5. The Other Heir
FIVE
THE OTHER HEIR
SOFIA
The dress is unlike anything I've ever worn.
It's black — not the flat, tired black of the work pants I rotate three times a week, but a deep, liquid black that seems to swallow the light and return it as something richer.
The fabric is silk—real silk—the kind that doesn't wrinkle, bunch, or do any of the things my clothes normally do.
It slides against my skin like cool water every time I move, and I keep catching myself touching my own arm just to feel it.
The neckline sits just below my collarbone — elegant, not revealing — held in place by a cut so precise it looks like the dress was poured onto my body rather than zipped.
The back dips low, a single open curve that ends just above my waist, and when I turn in the mirror, I can see the architecture of my own spine in a way I never have before.
Gianna paired it with heels that add three inches and change the way I carry myself — hips forward, shoulders back, chin lifted. A clutch so small it can't hold anything useful. Earrings I didn't choose, small diamonds that catch the light like sparks.
I stare at myself in the full-length mirror in the guest suite — the same mirror where, two days ago, I mouthed I hate you at Matteo's reflection.
The woman staring back at me looks like someone who has never worked a double shift, never eaten cereal for dinner three nights in a row, never sat in a hospital parking lot crying in a car she couldn't afford to put gas in.
She looks expensive. Untouchable. Like she was born into rooms like this, rather than scrubbing her way through the doors.
I press my palm flat against the silk over my stomach.
The fabric is so thin I can feel the warmth of my hand through it.
This dress was made for a woman who has never had to choose between groceries and a phone bill.
And yet, standing here, watching the silk catch the light and the earrings scatter tiny diamonds across the wall, I feel something I didn't expect.
I feel beautiful.
Not the way I feel after Valentina forces me to put on mascara for a night out.
Not the way I feel when a customer at the diner tells me I have nice eyes.
Something different. Something that starts in the center of my chest and radiates outward: warm, unfamiliar, and a little terrifying, because feeling beautiful while wearing a ring that feels like it belongs to someone else and a borrowed dress in a house that isn't mine means I'm beginning to slip into this life. And slipping is how you drown.
The sapphire on my left hand catches the light, casting a blue shadow across my wrist. I wonder if Matteo's mother ever stood in front of this mirror, feeling like she belonged. Or if belonging is something you earn. Or if it's something they take from you once the contract expires.
Matteo is waiting by the car. Dark suit, no tie, the collar of his shirt open.
He watches me walk across the gravel, and his eyes do that thing again — the slow, deliberate sweep that he thinks is subtle but isn't. He takes me in from my heels to my hair, and whatever he finds makes his jaw tighten in a way that could mean a dozen things, none of which I'm going to think about right now.
The car door opens. I slide in. Matteo slides in beside me.
"Rules for tonight?" I ask.
"Stay close. Answer only what he asks. Don't volunteer any information he doesn't request."
"And if he asks something I can't answer?"
"Smile. Redirect. Let me handle it."
"So my job is to look pretty and keep my mouth shut."
"Your job is to survive a dinner with the most observant man in Boston without giving him a single thing he can use against us." He pauses. "The looking pretty is a bonus."
I turn to stare at him. He's looking out the window. The faintest trace of a smirk lingers at the corner of his mouth — there and gone, like heat lightning.
I face forward and don't respond. I don't trust what my face would do if I did.
Sebastian De Santis lives above the city.
His penthouse occupies the entire top floor of a glass tower in the Seaport — the kind of building that didn't exist five years ago and now dominates the skyline like it's always been there.
The elevator requires a key card and ascends silently, and when the doors open, the first thing I see is the sky.
Floor-to-ceiling windows cover every wall.
The city sprawls below like a glittering, distant, circuit board.
The space is composed entirely of glass, steel, and sharp angles — cold in a way that is deliberate, designed to make you feel like you're standing inside a blade.
While Matteo's estate reflects old money — with dark wood, heavy furniture, and rooms that smell of history — Sebastian's penthouse is something else entirely.
Everything here says I don't need the past. I am the future.
Matteo's hand finds my lower back. He asked in the elevator — two words, quiet: "May I?
"— and I nodded, and now his palm rests against the bare skin where the dress dips low, and I can feel every finger.
Every single one. Five points of contact that have no business sending electricity up my spine, and yet here we are.
Sebastian greets us at the door.
He's taller than Matteo. That's the first thing.
Taller, broader, with the same dark coloring but sharper features, like someone took the same blueprint and removed anything that might have once been soft.
Silver at his temples. A suit that fits like it was stitched onto his body.
He stands in the doorway of his penthouse, the way a man stands at the entrance of a kingdom — relaxed, expansive, certain that everything on the other side belongs to him.
He's smiling. The smile is wide and warm but doesn't reach his eyes—not even close. It fades around his cheekbones and dies there, while the eyes above it are engaged in something entirely different — reading, calculating, dissecting.
"So this is her."
Three words. He says them to Matteo, but his eyes are on me. They move across my face with the precision of a man who reads people the way other men read stock tickers — searching for the number that doesn't add up, the line that's out of place.
"Sofia," Matteo says. His hand presses gently against my back — grounding and steady. "My fiancée."
"Of course." Sebastian extends his hand. His grip is firm and dry, lasting exactly the right amount of time. Everything about him is calibrated. "Sebastian De Santis. Welcome to the family."
The word family sounds different in his mouth than it does in Matteo's. To Matteo's, it's a burden; to Sebastian's, it's a weapon.
"Thank you," I say. I hold his handshake one beat longer than necessary — not because I want to, but because pulling away first means flinching, and I promised myself I wouldn't flinch tonight.
Dinner is a dissection.
Sebastian carves me open between the appetizer and the main course, and he does it with a smile and a wine glass and the kind of charm that makes you want to hand him the knife.
The table is intimate — just the four of us and two associates whose names I register and immediately discard, because every cell in my body is occupied by the man sitting at the head of the table, watching me like a cat watching a crack in a wall. Patient. Knowing something lies on the other side.
"So, Sofia." He leans back in his chair, swirling the wine he hasn't sipped. "Southie. That's where you grew up?"
"Born in Revere. Moved to Southie when I was nine."
"And what do you do?"
"I work at a restaurant."
"Rosario's, isn't it? On Dorchester?"
He knows the name. He knows the street. The information lands on the table between us like a card being played—casually, deliberately—a demonstration that he's done his homework and wants me to know it.
"That's right," I say. My voice doesn't waver.
My fork doesn't pause. I have spent eighteen months sitting across from doctors who tell me my mother is dying, and insurance representatives who say her life isn't worth saving.
A man with a wine glass and a research file doesn't even crack my top ten.
"And how did you two meet?" Sebastian's eyes move between me and Matteo. "I have to say, I was surprised by the announcement. My brother isn't exactly known for his romantic spontaneity."
The rehearsed story. Matteo and I built it in the car three days ago — close enough to the truth to hold weight, far enough from it to be safe.
"He came into the restaurant," I say. "Kept coming back. I kept telling him we were closed."
"Love at first sight?" Sebastian asks.
"More like persistence at first refusal." I glance at Matteo. "He doesn't hear the word no very well."
Matteo's mouth twitches. The table laughs. Sebastian doesn't laugh — he watches. He watches the glance, the timing, the way Matteo's hand rests near mine on the table. He watches how I look at Matteo when I say it, and then he watches how I look away.
He's cataloging. Every micro-expression, every beat of timing, every detail that doesn't quite fit the picture of a woman in love. I hold his gaze when he looks at me. I refuse to flinch.
But Sebastian isn't finished.
"And your family?" he asks, cutting into his steak with surgical precision. "Your mother — she's well?"
The fork in my hand goes heavy. He dropped it between a question about my neighborhood and a comment about the wine — casual, effortless, the way you'd ask about the weather. But it's not casual. Nothing this man does is casual.
He knows about Lucia. He already knows, and he's asking not because he wants an answer but because he wants to watch my face when I give it.
"She's doing well," I say. My voice is steady. My hand under the table is not, and Matteo's knee presses against mine — a silent signal, a steadying weight. "Thank you for asking."
"Family health is so important," Sebastian says. He raises his glass. "To family."