ivanrahal
She’s not what he expected.
He’s studied photos of her throughout the course of his reconnaissance, and he’s even caught a faraway glimpse or two of her at the Twelfth Night during his many visits to Rafaella’s office, but he’s never been this close to her, never seen her in this light. She’s different, somehow—warmer. Not kinder, and certainly not friendlier, but warmer—hotter, as though she was forged in flame, a wildfire-woman baptized in smoke and ash. Starbursts of hellfire seem to twinkle in the pits of her eyes, and for a moment, Ivan has the good sense to wonder if this is, perhaps, a bad idea.
But good sense and Ivan Rahal have never been all too compatible, and bad ideas and Ivan Rahal have always been remarkably compatible, and so he swallows any lingering uncertainty and surges forward, sidling up to her with a coy smile. Can I help you? she asks, and he ignores her. She knows who he is and he knows who she is, and he doesn’t feel inclined to waste time on introductions when he’s certain they know a great deal more about each other than some of their nearest and dearest. To the hackers go the spoils, he supposes. In lieu of any sort of greeting, he looks pointedly at the quarreling lovers below, bracing his forearms on the bannister of their shared perch. “Ah, young love,” he purrs, and lets the words roll off his tongue in lazy, lapping waves. “Her name is Antonia, and his is Gabriel.” Again: to the hackers go the spoils. “She’s angry,” he explains, flourishing a hand at a puffy-eyed Antonia, who’s now emphatically throwing her arms in the air as she shouts something Ivan can’t quite make out from so far away, “because she was looking over their joint bank account’s monthly statement and found several incriminating charges linked to the Dark Lady.” He watches Gabriel hold up his hands in surrender, and Ivan doesn’t have to be within earshot to know that he’s pleading his case to his fiancée, begging her to believe him, to believe that he doesn’t know anything about those charges, to believe that he’s never even stepped foot inside the Dark Lady.
Ivan smirks. He withdraws his phone from his pocket, swipes right to access his applications, clicks on the Banca Intesa Sanpaolo logo, and uses deft fingers to enter Gabriel’s username and password, extending his arm and tilting the screen towards Loretta for her purveyance—his way of saying, I did this. It was easy, far easier than he anticipated. He watched the couple traipse about the Twelfth Night for months, watched them kiss and twirl and laugh in between statues and paintings, watched them bend their heads low and whisper sweet nothings into each other’s ears, both of them red-cheeked and bright-eyed. He chose them for their lovesickness, for the nauseating adoration that they paraded around like some sent-from-God miracle, like they were the first two people in Verona to have ever fallen in love. And so Ivan, if for no other reason than to prove that he could, assumed fate’s cruel mantle and took a pair of shears to the lovers’ heartstrings. He studied Gabriel for a week, discerned his routine, and discovered, in no time at all, that he often patronized a local bakery downtown. He followed him to that bakery time and again, watched and watched and watched until he deduced which public network Gabriel used, intercepted the young lover’s dual authentication, and then made quick work of hacking the couple’s joint bank account, charging upwards of $1,000 to the Dark Lady (he would remind Mona later to thank him for supporting local businesses). It took him no more than seven minutes, and he smiled, proud and predatory, as he bore the fruit of his labor.
“What would you have done differently?” he asks, and he only asks it because she won’t expect him to. Her reputation precedes her, and his ego precedes him, and if he has any chance at all of wooing Loretta away from Massetti, if he has any chance at all of gaining access to her wealth of resources, he must prove himself capable of playing nice. (He’s not, in fact, capable of playing nice, but he is capable of pretending to play nice.) The famed Lady Anne is clever, and so he knows that he won’t have to explain what he’s done in any detail. She’ll be able to piece it all together herself, he’s sure, so he doesn’t elaborate on his cyber-crimes against the despairing young lovers when he asks, “What would you have done better?”
There is a danger, Loretta Delluci thinks, in playing God.
Her first exposure to that sort of peril came with Ada --- Ada, who, for all her intelligence and wit and insurmountable passion, could not wait to dip her hands into the theoretical honey. Ada, who lorded her skills and acerbic personality over their employees. For a long while it had been alluring, because there’s nothing more enticing than a woman who believes she holds the world in her hands. But alluring soon became frustrating, and frustrating soon turned to combative. Where before arguments as to what would become of their future with Wilhelm and the security of the company contained playful banter over shared wine glasses, it transformed into quiet stares over dinner table. The uncomfortable scraping of silverware against fine china in a glassy, well-dined studio apartment Loretta could barely consider home.
Even the ring Ada had picked out for Loretta had been cold and steely, as if crafted by Hephaestus themselves. All shiny metal and glint and gloss, with no real material meaning to it. It had been beautiful, a symbol of power, but any warmth the diamond sitting in the center might have held was drained out. She can remember the shock of discovering it in the dresser drawer, tucked towards the back, underneath well-worn MIT sweaters and lacy bras. At first there had been surprise, emphatic joy, and then an all-consuming terror that had made the palms of her hands sweat.
Most things aren’t for Loretta. She knows that. Most men, most women, most relationships, most discussions over tables --- she struggles to fit into any one mold. She will never be sleek and blonde and beautiful, and one thing is certain: she’s never going to be fucking committed to anything any longer than she has to be. In the back of her mind she is still considering Verona to be temporary. But she looks out over the garden at Antonia and Gabriel and feels a pang of sorrow. They’d fit into their own molds well enough, accustomed to the familiar shape and fit of a relationship. They’d thought they’d been in love.
Well, they were in love.
And then Ivan Rahal stepped into the picture. The Plague. What a joke. Her shoulders lift, as if to imply nonchalance, but that’s not quite right. Instead she takes the opportunity to look Ivan Rahal over, and frankly, it’s not even subtle. It... probably should be, but she’s exhausted of the same song-and-dance-posturing that seems to be instrinstic to the Montagues and Capulets and their predatory nature. Nothing can ever be simple. It’s one thing she misses about America. Everything was usually laid out on the table. Interactions could be blunt, and rude, but they usually didn’t border on the superfluous or posturing for the sake of trying to figure out who had the bigger dick. She tries to imagine Damiano Montague and Cosimo Capulet arguing over whose dick is bigger and decides never to go for that metaphor ever again, even if it brings a small smile to her lips.
If Loretta is warm-in-a-not-warm-way, Ivan sucks warmth out of the room. He’s all straight lines and hard edges and Loretta immediately decides twice over that she does not like this man. Massetti, at least, had the kindness to take off his shoes stepping into her workspace. She doubts Rahal would even if she threatened to scuff them. But maybe she’s being too judgmental, jumping the gun too fast. Give them a chance, Ada would always plead. Loretta hasn’t spoken to Ada in nearly eleven months and finds any bits and pieces of missing her that remain are well and truly buried. “If it were me, I wouldn’t have done it at all.”
Gabriel seems to be crying, now, his hands thrown out in the air as if to ask what do you want from me? and Antonia is spitting fiery words in his direction. This has taken a turn for the worst. She lifts her chin in recognition of the dispute and then slides her gaze back to Rahal, crosses her arms over her chest. Painted fingernails drum a simple tune. “Let me ask you something: why the bank accounts? Why not something easier? Naughty photos. Text messages. Emails. It would have been easier for you.”
