Chapter 8 #3
"I don’t give a fuck. I'm going to do what I always do. Solve the problem. That's what you pay me for."
I push off the desk. Straighten my jacket. My hands are steady even though my chest is hammering and my pulse is thick in my throat. Twenty years of friendship and I'm about to drive a wedge into the center of it that might never come out.
"One more thing." I stop at the door. My hand rests on the frame, my thumb brushing the edge of the pencil marks. "Don't let Lorenzo near Sloane again. Not until I've had time to work through the options."
Harrison looks at me with an expression I can't fully read. Gratitude. Fear. And something underneath both, something that looks a lot like the moment he realizes my interest in his daughter isn't purely professional.
"Mass." His voice is quiet. Careful. "Why do you care this much?"
The truth sits on my tongue. I slept with your daughter, Harrison. She was in my bed last night and she gave me everything and I can’t go another day without holding her again. That's why I care this much.
I seal my lips. Not because I'm afraid of what it costs me.
Because right now, telling Harrison I touched his daughter gives him a reason to dismiss everything I just said.
He stops hearing the man trying to save Sloane and starts hearing the man who took her to bed.
I need him to listen. The confession can come later.
"Because someone should. And since you can’t find it in you to protect your daughter over your fortune, I guess it’s going to be me." I go to walk out, but stop and angle my head back. “You’re hiding something. Ferraro has something dirty on you. You better hope I don’t find out what it is.”
With that, I leave. The hallway is empty. Sloane is gone. The marble floor still carries the faint trace of Chanel where she passed through, and I breathe it in one last time before I reach the front door.
I walk to my car. Sit behind the wheel. The red heel in its box sits on the passenger seat, cherry leather catching the afternoon light through the windshield, glowing warm against the gray interior.
The wish presses against my chest from my breast pocket, the paper softened from hours of body heat.
I sit there. Engine off. Both hands on the wheel, gripping the leather until it creaks and my knuckles go white.
I'm going to marry Sloane Whitmore.
The thought doesn't scare me. It settles into my chest and stays. Solid. Certain. I've drafted hundreds of contracts in my career. Marriage agreements, custody terms, asset protections, dissolution clauses. I could write this one in my sleep.
I pull out my phone. My thumb hovers for a second before I tap Luca's name.
He picks up on the first ring. "Talk to me."
I don't answer right away. I stare through the windshield at Harrison's limestone facade, the ivy crawling up the walls, the tall windows reflecting gray sky, and let the silence sit.
"Mass?" His voice shifts. The playful edge drops. "What happened?"
"I'm going to marry Harrison's daughter."
Dead silence. Three seconds. Five. I hear him exhale through his nose.
"You want to say that again."
"Sloane. I'm marrying Sloane." I loosen my grip on the wheel and flex my fingers, the blood rushing back into my knuckles.
My hands ache from squeezing. "Lorenzo Ferraro has a marriage contract on her.
Harrison's in deep with the Ferraro family.
Debts, leverage, the whole picture. I'm going to draft a counter-contract tonight. My name instead of Lorenzo's."
Another pause. When Luca speaks, the humor is gone.
His voice is low and steady, the voice he uses when the games stop and the brotherhood takes over.
"You sure about this, brother? Because once you put your name on that line, Lorenzo Ferraro becomes your problem.
And the Ferraros don't lose gracefully."
"I'm sure."
"The woman from last night. The one with the shoe." It's not a question. "It's her."
"Yeah." My throat tightens and I swallow against it. "It's her."
I hear him lean back in his chair, the familiar creak of leather carrying through the phone. A few seconds pass and I let them because Luca is processing and when Luca processes, you wait.
"Then do what you need to do, Mass. I've got your back. Whatever comes from the Ferraros, we handle it together."
I nod even though he can't see me. My jaw is locked and my eyes burn. I don't trust my voice, so I just sit with the silence and listen to Luca breathe on the other end of the line until the tightness in my chest loosens enough to speak.
"I'll be at the office in twenty," I manage. "I need a few hours to draft the contract. Keep all the intel you pulled close by. I have a feeling before this is over, I’ll need the damning material."
"I'll have coffee waiting. The good stuff, not that battery acid from the break room Rafael always drinks."
The corner of my mouth pulls. "Thanks, brother."
"Mass." He catches me before I hang up. "For what it's worth, I saw the way you held that shoe this morning. You looked like a man who already made his decision. You're just catching up to it now."
I hang up. Start the engine. Pull out of Harrison's drive, the gravel crunching under my tires, and head toward Redthorne Holdings with the red heel beside me and a contract taking shape in my head, every clause already forming before I sit down to write it.
I have a few hours of work to do before I show up at Sloane Whitmore's door and do the most unprofessional thing the Syndicate's legal counsel has ever done.