Chapter 8
CRISTIAN
Six.
That’s how many times she checked each lock and window. As I lay on the sofa that’s entirely too small, thinking over the sequence of events I witnessed tonight, things start to fall into place.
Chantel is well practiced at hiding her real emotions, and for the most part, she tends to fool the people around her.
But I haven’t missed the way she clocks the exits in every room, or how she positions herself to keep an eye on them.
She’s hyper-vigilant—always scanning the people around her, noting every shift, and flinching at loud voices or unexpected touches.
She needs control of her space, and she creates rules to prevent anyone from getting too close. When she thinks nobody is paying attention, her thoughts tend to drift, and the darkness returns to her eyes.
On the surface, she’s composed and confident. But beneath that veneer, there are hairline fractures, and in rare moments, her vulnerability escapes.
Tonight, it bled out.
I’ve seen these types of rituals before in my cousin Luca when he’d come to visit over the summers. He’d lost half of his family in a home invasion carried out by a rival, and he was never quite the same.
The way he explained it was that his brain was always scanning for threats so he could try to prevent them. It didn’t matter how illogical it looked to everyone else. For him, his rituals were about survival.
I don’t know exactly what Chantel’s been through, but piecing everything together, it isn’t difficult to guess. Someone shattered her trust so deeply, she never feels safe. The kind of terror I saw in her eyes tonight doesn’t come from a scratch. It comes from being gravely wounded.
As a matter of principle, my brothers and I make it our business to know who our sister spends time with, friends included. In our world, you can never be too careful. So when Chantel came into Mariella’s life, we did what we always do and ran a background check on her.
In our family, Romeo handles cybersecurity, intelligence, and surveillance. He’s somewhat of a hermit and a genius, and he knows how to unearth what the average search might miss.
When he pulled up Chantel’s background, there was technically nothing wrong with it.
But it was too clean for him to believe it was anything other than a professionally curated identity.
Most people have digital breadcrumbs from their pasts.
Forgotten emails, old photos, dormant accounts. She had none of those.
Superficially, everything checks out, but it’s not organic.
The timeline has no gaps or inconsistencies, and the little details one would expect are absent.
There’s no record of any social media that ever existed, no extended family, no roommates, neighbors, or friends to speak of.
Not a single mention of her exists on any platform, and conveniently, her parents are both dead.
Given that Mariella is the head of the Aegis network, and they move abused women and provide them with new identities, I couldn’t discount that was how she met Chantel. But our sister would neither confirm or deny that, which left us with one option. We would need to keep an eye on her.
I told my brothers I would do it to protect our family, but if I was being honest, I knew she wasn’t a threat to us. I was curious, and I was rarely curious about anyone.
I’m an observer. A collector of information.
I like to read the room and understand the people in it, but not because I have any vested interest in them.
It’s always been my nature to identify threats and weaknesses, because while most people are busy talking, they tend to reveal a lot about themselves.
Chantel was different. From the moment I first saw her, something about her warranted a second look.
In a room full of people desperate to be noticed, she stood back and tried to blend in.
She wasn’t on the hunt for a high-ranking husband, nor was she vying for the approval of the people around her.
In a world of performative bullshit, she was unapologetically herself. She let other women judge her, and she didn’t bother to correct them. She pretended not to notice when men stared too long, and she quietly dismissed the ones bold enough to approach her.
I wanted to know why. And I’d never cared to know more about a woman…until her.
I was interested in her in a way that crawled under my skin and made it difficult to look away.
The more I discovered, the deeper the obsession grew.
It wasn’t enough to know why she created a new life.
I needed to know what broke her. I wanted her secrets, her fears, and, to the detriment of my sanity—her desires.
I spent an entire year observing, and in that time I learned intimate details of her life.
I knew the way she moved when she danced.
I could recognize the way her tone shifted, or how she shut down when something made her nervous.
I saw the way her pulse jumped when she looked at me, and how her body responded under the intensity of my gaze.
I came to understand her habits, her tells, and the things that excited or scared her.
With one foot out the door, always ready for an escape, she was wary of everyone. It was irrational to want her, and I didn’t possess enough restraint to have her halfway. If I claimed her, there would be no going back. But in my mind, it wasn’t a question of if. It was a question of when.
I saw her first.
I’d already made the silent declaration that she belonged to me.
Then came the plot twist of the fucking century when she walked in the door with my best friend.
She let him touch her.
He got her smiles. Her laughter. Her whispered words.
All that was left were stolen glances.
He was certain disappointment, and to her, that was safer than unknown possibility. So I let her go. I stayed silent when Marco brought her up. I avoided them when they were together. I became cold and distant and let her think I hated her, even when she never left my thoughts.
I still caught myself watching her in crowded rooms, remembering details I shouldn’t, and quietly eliminating any threats who took an interest in her.
Everyone but Marco.
That was a problem for me, because as much as I wanted to murder him at times, I still felt loyal to him.
I decided it was for the best. She was a complication I didn’t need in my life.
I had a duty to marry and carry on the Vitale line, but I never intended for that marriage to be anything other than a business arrangement.
My future wife, whoever she was, would have the same understanding.
I would protect her, remain faithful, and provide for her and our children.
But emotional investment wasn’t part of that equation.
Love is a liability, and I’d seen what it did to my family. I had no desire to repeat that history.
Now I had a solid offer on the table with a woman who could meet those requirements and secure our alliance with the French. There was no good reason for me not to marry Jolie. But fate had a twisted sense of humor, throwing Chantel back into my orbit.
When she climbed onto my lap and looked at me with those vulnerable fucking eyes, it took every ounce of restraint I possessed to reject her. In that moment, I was only thinking of her, and I couldn’t find a reason to care about the alliance.
It’s exactly why I need to stay away.
So when morning comes, and the buzz of activity around her house begins, I tell myself this will be my parting gift to her. Because it has to be.
But as my brothers and I get to work, a pattern develops.
It isn’t just her bedroom that’s full of weapons.
As Romeo and I do a sweep of the house, we find them hidden inside drawers, cupboards, books, and furniture cushions.
Knives, stun guns, pepper spray—there’s not a single place in this house you could stand without being in reach of something.
Chantel’s reaction last night wasn’t just adrenaline, and when she looks around every corner, it isn’t for invisible monsters. She’s expecting someone she knows. But who?
“Cristian, we’ve got something here.”
I glance over at Romeo as he holds up a small lock box. At my direction, he’s been checking for bugs, trackers, and hidden cameras. I didn’t actually expect him to find anything, but all the security in the world won’t make a difference if she’s already exposed inside her own home.
“What is it?”
He arches a brow at me. “Come and see for yourself.”
I take the box from him, noting he’s already picked the lock. Judging by the air vent he’s removed, I’m guessing that’s where he found it.
“It was up there?”
He nods, and something about the concern in his eyes makes me wary. If he doesn’t like what he found, I know I’m going to like it even less.
I open the box to find stacks of cash, but beneath them is the more concerning detail. There are three different passports with her face on them, and every one of them has a different name.
“Are any of them legit?” I ask Romeo.
“Doubt it.” He shakes his head. “But they’re professional. I flipped through them, and everything looks clean. She probably got them at the same time she established this identity.”
I stare at them, considering that this must be her backup plan. If or when her past catches up with her, she’s prepared to run.
Tension creeps up my spine as my grip on the lockbox tightens, and I mutter a low curse.
“Something’s not adding up here.” Romeo assesses me.
“I know.”
Chantel’s been saving her spare cash, but there can’t be more than twenty thousand here. Those documents would have easily cost at least sixty thousand. There’s a premium price on high-end passports, and she’d have to have connections to get them.