The pictures （his pov）
Chapter ten
L O R E N Z O
After she'd grabbed something from his car, and gave me in least dark look before walking straight past me toward the party without another word.i caught myself lokking after her She moves fast.
With her back straight, chin up, that small black bag tucked under her arm like a weapon she hasn't yet decided whether to use.
Fast enough that it almost could be called running, which is impressive given the flip-flops.
Her howl bodie languageis so difrent that I still don't know if I should take it as a challenge or if I should leave her and focus in the important things in my life.
I lokk away and take a breath, letting the night settle into me. The music from beyond the warehouse walls is a low, persistent pulse, barely perceptible but always there. And turn the helmet over in my hands once.
My thoughts drift automatically, without permission ,back to the moment our eyes had met across the crowd. Without meaning to, I feel the corner of my mouth move, just barely, at the memory of the way she had snapped her gaze away and pretended she hadn't seen me at all.
Her words. Still there, precise and inconvenient.
Why do I keep noticing? Maybe because she had handed me something accurate without asking permission to, and maybe because she is fucking annoying, and maybe because I don't like accuracy, as a general rule, when it comes from directions I hadn't anticipated.
I'd seen her in the crowd earlier that had been the first thing.
The moment the show ended I'd done a single scan of the place, and she'd been there.
Standing near the edge with her arms loosely crossed and her eyes on the bikes, and the red light had caught her hair, and she had looked...
She had looked like she didn't belong here. Like a small dear frozen in the middle of a busy street, not sure which way to run.
She doesn't know.
She thinks she does. That is the problem with people like her. They always think knowing the concept of something is the same as knowing the weight of it.
It isn't.
I'd been heading back to my bike when I saw her go into Santos warehouse, And I'd stood there for approximately three seconds having what could generously be described as an internal debate before I followed her, which I am choosing not to examine too closely.
Because in reality, I couldn't care less about her.
The only reason I followed is because I can't have drama and chaos at this party.
The party is mine , it exists for the racers which means shutting it down just because of her making a scene and drawing the wrong kind of attention isn't something I can deal with.
Not with three more races still on the card.
Three more races also means a lot of money.
And I knew Santos would get tempted by her body.And would forget the rules we set up for this place.
Santos
I let the name sit in my mind for a moment, flat and unpleasant.
He is so predictable. That is the only charitable thing to be said about him at least he is consistent.
Losing tonight hadn't helped. It never does, with him.
He needs the win the way some people need oxygen, and when he doesn't get it, he goes looking for something else to take.
She had handled herself. I'll give her that.
But she'd also needed those extra eight inches of clearance I'd provided by standing in that doorway, and she knows it, which is why it had made her angry, which is why she'd said what she said, which is...
The thought completes itself without my permission.
Which is interesting.
I finally turn away from the direction she'd gone and walk back toward the crowd.
Around me the party is still in full momentum.
The next riders have taken the circle, someone's sound system has climbed another level, voices and laughter and the smell of alcohol and exhaust mixing together into something that is, under normal circumstances, exactly where I want to be.
But Tonight it feels like noise.
"Lorenzo!" Someone grabs my arm, grinning too wide. "Bro, that last drift..."
I nod once. Keep walking. Not in the slightest way interested in having a longer conversation.
"Aye, Calloway." Another hand, another voice.
I acknowledge it without slowing. Here and there, faces turn toward me.
On a different night I would have let them.
Would have stood in the center of it and let it wash over me.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
And I already know who it is before I pull it out.
I look at the screen.
Three words. No question mark. My father has never used a question mark in his life. He considers them a form of uncertainty he isn't willing to perform.
I stare at the message for a moment.
Then I put the phone back in my pocket.
The evening, which had been one thing ten minutes ago, is now clearly going to become something else.
I know the texture of his messages well enough to read what isn't written.
The where are you that means you should have been here an hour ago .
The hour that means something has happened, or is about to, and he has decided that it requires my presence regardless of what I am currently doing.
I find my group near the far wall.
Mateo sees me coming and straightens. He always reads me faster than the others, has been doing it since we were sixteen , some kind of finely tuned calibration built from years of proximity. His expression asks the question before his mouth does.
"Vado."
(I'm leaving.)
I pick up my jacket from the wall where I'd left it and shake it out. "Padre."Mateo nods once. And shift his attention back to his dance partner.
"Baby..." Vivien materializes at my side and presses her lips against mine, both hands on my chest, lingering.
I let it happen. Only because I have no patience for the alternative the hours she would spend the next day telling me I had simply abandoned her.
"Stay," she says against my mouth. "A little longer. Please."She bleeds breaking the kiss and lokks me in the eys.Her lips pressed in a grin when she pushes her hand down to my Pents"I can help you relak a little bit "he whispers licking her lips in exitment .
I press my lips into two thin lines felling her hand on my melt stoping her the exact moment she tries to pent my belt le tug her wine out in frustration.
"Un'altra volta."I mutter and step back.
She holds my gaze for a moment, something flickering through her expression not hurt, not exactly, more like the minor irritation of someone who has tried a reliable method and found it temporarily suspended.
"Why ?"
I don't answer that. Because I know the second I leave, she will have her arms around someone else's neck, with me completely out of her thoughts.
Before I leave I quickly scan the crowd, find Santos's group and make sure they won't fuck this party up while I'm gone.
And walk to my bike, swing on, settle the helmet over my head, and the city goes quiet.
And somewhere between the first turn and the second, a thought surfaces quiet and uninvited and without my permission.
The house is quiet when I get home. My footsteps cross the marble entrance hall and go nowhere.
The chandelier above the staircase burns low, almost calming, casting soft light across the portraits lining the walls.
Calloways, mostly. Three generations of them.
Dark eyes, straight backs and a emotionless expression.
I am halfway up the stairs when Richard appears at the bottom of them. He has been with the family for eleven years. He is somewhere between sixty and ageless, moves without sound, and communicates primarily through the careful arrangement of his expression.
"Il signore è nel suo studio."He tells me in a low voice.
Of course he is. This man has the ability to work through anything through sleepless nights, through grief.
At my grandmother's funeral he had the nerves to take a fucking business call during the eulogy.
It is a moment that had settled into my bones with a particular bitterness I haven't been able to shake since.
I hand him my helmet without a word and turn back toward the east wing.
The study door is open.
My father almost never closes it when he is waiting for someone.
A closed door, in his view, suggests uncertainty about whether they will come.
He is always certain. The room is exactly as it has been my entire life ,dark wood, floor-to-ceiling shelves, the kind of books.
A single lamp on the desk. A fireplace which is more decoration because of the heat.
Everything else in shadow. He is standing at the window when I walk in.
His back to me, hands clasped behind him, looking out at the dark garden below.
He is still in his suit.
At nearly two in the morning.
"Lorenzo." His voice, deep and level, reaches me across the room.
"Padre." I cross the room and sit in one of the two brown leather chairs across from his desk without being invited to. A small thing. He notices and says nothing, which means he's decided it isn't worth addressing tonight.
That, in itself, is information enough.
Either he has found out that one of his many investments has slipped and wants to hold me responsible which is plausible given that I almost certainly had something to do with it or he has decided to hand me yet another responsibility, as if I don't already have enough.
I cross my legs and feel the stillness before the storm.
He turns from the window and finally looks at me.
My Vater is fifty nine years old and looks fifty.
Grey hair, tall, composed, he is someone who has never once in his life needed to raise his voice to be heard.
I have his height. His hair is slightly lighter today, and to my surprise there is a faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, something he never wears.
Something that doesn't belong in his usual appearance.
He always looks immaculate.But tonight he looks tired.
I haven't seen him in days. My mother is the only person freely allowed into his study, aside from ingsley his assistant, who has been with us almost as long as Richard, always at my father's side, to the point where I sometimes think he should simply set up a bed in here and be done with it.