Melanie was a natural choice to fill in as manager in his absence. Antonio didn’t need to know, and as long as the staff kept their mouths shut and didn’t text Antonio about it directly, Luciano was sure he’d never find out. As long as no one grew suspicious, Luciano considered her rise to manager as non-news.

On her first day at Thorn Tattoo as official manager, Melanie received a shipment of green soap the shop desperately needed, only to carry the boxes the wrong way on her way into the back. The bottom split, the plastic bottles tumbled out, and one of the caps burst off and sprayed liquid soap everywhere. The cleanup took half the day. No matter how much they scrubbed, the soap remained. Not only was Melanie busy with cleanup duty for close to the rest of the day, but she pulled Jill in to help her, and the front suffered for it.

On her second day as manager, Melanie placed an order for the wrong kind of disposable needles. Luciano only caught her mistake because she’d left the invoice on the midsection between their desks. He’d had to call in to the company himself to manually fix the order before it shipped because Melanie had to deal with an upset customer—she’d booked an appointment through Mal’s lunch, and Mal was pissed and cutting the session short.

On the third day, when Melanie ‘accidentally’ crashed the computer system and had to call in an IT specialist to get it up and running, bringing operations to a near standstill, Luciano knew that she was doing it all on purpose. The entire two years they’d spent together, Melanie had been mortified of making mistakes. Whatever she did, she did with care and precision. She took the time to do things right. She never jumped into something that might lead to failure.

In three days, she’d done more wrong than he’d seen her do in two whole years.

She was trying to make a point. Luciano knew that she didn’t want the position, and he figured this was her way of proving to him that she was unfit for the job.

It was bullshit. He knew Melanie, and he knew that she was smart, capable, clever, and a quick learner. There was no way she was ill-suited for the job.

If anything, she was too perfect for it.

Luciano had been raised in Vegas, and he was no stranger to games. If she wanted to tempt the odds and bluff her way from competence to incompetence, he knew how to call her out on it. If she could fake it, Luciano could fake it, too.

On Melanie’s fourth day as manager, Luciano used his lunch break to write an email.

Hey Antonio,

It’s been a long time since we wrote to each other. Sorry. You know how it goes. Not really into the whole keeping in touch thing, if only because half the time I’m too scatterbrained, and half the time I’m too lazy.

But today I’ve got something I need to talk to you about. I know you thought hiring Melanie on as shop manager was going to be a good thing, but she’s crashing and burning hard. She’s wasting time, energy, and resources better spent elsewhere. I’m catching her making big mistakes left and right, and I feel like she’s blowing the whole thing off.

I think you should fire her. I can definitely find another assistant. The convention in town is happening next week, and there’ll be plenty of enthusiasts there who would trade their right hand for a chance to work with me. What do you think?

Good seeing you at dinner the other night, by the way. Hoping we can get out and do it again soon. Didn’t realize how much I missed you and Gio until I was back.

Talk soon,

Luc

Luciano reviewed the email briefly, decided it was solid, then filled in the subject field as ‘About Melanie’ and then clicked to fill in the recipient info. Without hesitating, Luciano keyed in Melanie’s work email address. He didn’t bother to look for Antonio’s.

If Melanie was going to play games, he was going to play games right back. Hopefully, hearing he was thinking about firing her would set her straight and get her to do her job like she should have been since the beginning.

Luciano sent the email, held back a chuckle, and then shut down his computer. It had been a long time since he’d played a prank, but it felt good to get it out of his system—as if he was being proactive in keeping Thorn Tattoo alive.

Not far from the swinging doors of his tattoo bay, Luciano heard Melanie’s phone receive a text message. She had a cheery ring tone, like silver bells playing a famous pop melody he could never place.

He exited the tattoo bay to find her not even two feet from his doors, staring down at the screen of her phone. Her eyes flicked back and forth, reading, and when she was done, she turned the screen off and looked up. Her face was ashen.

Without saying a word, Melanie pushed her glasses further up her nose, turned around, and hurried for the stairs leading to the front door. Stunned, Luciano watched her go. The way she moved was pained, like she was an animal wounded in the wild, lopping along for dear life as it looked for salvation.

It was panic.

The door to Thorn Tattoo closed, and Melanie was gone. She didn’t return forty-five minutes later, when her break was officially over, nor did she reply to any of the text messages he sent her.

Luciano didn’t think she would have taken it that hard. Everything he knew about her was beginning to change.

The Melanie he thought he knew was a professional obsessed with perfection. She was the kind of woman who’d stand steadfast in the face of adversity and always come out on top; although sometimes not without a few telling injuries to show for her troubles.

He was seeing someone entirely different now. Someone fragile. Someone much more personable.

He wondered if it was the same Melanie he’d seen in Nashville, who’d spoken to him so sincerely and been so open about her love of the universe and all things in it, metaphysical or not.

Luciano wished he knew.

All he did know was that since they’d arrived back in Vegas, Melanie had been acting differently, and he’d hurt her more deeply and in more ways than he had in the last two years.