14. Public Pressure
PUBLIC PRESSURE
LUCA
Victor Raines did not sit down when the meeting started.
That told me everything.
The investors took their places around the conference table with the stiff irritation of men who thought money entitled them to calm. Victor stayed by the windows, phone in hand, waiting for permission to pull the trigger.
Outside, reporters and photographers crowded the resort gates, flashes bursting against the thick glass as security tightened the line.
I stood at the head of the table because sitting would have felt like surrender.
"You have my recovery plan," I said. "Statement by noon. Extra security is in place. Guest communications go out within the hour. We keep the relaunch on schedule."
Victor laughed once. "You keep saying relaunch like the public is still buying luxury from a man being called a violent liability on every gossip feed in Miami."
"Jax Hale started this circus because he wants attention."
"And you handed it to him gift-wrapped."
Donny shifted beside me, but I cut him off with a glance.
Victor set his phone facedown on the table. "The fund is prepared to pause the final relaunch disbursement."
The room changed. No one moved, but every silence sharpened.
"You signed contracts," I said.
"With morality and reputational clauses." His smile was thin. "You want our money released? Give the public a better story."
A pulse beat once in my temple. "I am not fighting Jax."
"Not Jax. An exhibition. Give it a charity angle—veterans, youth boxing, concussion research, whatever your team can package by Friday.
Announce within forty-eight hours, and the narrative shifts.
" Victor leaned one hand against the table.
"The retired legend returns for a cause. Discipline. Redemption. Control."
Control.
The word found the oldest fracture in me.
For half a second, the conference room dissolved into hospital light. Zoe too still beneath a white sheet. My hand locked around a bed rail while doctors explained that strength, money, rage—none of it could bargain with what had already happened.
"No," I said.
Victor's expression cooled. "Then we pause the funds."
Donny swore under his breath. Across the table, two investors avoided my eyes, pretending this was business and not a leash.
"You don't get to put me back in a cage because you're scared of bad press."
"I'm asking you to sell the version of yourself people still understand."
There it was. Not the father. Not the widower. Not the man who had built something clean out of wreckage.
The animal.
My phone buzzed. Security. Media relations. Bianca. The resort was cracking in three places while ten men in tailored suits watched me like I was both problem and product.
I silenced it.
"Forty-eight hours," Victor said. "Or the relaunch stalls."
I looked at every face in that room until the silence belonged to me again.
"Meeting's over."
"That is not an answer."
"No," I said, already turning toward the door. "It's the only one you've earned."
The crisis had multiplied while I was in the conference room.
Marco was waiting in the hallway, a tablet clutched in one hand and the expression of a man reconsidering every career choice that had led him to me.
"Three more cancellations," he said, falling into step beside me. "Two wedding tours want to reschedule. The corporate retreat wants written assurance there won't be media on property."
"There won't be."
"There are cameras at the south gate, Luca."
"Then move them."
He swallowed whatever he wanted to say. Smart man. Tired man. I hated that I noticed the purple half-moons under his eyes.
My phone lit up again. Bianca.
I answered without slowing. "Tell me."
"Your staff is scared," she said, no greeting. "The catering lead wants her name pulled from the relaunch packet because reporters found her Instagram. The florist is threatening to walk. Vendors are calling me like I'm hiding bodies in the ballroom."
"Keep them from defecting until I can get there."
A beat of silence. "Wonderful. Should I reassure them before or after I finish disposing of the ballroom bodies?"
"Use the service elevator."
"Luca."
"Keep them calm, Bianca."
"That is not a plan."
"It is until I have one."
I ended the call before she could say my name in that careful way people used when they thought I was bleeding and too stubborn to look down.
At the lobby entrance, two housekeepers stood near the service corridor, whispering fast. They went quiet when they saw me. One looked away. The other didn't.
"Mr. Santoro," she said. "My kids saw my picture online this morning. Someone tagged me in a video from outside the resort."
The words landed lower than anger. Somewhere uglier.
"I'll have security review every staff image they've circulated and get someone to help you lock down your accounts."
She waited. Not for another procedure. For something human.
I forced myself to hold her gaze. "You shouldn't have been dragged into this. I'm sorry."
Her mouth trembled once. "I just work here."
I nodded, because if I said anything else, I might tell her I knew exactly what it felt like to become collateral damage.
By the time I made it back to the house, the resort was still burning behind me. But the weight of it followed me through the front door, in the vibration of my phone, in the security updates stacking unread, in the memory of Victor's voice turning my life into a transaction.
Then I heard Ava laugh. The sound hit me so hard I stopped in the entryway.
In the living room, Donny was on the floor with one of Ava's plush sharks balanced on his head, walking his fingers across the rug like it was escaping.
"Careful," Ava warned, serious and delighted all at once. "That shark is not emotionally prepared for freedom."
Riley sat beside her, cross-legged, helping line up a neat row of seashells along the coffee table. Her hair was tucked behind one ear. Her smile was soft, real, and aimed at my daughter.
For one second, the world steadied. Then Riley looked up and saw me.
The smile faded first. Not gone. Just folded away beneath worry. She stood carefully, like she didn't want Ava to feel the shift.
"Luca," she said.
I should have answered.
Ava turned, face lighting. "Daddy, Uncle Donny's shark is making poor choices."
"Sounds like Uncle Donny," I said, my voice rougher than I meant it to be.
Donny glanced at me, his grin dimming as he read my face. "Hey, champ."
Riley took one step toward me. "Are you okay?"
There it was. The question I could not survive from her mouth.
"I need to take a call," I said.
Her brow pinched. "Luca?—"
"Not now."
The words cracked through the room.
Ava's fingers stopped over the shells. One slipped from her hand and clicked against the glass tabletop.
I saw the flinch she tried to hide. Hated myself for causing it. Still, I turned toward the hall.
Behind me, Donny said quietly, "You can't freeze her out too."
I stopped but didn't look back.
"She's not your concern," I said.
A silence fell behind me, heavy and immediate.
Then Donny's voice came, low and hard. "She's yours, though."
I kept walking anyway, phone buzzing in my hand, the whole resort pressing against my ribs like a crowd at the cage wall.
At my office door, I heard Riley say something gentle to Ava, her voice steady enough to cover what I had just broken.
I stepped inside and shut the door before I could hear more.
Hours passed without meaning anything.
I answered calls. Rejected three versions of a statement that made me sound polished, remorseful, and conveniently harmless.
Read Victor's ultimatum until the words stopped looking like language.
Somewhere beyond the office, the house moved through its nighttime routine without me—the muted clink of dishes, water running through the pipes, Donny's voice rumbling low before the front door opened and closed.
Then silence.
Not the tense silence I had left behind. The deeper kind that only settled over the house once Ava was asleep and every light except mine had gone dark.
I should have gone to her room. Should have checked the shells on her nightstand, pulled the blanket over her shoulder, whispered an apology she might not hear but deserved anyway.
Instead, I stayed behind my desk, pretending the resort needed me more than my daughter did.
A soft knock sounded against the office door.
I stared at it.
The knock came again, harder this time.
"Go to bed, Riley."
The door opened anyway.
Riley stepped inside and closed it behind her with a quiet click that cut through the noise in my head sharper than any raised voice could have.
My home office overlooked the dark stretch of beach beyond the pool, the glass reflecting back a version of me I barely recognized.
The desk was covered in legal notes, investor emails, security updates, and the half-empty coffee I had forgotten to drink hours ago.
Somewhere down the hall, Ava slept after a day that had taken too much from everyone.
Which meant Riley had waited.
That should have warned me.
"Don't do that again," she said.
I set my phone facedown on the desk. "You shouldn't be in here."
"That's not what I said."
"Riley."
"No." She crossed the room, stopping on the other side of my desk instead of coming around it. Smart. If she got closer, I didn't know what part of me would win. "You shut me out in front of Ava."
"I was handling a crisis."
"You were hiding behind one."
My hand curled against the edge of the desk. "Careful."
Her eyes flashed. "Don't use that voice with me because you're angry at everyone else."
Behind her, the office lights threw our reflections against the dark glass: her small and furious, me still as stone, both of us trapped inside the same breaking thing.
Outside, the pool shimmered black beneath the patio lights.
Inside, the house had gone quiet in that fragile way it only did after Ava finally surrendered to sleep.
Riley lowered her voice, but that only made the anger in it cut deeper.