have all day. You have the golden touch, Harvard.”
“I aim to please, Venus,” I reply, smiling back at her.
“And you always do.” She shifts back. “So, something weird happened today.”
I continue wiping off my belly without looking up. “What?”
“My ex-boyfriend from college is here. Turns out La Diva is his aunt on his mom’s side.”
What the fuck?
I stop cleaning myself, looking up from my torso into the screen. “Run that by me again.”