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Gianpierre shook his head. “All of this, the work we do in there, you’ve grown your job so much and everything we do all revolves around you now. I couldn’t fire you. I could be replaced easier than you.”
Luciana stiffened and looked away for a long moment before meeting Gianpierre’s penetrating gaze again. “I wasn’t trying to replace you. I”—she hesitated—“was trying to let you go.”
“Luciana, I don’t want to be let go.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb, and it took all of her will power not to close her eyes and lean her cheek into the cup of his palm.
“Why not?” It was a hard question, but she needed to know. “You’re leaving anyway. Why not be replaced?” Then, when Gianpierre’s expression turned stony and he leaned slightly away from her, she quickly added with a soft voice, “I mean here at the resort. Not… you know.” It would probably be a long, long time before she invited another man into her bed.
“I don’t want to go.”
Luciana blinked, unsure of what she was hearing.
“I mean,” Gianpierre quickly amended, “I don’t want to leave this job undone.” His words seemed rushed and felt to Luciana as though they were not coming directly from his heart. He was covering how he really felt. There was more to it than he was saying.
“I can’t have you in Natalia’s life anymore,” she said. While Gianpierre’s words had not been a true reflection of what was going on inside of him, Luciana held nothing back as she let the blunt truth spill from her lips.
“What?” Gianpierre’s body went still.
“She adores you. She might even like you better than me, you and that damn fairy castle that you guys have been obsessing over. It’s all you do every second that you’re home and she’s awake, but you are going to leave and all that she’ll be left with is a pile of carved styrofoam and other mix-matched supplies. She’ll have a thing to remember you by, but she won’t have you. She’s already been through that, Gianpierre. All she has to remind herself of her mom are some short videos on her mom’s old cell phone. She needs more than that.”
“I can come back, maybe a weekend out of every month,” Gianpierre said. “I can video chat with her… and you. We can still…” His words trailed off.
“Still what?” She swallowed, feeling unsure of how far she wanted to sink the proverbial knife in. “Still be a family?” It was what they had begun to feel like. A beautiful, amazing, wonderful, happy family. The best she had ever known.
“Is that so awful?” he challenged.
“No.” She shook her head. “But I have to protect her better than that.”
“We can talk to her, explain that I’ll be leaving soon. Don’t end things yet.” He wrapped her in his arms, and Luciana melted against him. He was so strong, so steady, she couldn’t believe that they were talking about everything they had ending. “And I can come back and see you both every chance I get.”
“No,” Luciana said with a firm voice as she pushed herself away. “I don’t want you waltzing in and out of her life whenever it suits you. I won’t have her looking forward to your visits just to have you show up less and less.”
Gianpierre looked pained by her words, but he didn’t fight her by offering up a counterargument. Finally, he nodded. “Okay, once I go, I’ll be gone. But let me stay in Natalia’s life… and your life until then.”
“You’re not going to finish the job in time. We are going to have to tape everything off and abandon it as unfinished and unsafe. We need to bring in someone else to finish the job.”
“No.” It was Gianpierre’s turn for his back to stiffen and for him to declare an impasse. “I will get the job done. We will get the job done—me, you and the rest of the crew. I’ll hire on additional hands, and we’ll work round the clock. We’ll get it done on time, Luciana, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll run the crew from Dubai over video calls. This resort, it’s my family’s legacy. I can’t hand this over to someone else, especially not Grantzky. I can’t have his stamp on my family’s mark for centuries to come. I can’t do it.”
“You’ll finish it from Dubai?”
Gianpierre nodded. “Which means that I need your help more than ever. You would be my eyes, ears and compass. I’d leave Paolo behind to lead the crew and you would be the production manager, making sure all needs are met before anyone even realizes they need anything. I know it’s what you’re brilliant at. You jumped into this job, found your footing and then made the job your own. It’s what I was coming to talk to you about today when I found you with Grantzky.” He said the man’s name like it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Luciana laughed. “You know,” she said, dragging the tip of her finger down his chest between the valley of his incredible pecs, “Grantzky’s just as jealous of you. He sees you as the one to beat.”
“That arrogant blowhard?”
Luciana laughed harder. “Mmhmm, and that’s exactly how he feels about you, too.” She turned somber. “But we’ll do it without him. Me, you and that insane crew of yours. We’ll make this work. If anyone can do it, I know it’s you.” She said the words despite the heaviness in her heart. Never in her life had she been willing to work so hard to get rid of someone she cared so much about. It was tearing her in two, but in the center of it all sat a little girl who was worth any pain Luciana had to face in order to make things right.
13
Gianpierre
“What is this?” Gianpierre roared as he stormed his way into the courtyard with a pink notification from the local inspections office. “Luciana!”
Fat raindrops started to fall from a sky that was already dark with night. Floodlights wired with weatherproof extension cords lit the entire center courtyard of the Romano del Mare with the brilliance of day, and instead of his usual crew of eight, no less than thirty people were hard at work. Just as Gianpierre had promised, he and Luciana had put together a round-the-clock crew operating with the sole purpose of finishing the Romano del Mare’s inner courtyard before he left for Dubai. It was why he was here. It was what was most important.
Another five days had ticked past, and now all that he had left was nine days before he was scheduled to board the plane that would take him away from everything that meant the most to him. He didn’t know how he had found himself in this predicament, but he had. He’d woken up one morning to discover that what he’d thought he wanted most—being unequivocally recognized as the best of the best—was no longer that important to him and that it had not been important to him for some unknown amount of time. It was as if he didn’t even need to grieve the letting go of a lifelong dream. It was simply gone, and he was happy.
Despite that, nothing had actua
