Novels by Esther

Damien's POVThursday evening Alex showed up at my apartment with groceries.Not announced. He texted from the lobby: “I'm teaching myself to cook something. You're the test subject. Buzz me up.”I buzzed him up.He arrived with two bags and the focused expression of someone who had a plan they were moderately confident in."What are you making," I said."Pasta. Carla's advice. Better ingredients first.""You bought ingredients based on advice from a woman you met for one dinner.""I bought ingredients based on advice from a woman who made the best pasta I've ever eaten." He set the bags on the counter and started unpacking. "There's a difference."I leaned against the counter and watched him organize things with the particular methodology he brought to tasks he was learning. Everything laid out before anything started. Sequence established first."You don't need to watch," he said."I'm not watching. I'm standing in my kitchen.""You're watching with your arms crossed."I uncrossed m

Alex's POVSophie's nine o'clock became a ten o'clock because she was on a call when we arrived and her assistant made apologetic faces at us through the glass.Damien and I waited in the corridor outside her office. He had his phone. I had coffee. We stood close enough that our shoulders were almost touching and neither of us adjusted."Jordan withdrew the complaint," Marcus had texted me at seven that morning. Single sentence. No elaboration. Marcus communicated like someone who billed by the word."Did he tell you why Jordan withdrew," I said."Sophie applied pressure on the authorship question," Damien said without looking up from his phone. "Once it became clear she could demonstrate the complaint hadn't originated with Jordan, whoever helped him write it got nervous.""Richard.""Adjacent to Richard. Same result.""So it's over.""The complaint is over. Richard isn't." He put his phone away. "But we knew that."Sophie's door opened. She waved us in with the brisk efficiency of s

Damien's POVThe flight home left on time.Alex fell asleep forty minutes in, which didn't surprise me. He'd been running on canal air and good coffee since eight in the morning and the adrenaline of the Rossi deal had taken more out of him than he'd admitted.He slept differently than most people. Still. Like he'd made a decision about it.I worked for two hours and then stopped because the work wasn't urgent and the alternative was watching the dark outside the window and thinking about the last forty-eight hours, which I found I didn't mind doing.It was his first time in Milan. I'd known that going in and had wanted, without making it a production, for it to be good. The square. The bookshop. Carla Rossi called him smart and fed him pasta and hugged him longer at the door.It had been better than good.The thing I kept returning to was the canal. Him saying *like yourself, the version without the building.* Not as a compliment. Just as an observation, the way he said most true thi

Alex's POVOur flight home was at six in the evening.That left the morning free and neither of us wasted it. We were out of the hotel by eight-thirty with no plan beyond Damien saying there was a market near the Navigli canals he'd been meaning to get back to for two years.I didn't ask questions. I'd learned that following Damien somewhere he'd been meaning to return to was always worth it.The market was small and permanent, the kind that existed for the neighborhood rather than for visitors. Produce cheese, a man selling bread from a cart who had a line six people deep at nine in the morning. We joined it without discussing it."What are we buying bread for," I said. "We leave in eight hours.""We're buying it to eat now.""We had breakfast.""That was coffee.""You had eggs.""Hotel eggs." He said it with quiet disdain. "That doesn't count."I looked at him. "You're a snob.""I have standards. There's a difference.""You say that constantly.""Because it's constantly true."The l

Damien's POVCarla Rossi was seventy-two and had no interest in pretending dinner was a business occasion.She'd said so within the first five minutes of us arriving at their home in Brera, a townhouse that had been in the family for four generations and showed it in the best way. Photographs on every wall. Books on every surface. A kitchen that smelled like something had been cooking since morning."Carlo talks about business at the office," she said, taking our coats with the efficiency of someone who'd been hosting people her entire life. "Here we eat. Sit."Carlo caught my eye and shrugged pleasantly. "You see how it is.""I see how it is," I said.Alex was already looking at the photographs in the hallway. He did it the way he did most things, with full attention and no self-consciousness about the attention. Carla noticed immediately."You like old things," she said to him."I like things that have been kept," he said. "There's a difference."She looked at him for a moment. Then

Alex's POVThe Rossi meeting ran long. Just the particular length of a room full of people who were genuinely interested in each other's ideas and kept finding new threads to pull. Damien was different there than he was in New York meetings. Still precise, still authoritative, but there was less armor. Like being on someone else's ground gave him permission to be slightly more human about it.I watched him across the table and tried to focus on my notes.Carlo Rossi was seventy and looked sixty and had opinions about everything that he delivered with the cheerful certainty of someone who'd been right often enough to stop qualifying. He'd taken to Damien immediately, the way older self-made men sometimes recognized each other across a table.He'd taken to me too, which I hadn't expected."Your marketing man," he said to Damien at one point, gesturing at me. "He asked the right question.""He usually does," Damien said. He didn't look at me when he said it. Just stated it like weather.