Carter
Chapter seven
The door clicked shut behind me.
Just a soft sound. Small. Harmless. But it felt like a gunshot under my ribs.
I stood in the dim hallway, breath snagging in my throat, pulse thrashing like it wanted out.
My fingers were still curled into claws, holding onto the memory of the doorframe.
I didn’t even realize I’d reached for the wall until my palm pressed flat against it, grounding me against something that wasn’t him.
I should have walked away the second the door budged. I should have spun around, marched back downstairs, and pretended I hadn’t watched Dominic Valerio come apart.
Except I had watched. I’d seen the way his head tipped back as his breath unraveled into something wrecked. But he hadn't even been looking at the female in his arms.
He’d been looking at me.
His eyes had stayed locked on mine, dark and predatory, and for one terrifying, silent second, it felt like he was trying to claim the space between us even then.
Like his dominance issues were so massive, so suffocating, that he couldn't even finish a private moment without trying to make it a confrontation with me.
No. I shook my head, the movement sharp and frantic. I was overthinking it. I was giving him too much credit. There was no way a guy like Dominic—arrogant, emotionally unavailable, and entirely too full of himself—had actually been affected by me walking in. It was an accident of timing.
He hadn't been looking at me because he wanted to; he’d been looking at me to intimidate me. To show me that even caught like that, he was still the one in charge. It was a power play, nothing more. A disgusting, power-hungry display of dominance that made my stomach turn.
“What is wrong with me,” I said under my breath, the words paper-thin in the empty hall.
I pushed off the wall and forced myself toward the stairs.
Every step was too fast, too uneven, as if motion alone could outrun the memory of his attention.
I didn't want to think about him. I didn't want to think about the way he’d stared me down, like I was just another thing he intended to break.
I reached the banister, my fingers trembling with a mix of shock and pure, unadulterated loathing.
But beneath the hatred, there was something else—a traitorous rush that had rooted itself deep in my bones the second his eyes had locked onto mine.
My pulse wasn’t just racing from the walk; it was thrumming with a dark, electric rhythm I couldn't switch off.
For one sickening heartbeat, I realized I hadn't just been horrified. I’d been wired.
The raw, unfiltered intensity of it— the way he hadn't blinked, the way he’d watched me like he could corner me without ever touching me while he lost control—had sparked a fuse I didn't know I had.
It wasn't a look of affection; it was a challenge.
I descended quickly, my heels clicking a frantic rhythm against the floor, trying to outrun the shameful weight of my own arousal.
I needed to find my father. I needed to get back to the real world, far away from Dominic’s hallway and the suffocating arrogance that seemed to be stitched into everything around him.
I wasn't rattled because of him. I was rattled because I hated what he represented, and yet he’d managed to reach inside me and pull a reaction out of my body that I hadn't authorized.
It was a violation of my own control, a physical weight that made me want to scrub my skin raw just to shake the feeling of his focus clinging to me.
I stepped through the archway into the hall, and the air left my lungs.
Chaos.
Staff members were scrambling across the stage, their movements dancing frantically against the walls like a fever dream.
The massive, tiered awards display—the center-piece of the TwoFold history—was a wreck.
A heavy glass sculpture sat shattered on the floor, its remains glittering like ice under the harsh spotlights.
Plaques were skewed at impossible angles, some dangling off the edge of the velvet-covered table as if the entire platform had been shoved by an invisible hand.
But the noise in the room was the worst part. It wasn't just a low drone of confusion; it was the sound of a hundred social grazers sensing blood in the water.
Behind my father, the projector screen was flickering with a violent, rhythmic strobe.
It wasn't showing the team highlights. It was a high-resolution scan of a crash report—an old, black-and-white graph from the night of the accident that ended his life as he knew it.
Words like judgment error and driver negligence were blown up in massive, blurry text that seemed to pulse against the back of his head.
My heart stopped. That file shouldn't have been anywhere near this presentation. It was a private shame he locked away, now serving as a twenty-foot backdrop.
Dad stood center-stage, clutching a microphone that was letting out a shrill, dying whine of feedback. He looked small. He looked like he was back in the cockpit of a burning car, trapped in the harness and waiting for the end while the world watched from the sidelines.
“There’s been… a mistake,” my father stammered into the mic.
His voice was thin, robbed of its usual authority.
His face was a shade of grey that made my stomach turn.
He looked toward the wings for help, for a technician, for anyone, but the stagehands were just as lost. They were fumbling with cables and tablets, trying to kill a feed that seemed to have a life of its own.
I stood there, paralyzed. How had this happened? He was supposed to be the new face of the team. Now, he was standing in the middle of a technical disaster that made him look like a total amateur.
The pity in the room was louder than the feedback.
Movement at the opposite entrance pulled my attention.
Dominic walked in—jacket straight, every button fastened, not a single hair out of place. His expression was a flawless face of concerned surprise, his brow furrowed just enough to suggest he was witnessing a tragedy. He looked like the only calm person in a room full of hysterics.
I stared at him, my breath catching on a silent, gagging laugh.
It was inhuman. Seconds ago, his hair had been messy, his clothes rumpled.
He had been unraveling. Now, he stood there looking like he’d been pressed and steamed in a closet while I ran downstairs.
There was no sweat on his brow, no flush on his neck.
He was entirely too composed for someone who’d just finished taking what he wanted.
Our eyes met, and the look of predatory intensity from that hallway was gone, replaced by a cool, unreadable gaze.
It hit me with the force of a wrecking ball. The volunteer who had sent me on a wild goose chase. I hadn't been "lost"—I had been removed. He’d cleared the path, ensuring the stage was set for a disaster I wouldn't be present to stop.
He hadn’t forced me to stay upstairs. He didn't have to. He’d simply pinned me to that wall with the intensity of his focus, offering up a spectacle so jarring he knew I wouldn't be able to look away.
He had used my own shock—my own curiosity—to keep me as a captive audience upstairs while he ran a cold-blooded execution downstairs.
I’d been busy dissecting the way he looked at me, while he was busy making my father his victim. He’d turned my own pulse into a distraction, a rhythmic hum that drowned out the sound of our lives hitting the floor until it was too late to catch the pieces.
Dominic didn't move. He stood at the edge of the room, posture relaxed, watching the mortification roll off my father in waves. He didn’t need to say a word; he just had to exist as the calm center of the storm he’d created.
To everyone else, I knew it looked like my father was a careless, incompetent relic.
Movement at the edge of my vision pulled my gaze.
Dominic’s father was already in motion. Red-faced and radiating a lethal kind of silence, he charged toward the stage like an executioner.
He didn’t look left or right; he was focused entirely on salvaging this execution.
Sienna didn't follow; she stayed exactly where she’d been, rooted beside Dominic’s father, her face of practiced concern as she watched the fallout from a safe distance.
The atmosphere of that upstairs room felt like a scar on my flesh—a reminder of exactly how I’d let myself be occupied while Dominic set fire to our lives.
He hadn't just played a game. He’d cleared the board.
Just as Dominic’s father reached the steps, Luka appeared out of the wings. He moved with a practiced, easy grace, sliding in front of my father and gently taking the microphone from his trembling hand.
“I told them the vintage footage were for the after-party,” Luka said, his voice smooth and projecting just enough charm to ripple through the tension.
He threw a wink toward the front row. “Landon here is just so dedicated to the history of the sport, he couldn't wait to show you the 'before' so you'd really appreciate the 'after' we’ve got planned.”
A few ripples of laughter broke through the crowd. The suffocating pressure in the room lifted just enough to let people breathe again. It was a perfect save—quick, witty, and entirely dismissive of the disaster.
I looked toward Dominic one last time, desperate for some flicker of guilt, some sign that he realized the weight of what he’d done. But his focus was fixed on the stage, watching his father pull my Dad into the wings.
He didn't move a muscle, but I swore I could see it—the hint of a smirk in his expression, a quiet, satisfied glint that said everything was exactly where he wanted it. My father’s dignity was just collateral damage in a game Dominic had won before I even knew we were playing.
I hated this sport. I’d hated the noise, the spectacle, and the hollow, expensive worship of men who went fast just to prove they could. But as I watched Dominic Valerio stand there in his pristine suit, savoring the wreckage of the only person I had left, my hatred finally found its pulse.
He hadn't just cleared the board. He’d made me a permanent enemy.
The drive home was silent. Not the kind filled with the hum of tires, but the kind that pressed against my ears until breathing felt too loud. My father didn't speak, and I couldn't find the words to bridge the gap he’d built between us in his mind.
I pushed my bedroom door shut and let my heels fall to the rug with a dull thud. Every part of me throbbed. I sat on the edge of the mattress, my head in my hands, trying to erase the image of Dominic’s face from my mind in the aftermath.
My phone lit up on the nightstand.
Unknown Number: You saw what happens when you wander into the wrong rooms. Be more careful next time.
The ice prickled across my skin. It was him. Turning the knife.
My fingers hovered over the screen. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw the phone through the window. I typed back, my composure stretched painfully thin.
Me: You can blame the world all you want, but eventually you’ll learn to blame yourself.
I didn't wait. I sent the second one immediately.
Me: If you think you scared me, you didn’t. And if this is supposed to be a warning, don’t bother. I’m done playing your games.
I didn't wait for a reply. I didn't want one. I set the phone facedown on the nightstand, the glass clattering against the wood like a final gavel strike.
He’d done exactly what he wanted. He’d dismantled my father’s life with the clinical precision of someone who’d never known the weight of a consequence. He was a Valerio; he didn't build things, he just decided who was allowed to exist in his world.
I crawled beneath the covers, pulling the duvet up until it felt like a shroud, and waited for exhaustion to kill the noise in my head. For a few hours, I clung to the lie that I could shut him out. That if I just closed my eyes, I could pretend he didn’t exist.
But my dreams never seemed to get the memo.
As I drifted off, the anger didn't fade—it just pooled into something unwelcome. The edges of the gala floor blurred back into the suffocating dark of that upstairs hallway. I could still feel the imprint of the way he’d looked at me, heavy and electric, pinning me back against the room.
In the dark, my mind didn't replay the sabotage or the shattered glass.
It replayed the way his breath had hitched.
It replayed the raw, unpolished hunger in his eyes.
I woke up in the middle of the night, my skin damp and my heart hammering a rhythm that felt like treason.
I stared at the ceiling, my throat tight with a sudden, hot flash of shame. It was one thing for Dominic to humiliate my father in public; it was another for him to occupy my head like this. It was a secondary violation, a sick joke played by my own nervous system.
He had turned my life into a wreckage, and here I was, still reacting to the way he looked while he did it.
I rolled onto my side, clutching the pillow until my knuckles ached.
I didn't want to surrender. I wanted to burn his world down.
But as I lay there in the dark, I realized the hardest part of this war wasn't going to be the sabotage or the racing.
It was going to be killing the part of me that had actually liked the way he looked at me—in that moment, right before he came.
I wasn't terrified of him. I was terrified of myself.