“Can you believe it, Tia?” Catalina exclaims under her breath as she and her assistant walk side by side to her office. "Sandwiches! He makes a living out of making sandwiches!"

“Surely there is a lot more than what he lets on.”

Catalina waves a hand of dismissal. “Of course, he does. What baffles me is that for a ‘day job’, Nemo chooses to make sandwiches.”

"I thought you mentioned his name was Domenico, miss."

"Just like how I have Nina, he is Nemo," Catalina explains.

"...The same name as the fish?"

Catalina pauses in her step to fully turn toward Tia. “Exactly!” She says. “That was my same comment!”

“Or it could also be from the captain in that story,” Tia adds.

Catalina scowls at her. “And that’s what he said after my fish comment.” Then she shakes her head and rubs her forehead, feeling the onset of a headache. “Jesus, I can’t believe I’m still talking about him. Because of him, I couldn’t sleep well last night! What a weird guy…”

“He must be tired as well, then,” Tia comments quietly.

“Why would he be tired?”

“...Because he’s been running in your mind all night.”

Catalina groans tiredly as Tia titters, proud of herself for slipping that in. “Tia, please, not now!”

“Sorry, yes,” her assistant clears her throat and returns to holding herself in a dignified manner. “The situation made me feel compelled to say that line.”

“Well, I would be happy to know if Nemo didn’t get any wink of sleep so that we’re even.”

(Little did she know that Domenico had one of the best sleep ever. He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.)

“Miss Catalina, I’m relieved that you did not encounter any danger last night.” Tia leads the way to the office, passing by different cubicles where other employees of Catalina’s family’s business are busy working. Some stop their task at hand to greet Catalina, their boss. She regards those who greeted her with a simple nod of her head, a small smile gracing her features as she does so.

“Honestly speaking, Nemo doesn’t seem to be a dangerous man.” He just wouldn’t hesitate to bring out his gun to shoot those ingredients last night if I wasn’t there.

“And that evaluation is based on what, miss?”

They stop before the dark-tinted doors to Catalina’s office. She answers, “Based on one thing he would never fail to bring up, that fact he cares so much for me that he wants to even marry me.”

“You’re talking nonchalantly for someone who suddenly received a marriage proposal out of the blue.”

“If I continue to force myself to think hard about it, I am going to lose my mind, Tia,” She murmurs.

“We still have to be careful, miss. Sometimes an act of ‘love’ for some people may be a misconstrued perception of obsession.”

Catalina laughs and rests her hand on the door handle in front of her. “I doubt that would be Nemo’s case.” She twists the handle and pushes the door open to reveal her office filled with bouquets of flowers ranging from those arranged with a small number of daisies to those overflowing bouquets of mixed flowers. “What. The. Heck?!”

Tia’s hand flies to her mouth. “O-Oh, my goodness,” she gasps. Catalina’s jaw dropped at the sight before her. The number of flowers ranging from roses of all colors to daisies, dandelions, lilies, peonies, daffodils, sunflowers, tulips – now her head is really hurting now – could amount to at least two flower gardens! Catalina bets some of the flowers were even imported.

The bouquets took up almost all of the office space. Catalina and Tia had to tiptoe to Catalina’s desk to avoid the bouquets placed on the ground since there was no more room. Catalina was grumbling incoherently under her breath the whole time they were trying to make it to her desk.

“Miss,” Tia begins, “should I call Cisco–”

"Yes, call him this instant!” Catalina commands, fuming with anger. Tia jumps a bit in shock at her boss’s sudden outburst and brings out her phone from her pocket to dial Catalina’s bodyguard, Cisco. The phone only rings twice before the call is picked up on the other end of the line.

“Yes, Miss Tia?”

Tia is not given the chance to reply as Catalina takes the phone from her hand. “Cisco,” Catalina starts, “what is with all these bouquets?!”

“M-Miss Catalina! There was a note, miss, that we had to place them all in your office. But don’t worry! We checked each of them and we did not find any bomb–”

“I don’t care about that!” She cuts him off. “What matters is that you flooded my office with them! “

The other end of the line goes silent until Cisco quietly asks, “But…but don’t you find them pretty, miss?”

Catalina almost drops the phone, completely appalled by Cisco’s question, and groans out loud. Tia immediately grabs back her phone and nervously glances at Catalina who has placed her hands on her desk and is leaning all her weight on them out of exhaustion. “Cisco, not now,” Tia whispers to the phone.

“But there are still more–”

“There’s more?!” Catalina cries out, turning with her eyes wider than before.

“Y-Yes, miss.” Cisco answers, “We placed them in the storage room…”

Catalina forces her eyes closed. Internally, she counts to ten – an act she learned from living with six other siblings who always found different ways to test her patience and question her whole being. Once she reached the number 10, her eyes slowly fly open, and a tight-lipped smile formed on her face which make Tia start to feel weirded out by her. “Alright, Cisco,” Catalina says in a calm and collected manner, “Thank you.” Catalina then directs her attention to Tia. “End the call,” she mutters. Tia taps the ‘end call’ button on her phone.

Once Tia inserts her phone back into her pocket, Catalina could not hold it back any longer and bellows out, “Nemo, that fish, I am going to kill him!”

“M-Miss,” Tia stammers, reaching over to grab a rose gold card resting in the middle of her desk. “I think Cisco forgot to mention one more detail.” She inspects the card before handing it over to Catalina.

Catalina takes it and finds that it’s a handwritten note. I don’t know what your favorite flower is, so I got you all. Maybe next time, you’ll tell me. You mentioned that you were up for challenges. And I’m sure you’ll want to know the reason why I would like to marry you. Here’s a challenge for you, then. Find my real phone number.

“Find my phone number?” She murmurs exasperatedly, “What does he mean?” Catalina now carefully looks around and only then does she start to notice that each bouquet has a card on them. She grabs the card from the nearest bouquet to her and finds another handwritten note on it. This time, it is shorter.

Darling. With love, Nemo (340 743416x)

Catalina grabs another card from a different bouquet and the same words are written on it except for the phone number, (351 122899x).

Tia takes another card with a different set of numbers on it, (382 511120x).

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Catalina breathes out in defeat.

“Are you going to do it, miss?”

Catalina throws the cards to the ground and makes her way behind her desk to sit on her chair. “No,” she grumbles. “I am not going to do this ‘challenge’ he set up for me.”

“I can always run a background check on him–”

“And what? You think that will scare him away? It’s best if we just leave him alone.” She brushes her fingers through her hair and prepares the reports she plans to work on for the day, spreading them on her desk. “I am going to imagine that I am not surrounded by all these flowers.”

“Do you want me to start cleaning them up, miss?”

“Clean what up?”

“The bouque–oh.” Tia stops and nods in understanding. Catalina throws a knowing look in her direction. “Now I get you,” Tia says. “Well, miss, if you change your mind, I will just be at my desk outside your office.”

“Thank you, Tia,” Catalina says, not tearing her eyes away from reading through an unfinished report. She hears her assistant carefully make her way to the door, open it, and close it behind her. Only then does she drop the report on her desk and huffs out in annoyance. The crease between her brows deepens as she basks in the number of bouquets surrounding her. She feels like she’s about to suffocate in this confined space filled with nothing but flowers.

At least they’re pretty flowers… “But what in the world was he thinking???” She complains to herself. “Doesn’t that fish have anything better to do with his money?!”

From where she was seated, Catalina could see another card peeking out of a bouquet of tulips beside her desktop computer. Again, another set of numbers is written on it. How could this tiny, fragile, nonliving thing made out of the flimsiest of paper somehow disturb her peace for the day?

Her eyes rake through the office, inside her head she counts how many bouquets of flowers surround her. She counts them by two and gradually begins to realize that there are too many to count when she reaches the number 88.

“I…I am not going to give in to this challenge,” she whispers. Then she holds her head high and repeats the words with more resolve, “I am not going to give in to his challenge!” She returns her attention to the report she needs to finish by the end of the day for this new proposal a multinational company is hoping to pass in terms of leasing one of her family’s properties.

But, dammit. She just can’t erase her peripheral vision filled with flowers and unknown mobile numbers. One of them is Nemo’s number and it’s not that she wants to know his number immediately, it’s the challenge that is making her oh-so-intrigued that it is irking her to the core!

One number won’t hurt, a voice in her mind consciously tempts her. It’s as if she’s back at the black-tie gala again! The sin of throwing away all practicality to follow Domenico that night and loosen up with him is just the same as the sin to disregard all her work for the day to take on this enticing challenge. One number won’t hurt, the voice says again. Without wasting another second, she grabs the card from the bouquet of tulips she has been eyeing for some time. Then she brings her phone out and begins to dial the number written on the card. She places the call on speaker mode just as it begins to ring.

Catalina brings a closed fist to her mouth, sometimes nipping at her knuckles as the call continues to ring. Her heartbeat quickens with every ring and she’s starting to become conscious of the way she’s breathing and the way her knee bobs up and down in nervousness and rising anticipation under her desk.

“Hello?” A masculine voice speaks from the other line as the call gets picked up.

Catalina rushes to sit up on her seat, surprised that someone answered. That was fast. “H-Hello?” she stammered. “Is this your number?”

“Mi Amor?” The man gasps. “Where are you, my love?”

“What the heck,” Catalina whispers, “Is this Nemo?” She clears her throat and answers in a louder voice, “I’m in my office and I’ve received all the flowers you’ve left me.”

“My love, I finally did it,” the man breathes out.

“D-Did what?”

“I finally killed your husband!” Catalina clasps a hand over her mouth. “I fled to the Marshall Islands, just as you instructed me to! I am waiting for you, my love, and I cannot wait to make love with you when–” She instantly ends the phone call and blocks the number.

The fact that she stayed on call to hear more details was beyond her, but she couldn’t stay long to the point that the weird man might start to talk in detail about whatever he was planning to do with his lover.

“Bless his heart and the man he killed, if that guy was good…or not. That was…eventful,” she murmurs, still in shock and albeit traumatized from what she heard in a matter of seconds. “I am not going to do it again. Nope, no more numbers that I am going to dial. This is stupid. Nemo is stupid.”

But it did not take a minute for her to cave in. “Oh, what the heck. Another one won’t hurt!” She stands from her chair, grabs her phone, and carefully tiptoes, minding the other bouquets on the floor, to the entrance of her office to pick a new number that she’ll now try.

As much as she hated to admit it, this endeavor is so exhilarating. It’s not every day that she is given this particular challenge that could rile her up and make her desire to know the answer. It is peculiar in its own way, but she hates that she is growing to love it.

“I hate how Nemo seems to know me and what I like,” she grumbles to herself as she dials another mobile number. The call does not ring as an automated voice on the service line begins to speak.

“The number you have dialed is incorrect.”

“Cavolo!” She curses out of frustration and does not hesitate to pick another card to try another number. “You fish, I am not going to stop until I find your number!”

—---------

“Joseph, I told you to stop calling me!”

“Y-Yes, I’m on my way home now, mama! And no, I was not drinking!”

“I’m glad you called first. I think we should break up.”

“The number you have dialed is not in service.”

“I can’t believe she broke up with me over the phone!”

“I have a new mission for you. A hundred thousand euros is on the line.”

“The number you have dialed is now unattended.”

Two hours have passed. But it felt like an entire day for Catalina. She’s been taking her business to the floor, gathering and piling the cards with mobile numbers on top of each other and if it’s not the number she’s looking for, she would instantly tear the card into pieces.

She was slowly starting to lose her mind. She’s lost count of how many numbers she has blocked and exhaustion was creeping up on her. She didn’t care if her hair was a mess already and if she was laying on a bed of flowers as she would dial another number to find that it was not Nemo’s.

And she thought that she had an interesting life with the underground matters her family is responsible for! People are really doing all kinds of things out there!

A knocking on the door causes Catalina to stop mid-dialing another number on her phone. The door opens and Tia peeks her head inside. “Miss Catali–oh my goodness, Miss!” She cries out, appalled by how her boss is looking now. She steps inside the office and gawks at her. “W-What happened, miss?”

“I couldn’t help it, Tia. Nemo got me with this challenge,” Catalina cries in self-pity, “Curiosity killed the cat. I’m the cat!”

Tia eyes the torn pieces of paper surrounding her boss and kneels to help her sit up. She begins to fix Catalina’s hair. “Miss, you have a meeting later with your siblings!”

“Dio, I completely forgot. I’ve been so scatter-brained for the past few days that I now don’t have enough time to prepare for the meeting!”

Tia felt sorry for how her boss clearly seemed bothered with what was going on. She didn’t expect that she would actually be swayed to try the challenge Domenico left for her. Catalina is not an easy person to persuade. There must be something with that man that causes Catalina to be magnetized to him in unconventional ways. Catalina may not be aware of that, yet, but Tia can help her realize that truth slowly. She won’t do it all at once in a smack-in-the-face manner, she’ll do it in her own unique way.

Tia sets her lips into a thin, tight line and she stands to leave the office without a word.

“Hey, where are you going?!” Catalina asks her assistant in a loud voice. But she receives no answer. “It’s official. I’ve gone crazy. Even Tia doesn’t want to talk to me anymore–”

“Curiosity may have killed the cat, Miss Catalina,” Tia’s voice rings above the air as the door opens again to reveal her on the other side, she then full pushes the door open to show that around 10 of their female employees are standing behind her, “but satisfaction brought it back.” Tia smiles and raises her phone. “We’re here to help, miss,” she announces and the other women raise their respective phones as well, encouraging grins plastered on their faces. “Let’s find the number of the fish!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please do not attempt to call the phone numbers in this chapter! I made them up but these might actually be active numbers!

Overall, this was fun to write! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

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Thank you, luvies ♡♡♡