Chapter 30
Chapter 30
LORENZO
"This is entirely your fault."she spits the words out like venom. While paces the perimeter of the room, her small frame vibrating with a brand of fury that I find altogether too distracting.
Up and down.
Sharp, frantic lines. The erratic click of her flip flops against the floor sounds like a countdown.
I stay exactly where I was, sprawled back against the leather cushions with a calculated air of absolute indifference, watching her every move. My eyes track the rigid set of her shoulders, the flush creeping up her neck, and the way the borrowed skirt hugs her curves.
"Brilliant," she continues, spinning on her heel.
Her voice drops an octave, mimicking a mocking, arrogant rasp meant to be mine. She throws her hands into the air, her fingers curling into tight, exaggerated quotation marks. "Mister I'm a genius feeding my aunt complete lies"
"Can you shut up for a second?"
"No. No, because this is all your fault."
"You already said that," I say and stand up.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Sophia lunges forward, closing the distance between us with a startling speed that forces me to a sudden halt. For one volatile, suspended second, the universe shrinks down to the mere inches of air separating our skin.
I can smell her. Something soft, like vanilla, entirely ruined by the sharp scent of the morning-after panic radiating off her skin.
She snaps herself back into reality, her fingers tightening around the heavy stack of centenary planning documents. She brandishes them like a weapon, shaking the thick pages directly under my chin.
I don't blink.
I look down at her through the dark tint of my sunglasses.
The polarized lenses make her face look impossibly small, framed by a halo of chaotic hair.
If I lean down just an inch, I can see my own reflection trapped in her wide, defiant eyes.
She is a match looking for a fire, and I am entirely too flammable today.
Before she can shake those papers at me again, my hand shoots out. My fingers close around her wrist.
But I don't grab her.
I don't need to.
My thumb rests precisely over her pulse point.
Light like a whisper of skin against skin, a touch that is entirely more suggestion than actual restraint.
But the trap is set. I feel the instantaneous, erratic leap of her pulse against my skin.
It is racing. A wild, frantic rhythm that exposes every ounce of the bravado she is trying to fake.
Slowly, deliberately, I draw her a single fraction closer.
Just enough to force her to look up. Just enough to let her feel the sheer size of the cage she has just walked into.
"What are you doing?" she hisses.
The words come out as a breathless, ragged vibration. Her voice has lost some of its heat. Not all of it,she is too stubborn for that but the roaring fire suddenly condenses into a tight, concentrated point of pure friction.
Her gaze flicks down to my mouth, then violently snaps back to my eyes before she wallows.
I catch it all.
I watch the delicate line of her throat move, tracking the visible ripple of her nervousness with a slow, dark satisfaction.
She is hyper-aware of me.
It is in the way her fingers are trembling against the papers, the way her breath hatches, the way the air between us grows thick enough to suffocate.
"You are causing me a headache, so I'm going to jump in the pool," I say, my tone dripping with a pleasant, infuriating calm that I know is driving her insane. "And then I have a meeting."
The distraction works.
The heat rushes back into her face, a beautiful, violent crimson blooming across her cheeks.
"No," she commands, jerking her arm back. I let her go, letting my fingers trail lazily over her skin before releasing her entirely. She pulls her wrist free, but to my intense amusement, she doesn't take a single step backward. She stays right there, rooted in my space .
"You are going to tell me what happened last night. Right now."
A heavy, dangerous silence settles over us.
She wants answers about a night she can't remember, entirely oblivious to the fact that the truth will drag her into a dark underworld she isn't built to survive.
"Trust me, stalker." I lean in slightly, holding her gaze until I see her pupils dilate. "You don't actually want to know."
Something shifts across her features, a brief, vulnerable flicker of doubt, there and gone before I can fully dissect it.
It is a thought she decides to bury.
Her lips press into a hard, stubborn line. Her fingers tighten around the centenary documents until the edges crumble beneath her grip. And then, a new light ignites in her eyes something sharp, specific, and incredibly petty.
I become aware of the faint, violent rustle of paper. Her hand has curled into a tight, white-knuckled fist. She is preparing to launch another verbal assault.
She opens her mouth, her lips parting to release whatever venom she has stored up, but before a single syllable can escape, the heavy oak door swings open behind her. The heavy static between us shatters instantly.
Ben enters the room first, his boots clopping loudly against the floor. Alex follows a step behind, and then comes Matteo, who as usual, doesn't bother looking up from his phone.
He simply crosses straight to the nearest leather sofa, drops his massive frame onto it, and swings his legs over the armrest with the practiced, lazy ease of someone for whom all furniture is merely a surface to be horizontal on.
"Hey, hey, hey" Alex spreads his arms wide, a massive, shit-eating grin arriving in the room a full three seconds before the rest of him does.
"If it isn't Weststarr's newest power couple."
"Cinderella and the beast"
they joke wich just causes me to roll my eyes.
Before I can stop him, Alex slings a heavy arm around Sophia's shoulders with zero hesitation.
I watch her shift under his waight
A dark, ugly prickle of irritation flares in the base of my throat at the sight of Alex's arm resting so casually against her.
Snap out of it.
"Last night was legendary," Ben chimed in, already chuckling as he leans against the doorframe. "Bro, after Vivienne saw you two" He turns his gaze directly to Sophia, his eyes dancing with mischief.
"I mean after...when you..."Ben bursts out laughing again, a loud, wheezing sound that completely prevents him from finishing either sentence.
"What."
Sophia's voice goes dangerously quiet.
Very careful.
Very deliberate.
The embarrassed flush doesn't leave her face, but her spine goes completely rigid. She ducks out from under Alex's heavy arm, stepping sideways with sharp, calculated movements until she was standing a mere foot away from Ben.
"What happened last night?" she demands, her voice cutting through their laughter like a blade. "And where the hell is my phone?"
Ben opens his mouth, a fresh wave of gossip practically spilling over his teeth.
But I'm faster, I reach out and snatch a crisp, green apple from the crystal bowl sitting on the console table to my left. Before he can utter a single syllable, I lunge forward and shove the apple directly into his open mouth.
He chokes out a muffled sound of pure indignation, his eyes widening in shock as his teeth click against the fruit.
"You'll find out eventually, stalker," I say, turning my back on Ben and fixing my gaze entirely on Sophia.
I nod pointedly at the crumpled planning documents still clutched in her fist. "Start going through the guest list. We'll talk tomorrow."
"You can go through them"
"Melissa!" I called out, my voice ringing with an authority that brooked no argument.
Our housekeeper appears in the doorway within seconds.
Melissa, a woman who has survived eleven years in this estate, has developed a terrifying, quietly admirable immunity to the specific, high-stakes chaos of my family.
She stands there, completely unbothered by the fact that Ben has an apple shoved in his mouth or that a strange girl is glaring at me with murderous intent.
"Melissa, would you please show our guest out?" I say, keeping my tone perfectly smooth. "And make sure she has the full planning documents before she leaves."
"I am absolutely not doing this alone—" Sophia starts, her voice rising in a desperate pitch as she spins back toward me.
I don't let her finish.
I place one hand gently, but firmly, against the small of her back. The heat of her body burns right through my palm. I guide her forward, ignoring the way she tries to dig her heels into the rug, usher her straight past Melissa, and firmly click the heavy oak door shut right in her face.
A beat of absolute silence.
Then, muffled through the thick wood, low and precisely aimed
"Asshole."
The sound of her sharp, retreating footsteps follows, fading down the long hallway until the house falls into a heavy, quiet stillness.
I stand at the closed door for a long moment. I close my eyes, letting out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. Slowly, I run a hand through my hair, gripping the strands tightly. The ghost of her vanilla scent still lingers in the air, mocking me.
"God," I mutter, turning back to face the room. "She is going to be the end of me."
Alex is grinning at me from his armchair, his ankles crossed, wearing the specific, insufferable expression of a man who has just filed everything he witnessed under highly useful blackmail information.
I raise a single finger, pointing it directly between his eyes.
The gesture communicates everything it needs to: breathe a word and I'll end you.
Alex immediately holds both hands up in mock surrender, converting his grin into something slightly more neutral, though his eyes are still dancing.
I walk back into the center of the room, my mind bitter. My mother has actually seen fit to sentence me to this ridiculous event, binding me to the most infuriating, chaotic woman I have ever encountered in my life.
Which—fine. Fine.
There are ways around a mother's decree.
I will find a high-ranking staff member, pay them a rate that makes their eyes pop to handle the actual logistics, maintain the bare minimum appearance of involvement, and make sure not a single whisper of my absence reaches my mother before the gala concludes successfully.
It is simple.
Manageable.
I just need Sophia to stay out of my way.
I drop onto the sofa next to Matteo, staring up at the high ceiling for exactly one second to clear the lingering image of her wide eyes from my brain. Then, I snap back into the dark reality that actually matters.
"Where are we?" I say, my voice dropping into its usual cold, commanding register.
Matteo hands me his phone without a word, his gaze still fixed on a secondary tablet in his lap. The screen shows a dense, heavily encrypted spreadsheet with columns of names, massive dollar figures, specific dates, and a red tracking line that has been updated over months of careful surveillance.
"According to the wire reports, the last two have paid their debts," Matteo says, his voice carrying that terrifying, measured calm he brings to the family business. He flicks his thumb, scrolling slightly down the list. "All of it. On time."
"They had motivation," Alex chimes"It's funny how a midnight visit from us tends to clarify a person's financial priorities."
"Either way." Matteo taps a specific cell on the screen, bringing up a new column of encrypted data.
"At our next race , we need to make sure our opposition ends up at 2 minuts behind."
His thumb rests on an empty, blinking field at the bottom of the spreadsheet.
"Once that is done, we consolidate the remaining bets"
"And increase the debt," I finish for him, the grim reality of the trap we are setting locking into place.
Matteo nods once.
I hand the phone back, leaning my head against the leather sofa as I stare out the window.
"How confident are we?" I ask, my eyes narrowing.
"Confident enough," Matteo replies, his tone shifting into something heavier, more warning. "But you cannot miss this, Lorenzo. Twenty percent of the pool is counted entirely on you. And Santos... he's already looking for a reason to end you permanently."
Alex leans back, lacing his hands behind his head. He looks entirely comfortable, completely oblivious to the tightening noose around our operations. "Besides, look at us. When does anything unexpected ever actually happen to us?"
Matteo and I lock eyes across the sofa.
Neither of us says a word.
"Let's not answer that," I say
"Let's better talk about her," Ben chimes into the conversation, finally swallowing the last bite of his apple and pointing the core toward the closed door.
"What is there to talk about?" My voice drops instantly, a sharp edge cutting through the air.
"For example," Ben grins, leaning forward with an insufferable spark of curiosity in his eyes, "why did you disappear after the party....carrying her?"
"Yeah, we thought you hated her," Alex adds, tossing his head back. In this exact moment, I wish my looks could physically kill. The room temperature seems to plunge as I stare them down.
"Because," I growl, the words grinding past my teeth, "I could not risk the same incident as last time." My voice shifts, morphing into a dark, low, threatening vibration that leaves absolutely no room for argument.
" Can I?"
The last part isn't really a question. I know the three of them will agree with that. The memory of 'last time' is a ghost that haunts all of us, a mistake we cannot afford to repeat.
I face up, bracing myself against the leather backrest. I hate this entire shitshow. I just have to figure out how to stay as far away from her as humanly possible before she accidentally uncovers what we are running here.
"So we leave her alone for now?" Alex asks, his tone skeptical as he looks between Matteo and me.
"For now," I bark out, completely unhappy with everything that happened last night, and even less happy about the trap my mother just set for me.