Being selfish paid dividends. She could see that now. And she most definitely saw it when she was plunged into the madness of her working week when she returned to the Casa Adriana the following week. There were moments when she wondered how she and Nico coped before Demetrio and Ines had been on board. Once the current pressure of both home and work life had calmed down, she was determined to take Nico at his word and begin recruiting for an office manager, as well as someone to take control of the IT side of things.
She was going to take a stand. A life of work wasn’t what she wanted and there were other things, far more satisfying, far more pleasurable, to be had.
She was also worried about her mother and the fact that she hadn’t fully shaken that cough of hers. At the pre-op appointment for her second knee, to which Mimi had taken her, the doctors hadn’t been keen to perform the operation until she had one hundred per cent recovered from it.
Nico had gone to Siena on one of his hotel visits, and from there he had plans to visit Ancona. He would be out the entire week. Demetrio had gone, and with only her and Ines at the Casa Adriana, things were much more relaxed in one way, but fraught with too much work at the same time.
Still, she had so much work to get through that she left Nico’s report and the invoicing to the end of the week.
She had spoken to Christian a few times but he seemed more irritable as the day of the race grew nearer. In a way it made her feel thankful that she hadn’t moved in with him yet, fearing that had she done so, she would only have been in the way.
As the week drew to a close, she hurried into work early on Friday morning, eager to get started on the tasks Nico had given her. As she switched on her PC and settled down, looking through her desk diary to see what meetings she had scheduled, she glanced up at her screen, bewildered. The programs were opening and closing automatically. She picked up her mouse pointer, thinking that it might have become stuck. She rolled the ball about a few times, pressed the left and right buttons and still programs opened and closed and the icons flashed together in a riot of movement. She switched the main button to her computer, waited a few second, then pressed it back on again.
But the same thing happened again. She frowned, confused and irritated by the seconds she was losing, given the amount of work she had on today. Her computer had been fine yesterday and she had never in all her time here, had problems with it before.
Undaunted, and hoping for third time lucky, she repeated the process and watched as her machine went through the usual boot sequence. Gone was her screensaver—a beach scene complete with emerald blue water and an inviting hammock strung between two fringed palm trees over white sand.
Something in the pit of her stomach felt queasy. She called Ines. “Is your PC working?”
“Yes, why?”
“Come and take a look at mine.”
A few moments later Ines walked in, stared at the screen and announced that she had a virus.
“A virus?” But how?
“I don’t know, but this isn’t normal.”
Gina groaned. “We don't even have an IT person.” If ever there was a time when she would have been happy to see Demetrio, it would have been today. “I’ve got a ton of reports to run for Nico and invoices to take care of, and—” She rubbed her brow. Too much.
“Can you use Nico’s PC?” Ines suggested. She could. The reports were on the network and both she and Nico had the same high-level security logins and access to parts of the network that the others didn’t. But not using her own computer was going to be a pain because she had a lot of confidential data and documents on her computer and she had everything set up just right and the way she wanted. “I could,” she sighed in an all-is-lost-voice. “But I don’t understand how this happened.”
“What did you download?” Ines asked.
“Nothing.” She rubbed her shoulder. She wasn’t one to surf around the net and she never downloaded anything from external sources, only email attachments, and even then it was only emails from people at work . Nico had sent her a few emails with attached files yesterday but apart from that, she hadn’t done much else on it.
“Did you open a suspicious email?”
“No.” She shrugged. She would have to call the IT firm they had used in the past and get someone to come and sort out this mess.
“Sorry I can’t help,” said Ines.
“Don’t worry. I think I know someone who might be able to.” She picked up the phone and called Mimi hoping to get Marco’s cell phone number. He was a computer whizz and he also worked in IT but when she rang, Mimi told her he was sleeping as he had just done another overnight shift. “Why do you want to talk him?” her sister asked, suspiciously. Gina explained her problem.
“I’ll get him to call you when he wakes up.”
“Don’t worry,” said Gina. She didn’t have time to waste. She looked for the number of the computer firm they had used in the past.
“You’ve got a virus," the engineer said, his obvious diagnosis made her irritation shoot up three levels. She had been in and out of her office, ever since the late afternoon when the engineer had finally arrived, and she had left him alone to diagnose the problem with her computer, and, she had hoped, to fix it.
She silently seethed with contempt at his final conclusion—which she had already arrived at first thing in the morning. “I know that,” she said, through gritted teeth. “But what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not sure I can do much here.” He stared at her with a glum expression. “This is something serious. It’s encrypted all of your data and it’s going to be a while before I can assess how much damage it’s done.”
It would soon be time to go home and she had yet to start on Nico’s work. Her morning had been taken up dealing with some problems at one of the other hotels. The managers had become used to calling her as their first-line of support, instead of dealing directly with Nico. She had been secretly praying for a miracle, that her PC was fully restored to proper working order.
“But I need you to fix it as soon as possible.”
He threw his hands up in the air, shaking his head as if she had asked him to make her a new PC out of thin air. “It’s not possible. What you’re asking is impossible. I don’t have the tools I need.”
“That’s hardly my fault.”
He wiped his hand over his face. “When was the last time it worked properly? As in not running slowly, or hanging, nothing odd happening.”
“Yesterday. It was perfectly fine yesterday.”
He nodded, wearily but offered no comforting words. Time was starting to run out. Today was supposed to have been an easy day, but the tiredness of working the last weekend and, in effect, working two weeks back to back had now caught up with her. There was also the important matter of Christian’s race tomorrow. She had promised to be there when he rode over the finish line.
There was no chance of her lying in bed and getting up late, on one of the rare occasions she needed it.
“So, what are you proposing to do?” she asked. She presumed he was going to do something.
“I’ll need a few more hours.”
Her mind was racing and she was still fixated on the mountain of work in front of her.
“You know where to find me,” she said and rushed out, wondering whether to call Christian and let him know that there was a strong possibility she was going to be late tonight.
“Hey, Gina.” The sound of Ava’s voice took her out of her web of worry. She turned around. “Ava—what a surprise! When did you come back to work?” She hadn’t seen Nico’s wife at all since their return from Venice.
“I’m only rushing in now to grab some files. I’ve been working from home mostly since we got back. Elisabetta’s at home sleeping and my housekeeper said she’d keep an eye on her.”
“I hear you had a great vacation.”
“I did. We did. Even Nico.” Ava rolled her eyes. “He thinks I don’t know that he worked more than he let on.”
Gina grinned. Nothing got past Ava.
“It’s Nico,” said Ava, inspecting her fingernails. “I can see right through him.”
They both chuckled at that and Gina noted how well Ava looked. Radiant and happy.
“Nico says you’re moving away from Verona?”
“To Brescia.”
“So I heard.” Ava’s eyes lit up. “What takes you to Brescia?”
“Oh, nothing, much.” Gina started to feel the heat on her face. It was obvious that Ava knew.
“It didn’t sound like nothing much the way Nico explained it to me.” Ava raised an eyebrow. “Who’s the lucky man?”
“Someone I met in Rome.” She blushed, then giggled, then confessed. “He was a trainer I met on one of the training courses that Nico sent me on.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“A trainer?” asked Ava, her mouth half-opening in awe. “How romantic. What’s his name?”
“Christian.”
Ava’s blue eyes opened wider. “Gina, you’re full of surprises, though I have to admit, I had a feeling something was going on with you.”
“You did?”
“The subtle but obvious change in the way you dress, the way you are, the shoes, the heels.”
Gina looked away, and fiddled around with her necklace. It was a long bronze chain with a round pendant and bronze wire tassels suspended from it.
“This is what I mean,” said Ava. “Jewelry. You never used to wear jewelry before, and,” she stared pointedly at Gina’s shoes. “Nice heels. I almost did a double take a few weeks ago.”
Gina blushed. She had been making small changes here and there but she didn’t think anybody at work had noticed.
“I can’t say I was surprised when Nico mentioned it to me.”
Gina shrugged and touched her fingers to her hair, primping it up. “I felt like a change. The old ‘me’ felt outdated.” She bit her lip. “He makes me happy.”
“Oh, Gina, that’s so plain to see.” Ava grabbed her hand and gave it a little tug. “I’m glad you’ve met someone who puts a smile on your face.” She leaned closer. “When do we get to meet him?”
Gina’s insides flipped at the thought. “I haven’t given it much consideration. It’s still in the early days and..and…there’s so much going on at the moment.”
Ava waved a hand at her, as if to put her mind at rest. “Absolutely understandable. It’s a few months away but what about at Elisabetta’s first birthday party?”
“When’s that?”
“November 22nd but I’m not sure if we’re going to have the party on that exact date. We can’t seem to decide on a date or a venue, and Nico won’t let us have a small party at home. He has these grand ideas about putting up a marquee in the hotel grounds, but I’m going to put a stop to that. A child’s birthday party in a marquee in November of all months? That man always wants to do things on a grand scale. He obviously hasn’t thought it through.”
“I’m sure Nico will provide heaters, and I know he will have everything just perfect.”
“You’re right,” said Ava. “But I don’t want a huge A-list celebrity party for my daughter’s birthday. I want something small, with family and friends, and I want it to be fun for children. My mother will be coming over for it, maybe Rona and Carlos, too, and our friends, and Nico’s family. It would be the perfect time for you to introduce Christian.”
“Thank you.” It was still two months away and who knew what might have happened by then?
“Don’t thank me,” said Ava. “Bring him so that I can meet him!”
Gina laughed. “I’m sure it will be amazing. You and Nico always throw the best parties.”
“We shall see.”
“I can’t believe Elisabetta is going to be one already.” The year had indeed flown by. It had been at Nico and Ava’s wedding three months before Elisabetta’s birth that Gina had met Davide again, after many years. She had met and finished with Davide, or rather he had finished with her, and now she was madly in love and about to move in with Christian. Life could be strange sometimes.
“I am dreading the terrible twos.”
Gina refused to believe it. “Elisabetta will sail through them. Your daughter’s an angel.”
“She has her good moments.”
“When is Elsa coming?” Gina was particularly fond of Ava’s mother, and many a time she wished her own mother was more like that kind, wise and compassionate woman.
“Who knows?” Ava chuckled. “My mother might turn up a month before the birthday, or she might turn up a few days’ before. I can never tell with her. Anyway,” said Ava, shrugging, “Let’s arrange a lunch soon-ish. I’ll ask Andrea, and you could ask Ines along. It would be good for us all to get away from work and talk women talk.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” agreed Gina.
“Good to see you again. I must go before my baby wakes up.” She was gone in a flash.
Gina walked into Nico’s office and set to work. Undoubtedly, she was going to be late getting home tonight but with Christian’s race tomorrow, it might not be such a bad thing for him to have some time alone. She convinced herself that being out of his way wasn’t such a bad thing.
She worked away, and had made a start on Nico’s reports, but they took so long to run, it wasn’t going to be a quick job. While she waited for the second batch of reports to run, she ventured back into her office.
“We’ve made progress,” said the engineer, his tools and CDs lying on her desk. Her hopes soared.
“The virus came from an email you opened.”
She frowned. “An email? Can you tell which one?”
“Not yet. I’ll have to take your computer away and run more diagnostics on it. I can’t reclaim many of the files here. I’ll have our experts take a look at it in our labs.”
“I thought you were an expert.”
“I’m first line of support. We have people who will be able to delve deeper into your hard drive and hopefully save more of the drive, and your files than I can here.”
Her hopes slumped like a deflating balloon. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to get her computer back today and, by the looks of things, not any time soon. She scratched her head, contemplating what he had told her.
“I don't understand how it could have been from an email I opened. I don’t receive emails from suspicious sources, and I only open personal emails at home. They only get sent to my personal email address which I never access at work. ” She never had the time.
The engineer shrugged, indicating that he didn’t have any more answers for her. “It’s an email. I’ll have to dig deeper, and we might be able to trace it back to the source, but I can’t promise you anything.”
“I would really appreciate it if you could restore as many of my files as possible. It’s really important.”
“We’ll do our best. I've done everything I can here, I’ve recovered 30% of the files but that’s all I can do.” He shut down his laptop. “If you’re happy for me to take it away, I’ll need your signature here.” He shoved a piece of paper in her direction.
She signed the paper and stood back, working out in her head that tonight was going to be a very late night.
“I’ll have a report for you when this has been looked at properly.”
She saw him out of the door and returned to Nico's office wondering if she ought to call and give him an update on the state of things. But he would be out of the office until the middle of next week, and there was no good news to give. Better to say nothing than to have him worry. Then she suddenly remembered Christian. Guilt washed over her. She hadn’t considered calling him and giving him an update.
She was supposed to go over tonight, but she wasn’t sure what time she would get to leave today. If she stayed an hour or two tonight, she still wouldn’t be able to finish everything.
But she could come in tomorrow morning before the race and then drive to Brescia. As long as she got to the finish line by noon, it would be fine. As for going over tonight, he would understand after she explained the nightmare of a day she’d had.