"Are you kidding me?"

"Can you keep your fucking voice down, Romero? I'm dying here."

"It's Romano, dipshit," Gio shouted into his phone. "I can't believe you blew off our appointment to go get smashed. This is the third goddamned time, might I add."

"It was the Director's summer party, Romano," Curtis whispered. "What was I supposed to do? Turn it down for your ungrateful ass? Not in this lifetime. Everybody knows that promotion prospects are scoped out at his parties. Oh, wait," he added coldly. "You wouldn't know, would you?"

"Go fuck yourself, Curtis." Stabbing his finger at the button, Gio ended the call and almost threw his phone. Despite the flow of people not ten feet away, no one glanced into the alley that Gio had ducked into. Even the homeless guys slumped a few feet away didn’t look up from their card game.

"Son of a bitch. I'm gonna be late." Tossing a couple bucks at the homeless guys, Gio took off down the street.

His cheap, greasy hamburger wasn't sitting well with him today. He should have gone for the Chinese food again, but he'd had it four times this week already. If he wanted to pony up his entire day's pay, he could have eaten at one of the restaurants closer to work, but his cover didn't include supplementary income. If he wanted to pay his rent, he packed ramen, or he walked the mile and a half to the cheap part of downtown.

Halfway up the hill, he cursed. He'd forgotten to tell Curtis about maybe... kinda... accidentally... banging his boss's boss's new boss.

Whatever. It's not like Curtis would care, and Gio hadn't seen Marcus since that day. Rubbing his hand on his jeans, he tried to wipe away the phantom feeling of that warm hand wrapped around his.

Sprinting across the lobby, Gio dug around in his pockets for his badge. One of the elevators was just starting to close as he broke through the last group of slow moving executives.

"Hold the elevator," he called, pulling open his messenger bag to check if he'd put his badge in the pocket next to his cheap prepaid phone. He wasn't paying enough attention as he rounded the columns that bracketed the elevator area, and his shoulder clipped the edge almost knocking him off his feet. "Shit, fuck, goddamnit..."

He expected the elevator to take off, but a leather-clad arm caught the doors just before they could close.

"Thanks," he said, his ribs heaving as he shuffled into the elevator. "Fuck, what did I do with that damned thing?"

"What did you lose?"

Gio's head jerked up, and he stared at Marcus in horror. The alpha looked tired, even with the shadow of a smile curving his lips under his mustache. "My badge."

Marcus ducked his head, his lips twitching. "It's on your shirt," he said, coughing into the back of his hand.

"What?" Gio stared down at his worn out button up. "Where?"

"Here." Marcus reached out, his hand dropping down until he was practically at crotch level.

Gio shied away on reflex, his eyes going to the doors even as his body gave an enthusiastic vote in favor of whatever the alpha wanted.

Marcus paused. "It's caught on the hem," he said, pulling his hand back.

Running his hand along the fraying fabric, Gio caught a sharp piece of plastic in the fleshy part of his thumb. "Son of a bitch. Thanks," he said, sticking the digit in his mouth.

"For a guy who reads trashy romances, you've got quite the mouth," Marcus said, turning to face the doors as the elevator slid open.

It was Gio's floor, but he didn't get out. Giorgio Romano wasn't the kind of guy who read romance novels, but now he was going to have to rethink that. Again. Having Marcus as part of his cover's daily life was going to make things complicated.

Gio hated complicated.

The elevator doors slid closed, and he couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't a four-letter word.

"That was your floor, George," Marcus said.

"I fucking know that, Mark," Gio snapped.

Marcus had dark eyes, almost black and shockingly vivid against his blond hair. They drew Gio in, and he had to look away as he shot him a glance out of the corner of his eyes.

"Sorry, I'm having a crappy day," he said, staring at his windswept reflection in the elevator doors. "My name is Giorgio. Frank always gets our names wrong."

The elevator doors slid open again, and Marcus hesitated. "I wondered if I'd heard wrong or something," he said, staying put as the doors slid closed again.

"That was your floor," Gio said.

"I know. I just wanted to make sure there aren't going to be any problems. Between us." Marcus fiddled with the sleeves of his jacket, still facing the doors.

"Because we slept together?" Gio asked bluntly. "I'm not here to make trouble," he lied through his teeth. If he found anything, he'd bring a whole lot of trouble down on the company, but not over that. "Neither of us knew, and it was technically before you were my boss, so there are no problems." Gio looked away as Marcus turned to face him.

"That's not entirely what I meant," he said, straightening his cuffs for the dozenth time. "I hope you know that I'm not going to... expect anything... or... I mean..."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Gio said, turning and finding himself practically chest to chest with the alpha. It was a big elevator, but neither of them moved. Putting his hands on his hips, he glared. "You can't even say it, and you think I'm worried about you sexually harassing me at work? You're so squeaky clean, you could be used to wash windows."

Laughing under his breath, Marcus slumped. "Oh, thank goodness. I don't want you to be uncomfortable here because of me."

"The only thing that makes me uncomfortable," Gio said as the elevator slowed to a stop again, "is the hum of the goddamned lights. They're going to drive me insane one of these days, just you watch." Stomping out of the elevator, he flipped Marcus off behind him for good measure.

"Tell Frank that I asked you to show me where the mailroom is," Marcus called, his grin lighting up the dark space like sunshine. "I'll cover for you, just this once."

"Listen here, asshole," Gio said, turning to glare only to find the elevator doors had already closed. "Prick."

Storming around the corner and into cubicle hell, Gio was three desks past Frank's little supervisor station when he realized that it was someone else perched on a stool to survey their kingdom. The woman was younger, but she had the same vague look about her that Gio associated with the job having sucked away her will to live.

He wound his way through the cubicles to his seat, squeezing sideways past a guy who'd fallen asleep leaning back in his chair. No one seemed to have noticed.

"Where's Frank?" he whispered to the guy at the next desk as he sat down. There was a fresh stack of paperwork sitting front and center on his desk, the deceptively cheerful pink of the rubber band marking it as a rush job.

"Who?" the guy asked, without looking up.

"The supervisor? Nevermind," Gio said, tucking his bag under the desk and logging in.

The best thing about entering transactions was that it took very little attention and gave him plenty of time to think. The worst thing about entering transactions was that it took very little attention and gave him plenty of time to think. Two and a half months in, Gio had pretty much exhausted every avenue of investigation and decided that this was a wild goose chase. Now he spent most of his time thinking about what he was going to do when he got off this job.

Take a damned vacation, that was for sure. He'd go somewhere fancy and tropical and sit around on a beach while cabana boys fed him grapes all goddamn day. He owed it to himself.

Maybe he'd go home and see his parents. He hadn't talked to them since the undercover assignment in New York. They probably thought he'd drunk himself to death in Europe somewhere. Mia should have graduated by now, and it would be nice to see the old restaurant again. He'd known what he was giving up when he joined the FBI, but days like today made him wonder if it was worth it.

And then there was Marcus. What the hell was he going to do about that? It was bad enough when he thought the guy was a random stranger, but putting in his report that he slept with his boss wasn't going to endear him to the review board.

"Fuck," he muttered, slamming the last page of the stack down into his out tray. Shaking off the last of the thoughts clinging to him, he was surprised to find the room empty. The clock hanging crookedly on the wall glared down at him as he scrambled to shut his computer down and gather his things.

Even the supervisor's station was dark and abandoned as he rushed past it to the elevator. To combat the high turnover rate, the company had instituted a policy that everyone in Accounts Receivables had to turn in a report of their work along with the physical copies they'd entered information off of. The ride to the seventh floor was a matter of seconds, but it dragged as Gio fought to get the stack of random receipts to lay in some kind of order.

The printer just inside the door of the file room was still spitting out his report, and Gio checked his watch impatiently as he waited for it to finish. Clipping the whole mess, he shoved it into the appropriate tray and managed to catch the same elevator before it could leave.

The sun was low on the horizon, and the wind cut through Gio's thin shirt as he hurried through the parking garage. His car, rusty and dinged, was parked in the farthest corner of the roof. His parking pass didn't grant him a covered spot, and he was slightly bitter about it.

It took three tries to jiggle the handle just right so the car would open. The seat belt wasn't cooperating today, jammed with just enough length to strangle Gio as he drove, but the engine turned over on the first try and didn't stall out while he was waiting to merge into traffic. He was counting it a win.

Getting out of downtown took almost an hour. Gio pulled one of his emergency granola bars out of the glove box and downed it in two bites as he stared at the red glow of brake lights.

For as far out of town as his apartment was, he would have expected the rent to be more reasonable. The building was one among a hundred almost identical buildings clustered in a bad part of town. Gio pulled into a parking spot, almost losing an eye when the seatbelt came unstuck so suddenly that the buckle pinged off the windshield and ricocheted into his face.

"Stugats," he cursed, cupping a hand over his cheek. "I fucking hate this job," he growled. Yanking the sun shade down to get at the mirror was a mistake, and the whole thing came off in his hand. He threw it onto the passenger seat and got out of the car. He didn't bother locking it; anybody stupid enough to steal it deserved their fate and many blessings to them.

The stairwell smelled like vomit and stewing refuse from the drug-addled addicts on the first floor again, and Gio had to step over two children having a knockdown fight on the third floor landing. The haze of smoke on the fifth floor made him cough, and it wasn't until he was almost to his door, down at the end of the sixth floor, that he noticed the door had been kicked in again.

"Son of a bitch." He didn't even have the energy to be angry about it at this point, just glad he'd decided to move all his important possessions into the safe deposit box he'd opened the day he arrived.

His apartment was trashed, what little of it there was to destroy. His mattress had been thrown across the room, twisting as it landed half up against the kitchen counter. The secondhand table he'd picked up was in pieces, and the single chair was on the other side of the room from its legs.

Groaning, he shoved the mattress back into place and ignored the rest. It was almost too much effort to go down and report the break-in to the super. The man hadn't done anything about the last three, so he wasn't expecting much, anyway. At least they hadn't stolen his food this time.

He poured himself a bowl of cereal with the last of his milk and curled up on his mattress with a book he pulled out of his messenger bag.