5. The Other Heir #2
The table raises their glasses. I raise mine. The wine could be water for all I taste it.
I excuse myself between courses.
I tell the table I need to find the restroom. What I need is thirty seconds where Sebastian's eyes aren't on me, thirty seconds to unclench my jaw and breathe air that isn't being weighed and measured.
I find the hallway. Marble floors, recessed lighting, the low hum of a building that costs more per square foot than my entire block. I lean against the wall and close my eyes.
When I open them, I can see into a room at the end of the hall — a study, or a private office, the door half open. And inside it, Matteo and Sebastian.
They don't see me. They're facing each other across a desk, and everything about their bodies tells a story their words would never reveal.
Matteo is coiled — spine rigid, shoulders squared, every muscle locked in the controlled stillness of a man who is choosing, very deliberately, not to hit something.
His hands are at his sides. His fingers are curled.
Sebastian is the opposite. Loose. Leaned back against the desk, arms folded, one ankle crossed over the other.
Amused. The posture of a man who knows he's getting under someone's skin and is enjoying the texture of it.
His head is tilted at an angle that says go ahead, little brother. Show me what you've got.
I can't hear the words. They're speaking low — the register men adopt when the conversation has moved past performance and into the real thing. But I don't need the words. Body language is a language of its own, and I'm fluent.
Two men shaped by the same cruelty, carrying the same wound like a weapon between them.
I understand, standing in that hallway, watching them through a half-open door, exactly what I've walked into.
This isn't a family. It's a war zone adorned with tablecloths and wine glasses.
And I am standing in the middle of it wearing a ring that doesn't belong to me and a dress that was chosen for me, pretending to be something I'm not—for a man whose brother is already sharpening the knife.
I step away from the door before either of them sees me. I smooth my dress. I fix my face. I walk back to the table and sit down and pick up my wine glass like nothing happened.
The associate beside me asks if I'm enjoying the evening.
"It's lovely," I say.
My hands don't shake; I make sure of that.
Sebastian finds me on the balcony.
I stepped out for air while Matteo spoke with one of the associates — something quiet, something urgent, his voice dropping to the register that means I'm not supposed to hear. The balcony is wide, glass-railed, the wind sharp and cold forty stories above a city that has no idea I exist.
"You looked like you could use some company."
I turn. Sebastian is leaning against the door frame, a glass of bourbon in hand, that practiced warmth back in place like a coat he's put on for the occasion. He closes the balcony door behind him. The click of the latch is soft, but I hear it.
We're alone.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Sofia."
He says my name like he's turning it over in his hands — examining it, deciding if it's useful. He moves to the railing and stands beside me. Not too close. Not too far. The exact distance of a man who understands space as a tool.
"I know exactly what I'm doing," I say.
"Do you?" He looks out at the city. The lights paint his face in silver and orange, and for one disorienting second, he looks almost kind. "My brother is a remarkable man. Intelligent. Driven. Capable of extraordinary focus when he wants something."
He pauses. Take a sip of bourbon.
"But he consumes everything he touches. It's not cruelty — it's nature.
Gravity. Things fall toward him, and they don't come back.
" He turns to me. "You seem like a good person, Sofia.
A good person caught in a situation that's bigger than you realize.
And I've watched good people walk into Matteo's orbit and come out as wreckage. "
It sounds like a concern. Every word of it. The tone, the pacing, the way he lowers his voice at the end like he's sharing something he shouldn't — it's perfectly crafted to make me feel seen, understood, and protected.
It feels like a threat.
"I appreciate the concern," I say. "But I chose to be here."
"Did you? Or did your circumstances choose for you?"
The words hit below the armor. He's not guessing.
He knows about Lucia, about the bills, and about the trap I walked into because the alternative was watching my mother suffocate inch by inch in a hospital bed.
He knows all of it, and he's letting me know he knows, and the casualness of it — the bourbon, the balcony, the brotherly concern — makes it even worse.
"Either way," I say. "I'm here. And I'm staying."
He studies me. The smile is gone. What's left is something more honest — perhaps curiosity. The kind a locksmith feels when faced with a lock he has yet to crack.
"I hope so," he says quietly. "For your sake."
The balcony door opens.
Matteo stands in the frame. His jaw is tight. His eyes move from Sebastian to me to the closed door between us and the rest of the penthouse, and I can see every calculation happening behind them in real time — how long we've been alone, what was said, and what was planted.
He doesn't say anything to Sebastian. He doesn't need to. His presence fills the doorway completely, deliberately, leaving no room for anything else.
He extends his hand to me.
"We're leaving."
I take it. His fingers close around mine, firm and warm, and when we pass Sebastian, Matteo’s other hand settles at the small of my back — not gentle, not rough. Possessive enough to make a point.
We walk through the penthouse without stopping. Sebastian doesn't follow. He stays on the balcony, bourbon in hand, watching us go.
The car is silent for three blocks.