Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Mafia's Nanny : Kabanata 311 - Kabanata 320

311Matteo’s POV I am nothing if not persistent.Or maybe just stupid.Either way, I wasn’t going to let Gianna’s newfound ice-queen routine scare me off. Not yet.So, this next morning, I tried again. Showed up at her office with another coffee—because I’m thoughtful like that—and set it on her desk without a word. I figured a silent approach might work better this time. Less room for her to verbally rip me apart.She didn’t even blink. Didn’t look up, didn’t say thanks, didn’t acknowledge me at all. Just kept typing like I wasn’t even there.Alright then.I leaned against the edge of her desk. “Before you tell me you already have one, I checked. Your cup is empty.”Still nothing. But I saw the slight pause in her typing. A crack in the armor.Progress.“And before you say you don’t want it, this one isn’t coffee.” I nudged the cup closer. “It’s tea. Herbal. The kind you used to drink when you worked late.”That got her. The tiniest flicker of hesitation in her expression. Then, jus

313Matteo’s POV I should’ve seen this coming. I should have known that this would happened ever since she disappeared for two months without saying anything.The coldness. The distance. The way Gianna looked at me like I was a stranger, like I hadn’t once known exactly how she liked her coffee, how she twisted the rings on her fingers when she was overthinking, how she sighed my name when I kissed the spot just below her ear.I should have know this would happened. I should’ve been prepared for all of it.But I wasn’t.So instead, I did what any rational man in my position would do—I tortured myself by replaying every single moment we’d ever shared, as if overanalyzing the past would somehow change the present.There were the small things. The way she used to roll her eyes at me but smile anyway. The way she’d call me an idiot, but then pull me closer like she didn’t really mean it. The way she’d lean into me when she was tired, like it was the most natural thing in the world.Then

315Matteo’s POV Rejection wasn’t something I was used to, especially not from Gianna. Once upon a time, she had looked at me like I was something worth keeping. She had touched me without thinking, had laughed at my jokes, had let me pull her close without hesitation.Now? Now she barely looked at me at all.It had been two weeks—no, three—since she came back. Three weeks of stiff nods, clipped responses, and acting like I was nothing more than another employee in her company. As if we hadn’t spent nights tangled up in each other, as if she hadn’t moaned my name in the dark.It was bullshit and I wasn’t having it.I walked into the office this morning with a mission. The same mission I’ve had for three weeks now. Winning her back wasn’t going to happen overnight, but I wasn’t going to let her keep pretending like we were strangers.She was already in her office, typing away on her laptop like the world depended on it. I knocked once on the glass door before stepping inside.Her gaze

317Matteo’s POV The thing about Gianna was that she was good at pretending.She held her head high, shoulders squared, every step deliberate. She had mastered the art of detachment—the cool, unaffected tone, the perfectly arched brow, the way she could look straight through me like I was just another employee and not the man who used to know exactly how to make her melt.But I was watching her now. Closely. And I was noticing those tiny cracks, the tiny hesitations in her coldness to me that she probably thought it wasn’t as obvious as it was now.Like the way her breath caught—just for a second—when I brushed past her in the hallway. The way she gripped her pen a little too tightly when I leaned against her office doorframe and smirked at her. The way her eyes flickered to mine in meetings when she thought I wouldn’t notice.She was trying so damn hard to freeze me out. But ice cracks under enough pressure, in case she had forgotten that.“You need something, Matteo?”Gianna didn’t

319Gianna’s POV Some days tested my patience.Today flat-out stomped on it.First, our finance team sent in projections so off I had to double-check if someone had been drunk while making them. Then, an investor decided to “pop in” unannounced, which meant I had to sit through an hour-long meeting I hadn’t prepared for. And to top it off, some executive—I couldn’t even remember his name, that’s how unimportant he was—decided to question my authority in front of the board.By the time I got back to my office, my head was pounding, and I was two seconds away from quitting my own damn company.I shut the door behind me, exhaled sharply, and closed my eyes for a brief moment of silence.It lasted all of three seconds before a voice interrupted it.“Wow. That bad, huh?”I snapped my eyes open. Matteo was leaning against the corner of my desk, arms crossed, looking like he lived to get under my skin.“What are you doing here?” I muttered, already exhausted.He shrugged. “You weren’t in yo