Falling for My Elite Rival

CHAPTER TWO; Sabotage at 6:45 PM

The Academic Showcase starts in fifteen minutes, and my life is officially over.

"No, no, no..." My breath hitches in my throat as I throw textbooks, gym clothes, and highlighters out of my locker, sending them crashing onto the marble floor with a series of loud, echoing clatters.

I scramble on my knees, digging frantically through the bottom compartment, my hands sweeping through loose papers and old folders. Nothing.

The black USB drive containing four months of my criminal justice research—my slides, my comparative statistical models, my entire pitch for the Westbridge Board of Trustees—is gone.

"This can't be happening," I whisper, my voice cracking as tears of sheer, helpless panic burn the backs of my eyes. "It was right here at lunch. I checked it before fifth period. It was right here."

Without that presentation, my scholarship vanishes. Without the scholarship, I can't afford senior tuition at Westbridge. I’ll be sent back to my underfunded district school across town, and my dream of Columbia Law dies tonight on this cold floor.

"You look like you're about to pass out, Ribeiro."

I snap my head up.

Enzo is standing ten feet down the hall, framed by the gothic archway. He’s dressed in a tailored navy blazer and a sharp white dress shirt, looking like a young CEO straight off the cover of a magazine. But his usual arrogant, untouchable posture is gone. His face is unusually pale, his hazel eyes wide as he takes in the chaotic mess surrounding my locker.

"Get lost, Enzo," I choke out, frantically wiping a stray tear from my cheek with the back of my hand before he can see it. "I don't have time for your games right now."

He doesn't leave. Instead, he closes the distance between us in three long, urgent strides and drops to one knee right in front of me, his knees pressing into the hard marble.

"Where is your backup drive?" he asks, his voice sharp, clipped, and commanding.

"I don't have one!" I snap, my voice rising in sharp hysteria as my fingers dig into my palms. "The auditorium presenter laptop doesn't have internet access, so I couldn't back it up to the cloud! Someone... someone picked my lock!"

Enzo’s eyes narrow instantly, the gold flecks in his irises flashing. "Your locker was locked?"

"Yes! I always lock it!"

Something dark, lethal, and dangerous flickers across his face—a sudden flash of pure, unadulterated rage that shocks me into momentary silence. His jaw sets so hard I can hear his teeth grind.

He stands up in one fluid motion, reaching down and grabbing my wrist. His grip is warm, firm, and overwhelmingly grounding against my ice-cold skin.

"Get up," he commands.

"What?" I stumble to my feet, my heart pounding violently out of my chest. "Enzo, let go of me—"

"We have thirty-eight minutes before you step on that stage," he says, his voice leaving zero room for debate as he turns and drags me down the hallway toward the west stairwell. "There's an empty computer lab on the second floor. My personal laptop has high-speed offline presentation software."

I stop dead in my tracks at the landing, pulling back against his grip with all my remaining strength. "Why would you help me? If I don't present, you win by default! You get the full grant! You get the sole nomination!"

Enzo turns around, stepping so close I can feel the intense heat radiating off his body in the cool stairwell. He grabs both of my shoulders, his large hands anchoring me, forcing me to look him straight in the eye.

"I want to beat you, Mara," he says, his voice dangerously low, vibrating with a fierce, terrifying intensity. "But I want to beat you when you're at your best. I am not winning because someone played dirty in the shadows. Now stop arguing and move your ass."

Before I can process the mind-bending reality that my arch-enemy is currently shielding me from total disaster, he pulls me up the steps.

For the next twenty minutes, the second-floor computer lab becomes a war zone of rapid typing, mechanical keyboard clicks, and breathless dictation.

"Seattle, Denver, Eugene," I pace frantically behind his chair, running my hands through my ponytail as I rattle off complex statistics straight from memory. "The Eugene crisis response model saw a thirty-three percent drop in violent escalation within the first eighteen months—"

"Got it," Enzo says, his long, broad fingers flying across his keyboard like a concert pianist executing a masterpiece. "Formatting the comparative chart now. What’s your closing argument on the municipal budget reallocation?"

I stop pacing. I look at him—really look at him.

His navy blazer is thrown over a chair. His silk tie is loosened, the top button of his shirt undone, exposing the hollow of his throat. A dark strand of wet hair falls over his forehead as he furiously builds my presentation slides from absolute scratch, translating my panicked spoken words into clean, elegant visuals.

"Why are you doing this?" I whisper softly into the humming quiet of the lab.

Enzo pauses. His fingers hover half an inch above the keys. He doesn't look at the screen. He slowly turns his head to look at me.

The silence between us stretches, thick with an undeniable, suffocating heat that makes the air in the room feel entirely too scarce.

"Because," Enzo says, his voice dropping an octave, rich and heavy, "you worked harder than anyone in this damn school for this night. And because..." He hesitates, his hazel eyes locking onto mine with an emotion so raw, so deep, and so intense that it takes my breath away entirely. "Because I can't stand seeing you break."

My breath catches in my throat. My chest swells, my pulse racing for a reason that has absolutely nothing to do with panic and everything to do with the boy sitting six inches away from me.

BZZZ.

The sharp, loud vibration of Enzo’s phone against the wooden desk shatters the moment like glass.

He instantly looks away, reaching for his device to silence it. But before he can flip the phone face down, I glance down at the bright screen.

A text notification lights up his lock screen in bold, crisp letters:

[UNKNOWN NUMBER]: It’s done. Her USB is destroyed. The scholarship is yours, Enzo. Don't ruin this.

My blood turns to absolute ice.