1. Carter #4
A heavy, sudden silence blanketed the kitchen. My father looked genuinely clueless, completely untouched by whatever psychological warfare Dominic had been trying to wage.
And that's when it clicked.
Dominic didn't just apologize for the noise to be a jerk; he'd brought it up because he expected my father to be the one who had spent the night fuming in the room next door.
The extra volume, the rhythmic thuds against the headboard, calling me one of his father's tramps—none of it had been about passion or a genuine mistake.
He knew we were arriving last night—or at least that my father was.
I was still trying to make sense of his initial comments about me.
Not that they mattered in the moment. It had been a calculated, twisted power play aimed directly at his new coach.
Except he’d missed.
My lips twitched into a slow, satisfied smirk, and I watched the exact moment the same realization slammed into Dominic.
His eyes flicked to mine, his own smirky confidence freezing.
I saw the split-second his brain mapped out the layout of the pool house and realized his mistake: Dad was on the other side of the building.
I was the one who had been in the firing line of his little show.
He hadn't established dominance over his new keeper; he’d just looked like a noisy, desperate child to his coach’s daughter.
"Noise?" Dad repeated, looking between us for an explanation.
I didn't give Dominic the satisfaction of jumping in to save his pride. I leaned back against the counter, crossing my arms and letting my smirk widen just enough for him to see it.
"It was nothing, Dad," I said, my voice dripping with calm, bored amusement as I held Dominic's gaze. "Just some persistent, high-pitched whining. I thought it was a dying animal at first, but I guess it was just someone trying way too hard to prove they still have an engine under the hood."
"Actually," Dominic interrupted, his voice dripping with a mix of genuine fury and redirected interest. "How old did you say your daughter was again, Landon?"
He hadn’t.
"Nineteen," Dad said, sounding caught off guard by the sudden shift in atmosphere.
Dominic’s grin was slow, devastating, and entirely predatory. "Perfect. She seems to have a lot of opinions on performance. Maybe she’d like a closer look at the telemetry."
Then—holding my gaze with a terrifying level of intensity—he reached for the knot at his hip.
He didn't hesitate. He just loosened his grip, and the towel hit the floor with a soft, damning thud.
I saw everything.
All six-plus feet of smug, arrogant, annoyingly perfect athlete. He stood there, completely unbothered, weaponizing his own nakedness to try and reclaim the high ground he’d just lost.
Dad let out a strangled yelp of pure horror. "Dominic! For God's sake!" He lunged forward, slamming his hand over my eyes and nearly knocking my head back. "Go to your room! Carter, move! Don't you look at him!"
"I'm fine," I muffled into his palm, but I didn't fight him. I didn't need to see any more to know exactly what Dominic Valerio was.
I heard the glass door groan open, followed by a loud, theatrical splash that sent a spray of water against the windows. Dad finally dropped his hand, his face a shade of purple I’d never seen before as he stared at the ripples in the infinity pool.
“He’s not crazy,” Dad said, quieter now, like he was recalibrating. Something sharper settling into place. “He’s undisciplined. That’s fixable.”
I snorted in disbelief, my voice tight. "He's just a guy who thinks he's celestial because he can drive on a track."
My eyes caught the pool again. Dominic had surfaced at the far edge, the morning light slicing across his wet shoulders.
He was pressed against the lip of the pool, where a female in a tiny robe was now waiting.
She dropped to her knees at the edge, leaning over him as he reached up, his hands tangling in her hair.
He pulled her down into a deep, possessive kiss. It was a performance—a blatant, vulgar display of dominance. But as his mouth worked against hers, he wasn't looking at her.
His dark, heavy gaze was locked directly on mine through the glass. Even from twenty feet away, the intensity of it felt like a physical weight. Something hot and unwelcome swirled deep in my stomach—a visceral, traitorous reaction to the raw, unfiltered power he radiated.
I didn't let it show. I scoffed, rolling my eyes with a deliberate, bored slow-motion.
"Don't worry, Dad," I said, turning away from the window. "He’s just another engine. And every engine has a breaking point."
I walked back over to my accounting textbooks, leaving the racing star to his audience. He wanted a war? He had no idea how well I knew the battlefield—or how little I cared about his trophies.
That was his first win against me. A cheap shot in a towel, fueled by a night of manufactured noise.
I wouldn’t let him get a second.
Rich houses have rules. Smile. Be grateful. Don’t cause problems. Dominic Valerio is about to learn very quickly I don’t follow rules that aren’t made for me.