Paolo Romano's niece, Gina, had been his executive assistant for three years, and he still didn't know how he'd functioned without her. She was twenty-six, sharp-tempered, sharper-eyed, and had the kind of memory that stored every slight, every odd glance, every conversation that didn't land quite right. She'd grown up watching her uncle get steamrolled by the music industry — first the subsidiary labels, then the artists, then Michael Erickson's quiet suffocation — and she'd taken the job with one unspoken mission: never let it happen again.
She noticed the A&R coordinator's behavior on a Tuesday morning, around 10:30, while she was restocking the printer paper near Paolo's office.
