Chapter 6 #3
My hands flatten against the table on either side of the wish, pressing into the polished mahogany hard enough that the wood grain bites into my palms. The Chanel hits me again from the paper and I'm back in my bed with her trembling hands on my chest and her blue eyes locked on mine and the word tesoro on my lips. I had no right to say it, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
"Massimo." Rafael's voice cuts through the static clogging my brain.
I look up and find five pairs of eyes watching me with varying degrees of curiosity and concern. Rafael's are sharp, assessing. Luca's are bright, gleaming. I’ll bet the contents of my bank account, the man already guessed something is up. Kon’s expression is about the same.
Nosy fuckers.
"You alright, brother?" Drake's voice is low, measured, the question carrying genuine warmth beneath the gravel.
I blink twice. Drag my jaw loose by force. Press my spine against the back of the chair and pull the mask into place. Courtrooms and negotiations taught me how to hide what's on my face when the wrong expression could cost someone their life. I use every bit of that training now.
I press my palms against the mahogany, steady and deliberate, even though my pulse is still hammering behind my ribs hard enough to make my shirt move.
"Yep. Fine." The words come out flat. Controlled. The voice of a lawyer who has spent fifteen years hiding reactions behind professional composure while the rest of him falls apart. I raise the envelope. "This one is mine."
I fold the wish, slip it back into the red envelope, and tuck it into the breast pocket of my suit, over my heart. The paper is warm against my chest. Her tears. Her perfume. Her initials.
I can’t believe how fucking stupid and blind I am.
The reading continues. I assign the remaining wishes, make my notes, contribute to strategy discussions with a competence that runs on autopilot while the rest of my brain burns through implications at a speed that would make Luca's processors jealous.
The meeting ends. The brothers file out. Luca lingers in the doorway, his eyes fixed on me with an expression that hovers between curiosity and the delighted anticipation of a man about to witness something spectacular.
"Whatever you're about to say," I tell him without looking up from the table, "don't."
"I wasn't going to say anything." His grin is audible. "Just admiring the view. You've got that look."
Irritation flares inside me. “If this is you not saying something, I think you misunderstand the words coming outta your mouth.”
I narrow my eyes on him not really wanting to play into his game, but if I don’t say something the man will hound me for hours. "What look?"
"The one Kon had right before he bought a woman at auction and then grew her a rose garden.
The one Drake had when he built Katriana an entire publishing house because she mentioned once that she liked books.
The one Rafael had when he rewrote the entire Syndicate charter to include a clause protecting Persia's inheritance rights because she didn't know she had any.
" He leans his large frame against the doorframe, arms crossed.
"The look that says one of us is about to do something spectacularly stupid for a woman, and this time it's not me, brother."
I tilt my head to the side and don’t bother masking my irritation. "Get out of my office, Luca."
"It's the boardroom, technically." He pushes off the frame with a wink. "Good luck, brother. You are so going to need it."
The door closes. The boardroom goes silent again.
Thank fuck. I draw in a deep breath through my nose and let it out.
I reach into my breast pocket and pull out the red envelope. Hold it in both hands. Bring it to my face and breathe her in one more time.
Sloane Whitmore. Harrison's daughter. How the hell did I let this happen?
I set the envelope on the table and pull out my phone. My thumb finds Harrison's contact. Twenty years I've had this number saved. Twenty years of shared holidays and courtrooms and the trust that only comes from seeing each other at our worst.
Before I can figure out what to do about Sloane, I owe Harrison the truth. Twenty years of friendship. Twenty years of trust. It doesn’t matter that I didn't know who she was when I invited her to my penthouse.
But her wish reads like a woman drowning and that sits wrong with me.
His daughter feels invisible. His daughter ran to a stranger on her birthday because she had nowhere else to go.
And my mother was trapped in a life she never agreed to because no one paid attention until it was too late.
I swore I would never let that happen to someone I cared about.
I press call.
Harrison picks up on the third ring. "Mass. What's going on? It's early for you."
My jaw tightens. The wish sits on the table in front of me. Tear-stained. Her perfume. Her handwriting. Her truth.
"We need to talk, Harrison. Face to face. Today."
A pause. The silence of a man who knows he's been caught but doesn't know how much. "About what?"
"About your daughter."