He Loved Me in Secret, Until I Became Someone He Could Never Have novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Intern Ahead of Me
Renata overhears Dario call her worse than the intern, proves Chiara stole her pier plan in front of the department, and quits on the spot, then learns his father has asked for her hand.
The week I finished college, Dario Venturi offered me a job.
He was my oldest friend, the boy from the row house next door.
He was also the underboss of the Venturi Family.
Venturi Holdings was the clean face of everything his family owned on the Baltimore docks.
Dario ran it from the top floor.
He took care of his people.
His cousins got corner offices. His captains' kids got scholarships. His drivers got Christmas bonuses bigger than my rent.
Everyone got lifted up.
Everyone except me.
When my team cheered my port study, he flipped through it in front of them and said, "Thin. I've seen better from temps."
When my director put me up for promotion two years running, the paperwork died on Dario's desk both times.
"Time served isn't talent," he told her. "She hasn't earned it."
When a client called me sharp, Dario smiled at him.
"Anyone looks sharp with our money behind her."
For five years I told myself it meant something.
That he was harder on me because I mattered more.
That one day he'd close his office door and explain.
On a Thursday in October, I went up to the top floor with the final copy of my Harbor plan.
It was my best work.
A rotting pier on Caroline Street, rebuilt as a fish market and a boatyard with union jobs.
Two men in dark suits stood by Dario's door.
They knew me. They let me through.
His door was open a few inches.
I heard Ennio Palumbo, his advisor, before I saw him.
"Dario, she's the best analyst on that floor. Why are you putting an intern on Harbor over her?"
I stopped with my hand up to knock.
Dario's chair creaked.
"If the intern's ahead of her, then Renata is worse than the intern."
He said it.
Ennio didn't answer.
Neither did I.
My phone buzzed in my blazer pocket.
Three messages from my mother.
She ran the front counter at Mazzola Savings & Trust, our family's little brick bank in Little Italy.
Every Family on the East Coast kept money in its vault.
The bank's quiet today. Your father asked for you.
Come home, Nata. The chair is waiting.
Please call me back.
She'd sent some version of that every October since I graduated.
Every year I'd written back, Not yet.
I held the Harbor binder against my chest and walked back to the elevator.
Nobody stopped me.
At my desk, I played my mother's voicemail from that morning.
"Your father had a good day. He said your name twice." A pause. "It's time, Renata."
I listened to it again.
Then I opened my calendar.
Harbor kickoff, 3 p.m., Conference Room A.
I'd built the slides for it myself.
At five to three, I walked in and sat at the far end of the table.
Twenty people from development were there. Dario sat at the head.
Chiara Bonetti stood at the screen in a cream suit.
She was twenty-three, an intern for four months, and the Don's goddaughter.
My first slide came up behind her.
My pier. My drawings. Her name across the bottom.
"So this is my vision for Caroline Street," Chiara said.
A few people glanced at me.
One of them looked at the floor.
She clicked through my slides and read my words in a bright voice.
She skipped every number.
When she got to the ice house, I raised my hand.
"Quick question," I said. "Why does your plan keep the old ice house?"
Chiara smiled at me.
"Character. People love old brick."
"The engineers said tear it down," I said. "Why didn't you?"
She looked at Dario.
Dario looked at his phone.
"Because it's sitting on the only pilings on that pier that held in the 2003 hurricane," I said. "The rest are rotten. I know, because I stood under it in waders for three weekends and measured every one."
The room went quiet.
"Somebody here drove me home after the second weekend," I said. "I had a sinus infection for a month."
At the window, a man from engineering cleared his throat.
"That was me," he said quietly.
Chiara's cheeks went tight.
"I don't know what she's implying, Dario."
"I'm not implying," I said. "That's my plan with your name on it."
Dario finally put his phone down.
He didn't look at Chiara.
He looked at me.
"Renata. Sit down."
"I am sitting."
"Then be quiet. Chiara leads Harbor. That's decided."
Somebody's pen rolled off the table.
Nobody picked it up.
I unclipped my badge from my lanyard.
It had my picture from when I was twenty-two, still smiling.
I stood up, walked the length of the table and set it down in front of him.
"Then Chiara can measure the pilings herself," I said. "I quit."
Twenty people held their breath.
Dario stared at the badge.
For one second something moved across his face.
Then it was gone.
"If you walk out that door," he said, "you don't come back."
"I know."
I walked out.
The elevator doors were closing when I heard the conference room door slam down the hall.
In the lobby, my phone buzzed again.
My mother.
Tullio Venturi came to the bank an hour ago with flowers.
I stopped in the middle of the marble floor.
Another text came in under it.
He asked for your hand. For his son. He wants the wedding before your oath on Sunday.
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