Loreanzo POV
Chapter 28
LORENZO
"I really don't want to go."
Sophia's voice is barely above a murmur . Her eyes are closed and Her head is resting against the cold glass of the car window.
I can see the exhaustion on her clearly.
The way her body has given up fighting whatever is still moving through her system and has simply — stopped.
Given in. The rise and fall of her breathing is slow and even now, which is better than it was twenty minutes ago, but her colour is still off and her skin still has that specific heat to it that I can feel even from here.
"No hospital," she murmurs.
"We're not going to a hospital," I say.
She doesn't respond.
And then do I notice that I'm lokking at her face longer than I should.
There is a strand of hair across her face and without making a conscious decision about it I reach across and brush it back behind her ear. Carefully. Slowly. Making absolutely sure I don't wake her.
Before I sit back.
Richard's eyes find mine in the rearview mirror.
We look at each other for a brief moment before he returns his attention back to the road and says nothing, and the car continues in silence through the dark streets, and I look out my own window and say nothing either.
"Her father has been looking for you ," Richard says eventually.
My head turns toward Sophia automatically — checking, without having decided to check, whether she is still asleep.
She is.
I look back at the window.
After tonight I am never going to see this girl again.
That is the fact I am currently trying to convince myself of.
That is the version of events I have been building since the boat docked .
Tonight was a mistake. Tonight was a chain of decisions that compounded each other until they became something I did not intend, and the only reasonable response to that is to draw a line under it and not repeat any of them.
That is what I am telling myself.
"Let me guess," I say, "he threatened to have me removed from the premises."
"No," Richard says, and something in his tone makes me look at him. His eyes stay on the road. His voice stays level — but there is something underneath it, the specific careful neutrality of a man who is choosing his next words. "Her father, sir."
I open my mouth.
"How much longer," I say instead, and pull out my phone.
"We will arrive shortly," Richard says, returning to the register he uses when he has decided to let something go for now. "As requested, Doctor Santos has been notified and will be waiting in the west wing."
I nod once.
"Is she not the niece of—"
"Yes," I say, without looking up from my phone.
Richard is quiet for a moment.
"Would it not be advisable to inform her aunt of the situation?"
I look up.
And the thought lands with the specific weight of something obvious that I have managed not to think about until this exact moment.
I am in a car. In the middle of the night. With a girl who has no phone, no bag, no way of contacting anyone and I am currently taking her to my house without her aunt's knowledge or consent.
Theoretically speaking, I am kidnapping her.
I exhale slowly through my nose and look at Sophia.
She has pulled her knees up slightly in the seat, tucking herself smaller, her hands folded under her cheek.
She is frowning slightly in her sleep a small, unhappy crease between her brows and she is murmuring something I cannot make out, the soft, formless sound of someone navigating something difficult in a dream.
"She didn't have her phone with her," I say finally. "No bag either."
Richard nods. Waits.
"When we arrive," I say, "find me the aunt's number."
"Of course, sir."
He turns off the coastal road and begins the ascent toward the house, and I put my phone away and look out the window and watch the city fall away beneath us as the gates come into view and then the driveway and then, finally, the house itself the dark sprawl of it against the hillside,
the lights off in most of the windows, the specific heavy quiet of a building that has gone to sleep.
My eyes find my father's study window automatically.
Dark.
I release a breath I didn't know I was holding.
The car stops. The doors open. Cool night air comes in and Sophia stirs slightly and I watch the staff ease her carefully out of the car and guide her toward the west wing entrance, her feet moving in the vague,
cooperative way of someone who is half asleep and trusting the direction she is being taken in.
Richard is already moving back toward the house.
I follow at a slight distance, hands in my pockets, and I wait outside the door after they bring her in.
The corridor outside the medical room is quiet in the way of the whole house at this hour — a deep, specific quiet that has nothing to do with the absence of noise and everything to do with the weight of the building itself,
the particular silence of rooms that have seen too much and said nothing about any of it.
I wait.
I check my phone. Put it away. Check it again. Put it away.
Doctor Santos comes out after twenty minutes.
He is a compact, precise man in his sixties who has been on retainer with the Calloway household since before I can remember.
He removes his reading glasses when he sees me and holds them in both hands and looks at me with the expression he uses when the news requires a certain amount of preparation before it can be delivered.
"Her values were elevated," he says. "Blood pressure and breathing were briefly critical."
The words land somewhere specific and unpleasant.
"She has been detoxified," he continues. "I'm waiting on several results until morning. Until then she either remains here—" he pauses, "—or she goes to a local hospital."
"She stays here," I say. The words come out before he has finished the sentence.
He looks at me over the top of his glasses.
"She'll have no lasting effects?" I hold his gaze.
"She was fortunate," he says. A beat. "But I cannot release her in this state. She needs monitoring through the night."
"She stays," I say again. And then, to the two staff members waiting behind him: "Take her to one of the guest rooms."
They nod and move.
I stand in the corridor alone for a moment after they have gone the quiet settling back in around me, the house doing what it always does, absorbing everything and showing nothing and I become aware that I have my fist pressed against my sternum.
Against the specific ache that has been sitting there since the boat, since the empty glass, since Vivienne's face in the bar light.
I lower my hand.
I turn the words over once and then put them somewhere I am not going to take them out again tonight.
"Shall we notify the aunt?" Richard appears at the end of the corridor, quiet as ever, a folded piece of paper in his hand.
"No," I say. "I'll do it."
I take the paper from him and look at the number
Her aunt's name at the top in Richard's handwriting, and below it a phone number, and below that the address
I fold the paper once and put it in my jacket pocket.
"That would be all thank you "