The Mafia Boss’s Dog Chose the Plus-Size Woman Everyone Ignored—Then Refused to Leave Her Side

Chapter 4

Luca usually stayed for the entire session, pretending to answer messages while watching her work. He noticed the way her round body moved heavily but confidently between the treatment rooms. The way her full cheeks flushed when she hurried. The way she stopped sometimes to catch her breath without allowing anyone to help. Ruby Hart had never been graceful. She bumped into tables, lost her glasses. One afternoon, during a serious conversation about a fracture, she sat down on a squeaky toy, and it honked beneath her like a broken horn.

Ruby remained perfectly still. “We are going to pretend that did not happen.”

“I was prepared to,” Luca said.

Caesar pressed the toy again with his paw.

Then one afternoon, while she was cleaning the cut on a greyhound that had been found shivering in a warehouse, she looked up to find Luca standing in the doorway of the treatment room. Caesar was asleep in the basket by the front desk.

“You don’t have to stand guard,” Ruby said. “Nothing here bites harder than a biscuit.”

“I’m not guarding,” Luca said. “I’m watching.”

“Same thing, different vocabulary.”

He came closer, and the greyhound pressed itself flat against the table, eyes rolling white. Ruby smoothed a hand down its ribs and murmured something low. The dog’s trembling eased.

“He’s afraid of men,” she said. “Whoever left him, it was a man. He doesn’t know that not all of them are that kind.”

Luca looked at the dog for a long moment, and Ruby saw something flicker behind his careful face — a memory she would not ask about.

“Can he learn?” Luca asked.

“Only if someone gives him a reason to.” Ruby stood and held out the biscuit jar. “Here. You try.”

Luca stared at the jar like it was a weapon. Then he crouched, slow and stiff, and set a biscuit on the floor a full arm’s length from the table. The greyhound watched him with unblinking fear. Luca sat back on his heels and waited — not moving, not reaching, not commanding. For almost a minute, nothing happened. Then the greyhound crept forward, snatching the biscuit, and fled back to the safety of Ruby’s side.

“Progress,” Ruby said.

“He didn’t let me touch him.”

“He let you share his space. That’s how it starts.” She met his eyes. “You can’t order trust, Luca. You can only earn it by sitting still long enough.”

The silence between them held. Then Caesar’s snore rumbled through the front room like an engine, and the greyhound startled so badly it tried to climb onto Ruby’s shoulder. She laughed, and Luca almost smiled, and for the rest of that afternoon he stayed in the doorway, watching her work, not checking his phone once.

Ruby began to notice changes in Luca, too. He arrived with fewer guards. He stopped standing beside the exit. Sometimes he removed his jacket and loosened his tie, though he still looked like a man prepared to purchase the building if a chair offended him. Caesar often slept with his head on Ruby’s soft thigh while Luca sat across from them in silence. She could see that the dog was not the only one learning how to rest. Luca’s shoulders no longer stayed rigid every second. He occasionally forgot to check his phone. The moment he noticed himself relaxing, though, the cold expression returned like a tide.

One rainy afternoon she handed him a paper cup.

“Drink this.”

Luca looked inside. “What is it?”

“Chamomile. I drink espresso.”

“That explains why you look angry at furniture.”

He stared at her, then took the cup. Caesar watched from his mat, pig between his paws. Luca tasted the tea and frowned.

“It tastes like hot grass.”

“Excellent. Your personality is already improving.”

The sound that escaped him was brief, almost accidental — but it was unmistakably a laugh. Ruby stopped sorting medicine bottles and looked at him. Luca seemed startled by himself. For a few seconds the room went very quiet. He looked at her flushed round face, the oversized yellow cardigan, the strand of hair stuck to her lip gloss. She looked nothing like the polished women who appeared beside him at public events. She was soft, clumsy, stubborn, and completely unimpressed by his money. Luca had spent most of his life surrounded by people who wanted something from him. Ruby seemed to want only one thing: for him to stop frightening his own dog.

The moment broke when the front door opened and a tall man in blue veterinary scrubs walked in carrying two coffees and a paper bag. “I brought lunch,” he called.

Ruby’s face lit up. “Marcus, you’re saving my life.”

The man crossed the room, handed her a coffee, and kissed her cheek as if he had done it a hundred times. Luca’s expression went perfectly, dangerously still.