Chapter Forty-Eight
Soraya
STEFANO’S PRESENCE HAS RENDERED me wholly unproductive.
I’m in la-la land, head in the clouds, pouring all my focus into soaking up as much of him as possible.
Mentally trapped somewhere between dread and denial, a shadow of unease hovering just at the edge of my happiness.
The deal he made with Dad, unspoken yet ever-present, cast a heavy weight over my fragile bliss.
No matter how much I tell myself he’s mine, there’s a palpable fissure in that belief. Even when we’re together, when everything should feel perfect, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s slipping through my fingers. That no matter how close we get, it’ll never be enough.
It’s in the way he hugs me, long and hard. The way he kisses me with ravishing hunger, as if there’s a stopwatch ticking on our time together.
As the days slip by, anxiety hums under my skin.
Meanwhile, he’s been quietly putting in the work with my team, effortlessly winning them over, despite my insistence that the only opinion that matters is mine.
Now they’re seeing what I’ve known all along: beneath that dark, dangerous exterior, behind that lethal, guarded wall he keeps up, he’s magnetic.
Disarmingly funny. A natural storyteller with an endless arsenal of exaggerated tales that leave people hanging on his every word.
Give it another week, and he’ll have them eating out of his hands.
Because if Stefano Castello is anything, he’s a closer.
His business relationships aren’t built on fear, but on his ability to genuinely connect.
With charisma, instinct, and that maddening gift for sealing any deal.
Every major business partner he has sticks around because he earned their trust and respect, not because he demanded it.
As sharp and impenetrable as my team is, they don’t stand a chance against him.
Last night, he arranged a surprise birthday gathering for Eduardo from the B-Team. Definitely a first for us. But Eduardo was full of so much gratitude he teared up, then got mercilessly teased. But everyone had a blast.
Now it’s morning, and I’m waking up with a mild hangover, an empty bed and an inexplicable pit in my stomach. Not sure what it is, but something feels off.
I stumble out of bed, freshen up, and head downstairs. Halfway down, I pause, catching the low rumble of Stefano’s voice. Something about his tone makes me linger there, listening. His words are too muffled to make out, but my father’s name is unmistakable.
By the time I make it down to the kitchen, Stefano is hunched over his coffee, his phone face-down on the table. The hard set of his jaw and the shadow clouding his face turns the pit in my stomach to bile.
Moseying to the coffee station, I ask with feigned nonchalance, “Who were you talking to just now?”
“Pavlov.”
As a cocktail of inexpressible emotions unfurls in my chest, I pour myself a cup of black, then take a slow sip before turning around. “So, what, are you two buddies now or something?”
He sits back and sweeps his gaze down the length of me. “You’re a dream.” His expression shifts, a shadow of something indiscernible flitting across his features as he gestures to the chair across from him. “Come sit. We need to talk.”
That tone. The apology in his eyes. It’s enough to cue me in. He’s ready to tell me about the deal.
And it’s clearly nothing good.
I don’t want to hear it. I want to dawdle in our bubble a little longer. “I think I’ll stand.”
Stefano tips his head, observing me.
I hate and love and hate when he looks at me like that. Like he knows me. Like he sees all the hidden parts of me that no one else can.
“Don’t do that,” he chides.
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t start numbing because you’re afraid of what I’m going to say.”
“Fuck you.” Screw him. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Stefano.”
To that, he simply replies, “I love you.”
I love you a million times more. I love you to irrationality and insanity.
A part of me already knows I’m going to resent him for whatever he’s about to reveal, so I don’t return the sentiment. Instead, I clutch my coffee mug with both hands like it’s a lifeline and sip slowly, giving him nothing.
He exhales a resigned sigh, his fingers drumming on the table with a rhythm of inevitability. “I had an agreement with JB. Not Pavlov.”
Daggered. That’s how I feel right now. Stabbed from the back, straight through the heart.
“My mom?” The words scrape out of me, hoarse and cracked. “You made a deal with…my mom?”
He’s stolid now, blank. “I did.”
“When? How? She’s seven months pregnant and on bed rest. She hasn’t been—”
“I woke up in the middle of the night and she was just…there. In the room.”
Yep, that’s her style all right.
“What did she offer you? What did you trade me for?” I hate the weak, pathetic shake in my voice. Hate it, but can’t control it. “What’s worth more than me, Stefano?”
I know…I just know this is the end of us. It was too good to be true. As long as my mother is in control, happiness will only ever be an illusion for me.
Stefano’s eyes harden, jaw clenched. “You really don’t believe I love you, do you?”
“No! Because you’re Stefano fucking Castello and I know you.
I’ve been invading every crevice of your life since I was fifteen.
I. Know. You. Words and wiles are your weapons, wielded expertly to lure the unsuspecting.
The loves of your life? Money and power.
You’re bored with life. You’re bored with yourself.
So you go out and deliberately make enemies, piss people off, or chase anything that’s a challenge. A mystery.
“That’s why you came after me. I was a mystery to you. And that’s why I knew you would hunt me to the ends of the earth. You don’t like to lose. Now you’re suddenly in love with me, after finding out who I am? No, Stefano. You’re not in love with me. You’re in love with what I represent.”
For several tense beats of silence, he merely watches me with that infuriating see-right-through-me stare. Then, “I see you’ve moved on from numbing to self-sabotage.”
Fuck him.
Fuck him.
FUCK. HIM.
“What’s the agreement, Stefano?” I slam my coffee mug down, dark liquid sloshing over the rim. “Just tell me and get it over with.”
He scoots his chair back and rubs his palms along his linen-clad thighs. Calm and measured. “Come here.”
“Will I hate what you’re about to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“Then you don’t want me anywhere near you. Trust me.”
His impassive stare latches on to my glare. “I’m not afraid of you, Soraya.”
You should be. He hasn’t the slightest clue how fucked in the head I really am. And yet, I would set the world on fire to keep him warm.
“But…” He nods once. “I understand.”
“What’s the agreement?”
He looks down for a brief moment, then back at me.
“JB made it clear she doesn’t approve of us.
Said since she can’t kill me, she’ll make it her mission to ensure we don’t have a moment’s peace together,” he says.
“Threatened to make my life hell and our relationship miserable. To assign you projects that would make it impossible for us to even see each other.”
That woman just doesn’t know how to accept defeat. Still clinging to the delusion that she has the same hold over me she once did.
“Unless you agreed to her terms, yes?” I cross my arms. “Come on, let’s hear it.”
“After spending no more than one week with you here…” He takes a breath. “I go back home and cut all ties with you for one full year.”
Trust JB to know exactly where to plunge the knife, how to twist it so the wound never heals. “How long did it take you to agree to that?”
“Two days.”
“And you didn’t think to demand to speak to me first?” I ask with a calmness I don’t feel. “You didn’t think there might be a reason she came to you with this bullshit and not me?”
He stands and closes the space between us.
“Was this a verbal agreement, or did she make you blood-ink it?”
“The latter.”
No way out, then. He’s locked in.
“I’ll never forgive Dad for this.” I sag back against the counter.
“Just this once, he was supposed to be on my side. Just this fucking once.” I glare up at Stefano and punch his chest. “You were supposed to be on my side. But you’re just like them.
They hate me. You hate me. I’m last. I’m always fucking last! ”
Stefano dodges out of the way as I grab my coffee mug and hurl it across the room.
“Why can’t I have anything, huh? What the fuck did I do to deserve this life? They fucked me up. Why am I here? Why am I alive? They had no business having kids. They fucked me up! They—”
Stefano pulls me into him, his embrace firm but gentle. Warm and comforting. And for the second time in days, I’m caught off guard by my own damn tears. Stupid, malfunctioning tear ducts.
“Hours,” I whisper. “We talked for hours, day after day, making all those big plans. And the whole time, you knew…you knew you’d already given me up.”
“Soraya, listen to me...” He eases back, his hands cradling my face, tilting it until our eyes lock.
“I’m not giving you up. You’re not last. And I am in love with you.
” His thumb sweeps away my pathetic tears.
“Please don’t think I agreed to JB’s ultimatum because I’m afraid of challenging her.
Come on, she’s been threatening me for years, and I’ve been pushing her limits for the hell of it. Nothing new there.
“I agreed to her terms because there’s deep dysfunction in your family. And I know I’m in no position to judge, but family means a lot to me, good or bad. If you know me as well as you say, then you must know that.”
Another dumb tear escapes down my cheek and he tenderly wipes it away with the pad of his thumb.
“Soraya, I don’t want a dysfunctional relationship with you.
I want peace with you. I want laughter and love with you.
I want to be your safe haven and you mine.
I want us to build something real. Our own healthy, wholesome family.