The Moretti Arrangement by Katherine Garbera

champagne flute in each hand. He looked dashing in his tux as he handed one of the glasses to her.
    She took it, lifting it toward him in a salute. “To Moretti Motors continued success.”
    He clinked his glass to hers and they both took a drink.
    “You don’t believe there is still a curse, do you?” Nathalie asked. “I thought that Marco and Virginia broke it when Enzo was born.”
    Angelina had only heard rumors about the Moretti curse. The gossip was that the Moretti men could either be lucky in business or lucky in love, but never in both. Lorenzo Moretti, the founder of Moretti Motors, had been lucky in business turning the small company he started into one of the world’s top luxury automakers. His son Giovanni had been lucky in business until he’d fallen in love with Philomena at which time Moretti Motors started to fail. Dominic, Antonio and Marco had decided that they would be the generation to be lucky in business again.
    “How could the curse be broken?” Angelina asked.
    “Virginia is the granddaughter of Cassia Festa, the woman who cursed my nono. And she had access to the original language that Cassia had used to cast that curse. She read over the words and figured out the meaning behind the curse and then deemed that if Moretti and Festa blood were mingled the curse would be broken,” Dominic said.
    “So now there’s no more curse?” Angelina asked.
    Dominic shrugged. “Who worries about curses when they are as successful as I am?”
    She smiled because she knew he’d meant her to. But she wasn’t feeling it. Instead she was worried that Dominic didn’t seem to care that his family’s curse meant that the men were destined for either fortune or love.
    Though to be fair, Marco and Virginia seemed very happy. Marco’s fortune hadn’t changed and he was still winning F1 races. Antonio and Nathalie hadn’t been together that long, but Angelina didn’t see any signs that either Moretti Motors or Vallerio Inc. was going to face financial hardship.
    “Dominic, you are never going to convince a woman to stick around with that kind of attitude,” Nathalie said.
    “I have other attributes you might not be as aware of.”
    “She better not be,” Antonio said, coming up behind his fiancée. He hugged her close and dropped a quick kiss on Nathalie’s lips.
    “ Buona sera, Angelina.”
    “Good evening, Antonio.” She wasn’t too certain what Antonio thought of her. She knew that all of the Moretti brothers were aware she had been spying on the company and that made her feel as though she didn’t deserve the happiness she had found with Dominic. Maybe she was starting her own bad luck.
    “I don’t mean to hurry everyone away, but we need to mingle. Marco and the rest of Team Moretti should be arriving any minute and many of the guests will want to talk to him and Keke,” Dominic said.
    Keke had been a Team Moretti F1 driver who had been injured in a car accident; actually he’d almost died. And Angelina remembered how upset the Morettis had been about it. They treated everyone who worked for the company like family.
    Like a real family, she realized. Not at all the way she and Renni had been because it was just the two of them. But a big extended group of people that she could rely on. It was a different kind of feeling and she liked it.
    “Angelina?”
    “Hmm?”
    “I need you to entertain the press group,” Dominic said.
    “Certainly. What do you want me to do?” Angelina asked.
    “Just the tour of the factory like we discussed earlier,” Dominic said.
    Everyone at the reception would be taken on a factory tour in small groups. Angelina was happy to be included as one of the Moretti Motors representatives. She knew it wasn’t so much due to her being Dominic’s mistress but more because he was starting to trust her again.

    Angelina was tired a bit after the long day at work. Dominic was out of town for an F1 race all of the Morettis traditionally attended. She felt very