She must have assumed I didn’t catch her drift because she morphed into Google Translate: “Fawn. Affection to gain favor. Not a baby deer.” She grinned. “Not in this case, at least.”

“You’re hilarious, and my English is better than my Italian, by the way. And don’t you have a husband to bother instead of me?”

She bracketed her hands around her mouth to whisper, “Hudson’s doing recon of the site for us.”

Something I’d be doing later as well before we infil’ed the rave.

“And aren’t you supposed to be in a meeting with Dad? Another hundred million to make?” She snatched her full coffee cup, offering it to me anyway.

I declined, deciding I was better off getting my coffee from somewhere else where she wasn’t there to make fun of me. “You heard about that deal the other day?”

“When Dad is impressed, which is rare, the world hears about it.” She added sugar and milk to the coffee I’d turned down, and I fixed my tie under my suit jacket while mentally mapping out my exfil plan to escape the building without our old man noticing.

“Mind covering for me so I can skip out early?”

“You? Play hooky. Such an Alessandro thing to do.”

She was working hard to get a read on me again. Good luck with that. She’d never guess what was on my mind.

“You’ve been acting weird ever since you tracked down that boy to get your wallet back.”

And close enough. “Just cover for me so I can go, will ya?” I tipped my head toward the door, a plea with my eyes not to press and to just do what I asked.

“Fine, fine.” She patted my shoulder, nearly spilling her coffee on me. “Ooops.” Another wink came from her, and then she took off.

The second I was alone, I reached into my pocket and wrapped my hand around the heart locket. I’d been sitting at my desk, staring at the image inside it ten minutes earlier when my father came in unannounced, and I’d shoved the evidence of my distraction in my pocket.

The heart felt like it weighed a hundred pounds inside my hand. The weight of over sixteen years lost with my son was more like it.

I missed out on her baby bump and watching our son grow inside her.

The cutting of his umbilical cord.

Learning to swaddle him the way Enzo had to do with his twins.

His first tooth, and the first one lost.

The measurements on the wall as he grew up.

All of it.

Then there was the weight of seventeen years lost with his mother that I couldn’t wrap my head around, either.