Alessandro used his other hand to pull Lucrezia inside the meeting room. He closed the door and locked it to ensure they'd have privacy, and then turned to her again. "Why did you call me that?" he asked, and despite his attempt to appear calm, his voice came off hoarse and trembling. He was trying to get through his day with a semblance of normalcy – at least, as normal as possible considering that he was going crazy out of his mind with worry and frustration. But he couldn't wallow in misery. He had an empire to run, after all.
And when he thought he was doing a fairly good job of keeping a tight lid on his emotions, just hearing the number that 20 addressed him with flooded him with a thousand memories, and he felt himself cracking.
