Under Contract

Chapter Six: Family Fire

Melody POV

Suddenly, the chaos had stopped feeling like a weapon.

That should have bothered me more than it did.

My keyboard still snapped across Anton’s office like it had a personal grudge against silence. The mini fan still whined on full blast, stirring the edges of papers and making his perfectly ordered workspace look mildly offended. The pizza box from lunch sat half open on the side of my desk, and one more slice of greasy cheese might actually kill me. But Anton barely reacted anymore. No tight jaw. No pointed looks. No quiet comments about civilization collapsing under my presence.

If anything, he seemed... used to it.

That was unsettling.

I kept typing anyway, eyes on the screen, forcing my attention through the API work. Today, at least, the code was behaving. Integrations were smoother, server response was cleaner, and the infrastructure upgrades funded by Anton’s money were already making a difference. It irritated me that I had to admit that. His fifty million hadn’t just bought oversight. It had bought speed.

Still, every time I felt his attention shift toward me, my concentration frayed for reasons I refused to examine too closely.

His stare had no business being that distracting.

Or that calm.

Or that dangerous.

I should have been more bothered by it.

Instead I found myself typing harder whenever I noticed him looking, as if productivity might count as emotional self-defense.

The door slammed open hard enough to make me jump.

No knock.

No warning.

Just impact.

I looked up and saw an older man striding into the office like he already owned the air in it. Silver hair, slicked back too severely. Expensive suit, badly worn. The same sharp jaw Anton had, only older, harder, and soured by rage. His face was flushed, one hand gripping a folder so tightly the edges bent under his fingers.

Vespucci.

Senior, I assumed.

I had heard enough stories to recognize the type even before the resemblance confirmed it. Old-school power. Old-school ego. The kind of man who called ruthlessness discipline and expected gratitude from anyone lucky enough to survive it.

“What the hell is this?” he barked.

The folder hit Anton’s desk with a crack.

Papers jumped. My fan immediately made things worse, catching loose sheets and sending two of them sliding off the polished surface like they had chosen flight over involvement.

Neither man noticed.

Anton stood slowly.

That was somehow more alarming than if he had moved fast.

“My money,” he said, voice flat. “My call.”

“Your brain’s gone soft.”

Senior slapped the folder with the back of his hand as if even touching the contract insulted him. “Fifty million to some startup girl? In my building?”

My fingers stilled over the keyboard.

Startup girl.

I felt the insult land hot and sharp, but before I could decide whether to speak, the room shifted again.

Anton didn’t raise his voice.

He didn’t need to.

“Careful,” he said.

His father gave a harsh laugh. “She’s a risk. No experience. No discipline. This is how you tank a company.”

I looked from one man to the other and realized, all at once, that this wasn’t just a disagreement about a deal.

This was a war that had started long before I ever walked into Vespucci Tower.

The air felt different. Older. Meaner. Personal in a way boardrooms usually tried to hide.

“Out,” Anton said.

Low. Controlled. Deadly enough that even I felt it.

His father turned toward me instead.

Bad choice.

“You,” he snapped. “Hoodie hacker. Get out.”

Heat rushed straight to my face.

Not embarrassment.

Anger.

I pushed back my chair and stood. “This is business.”

He laughed at that—short, bitter, ugly. “Business? Is that what we’re calling it? Sleeping your way into funding?”

The sound of Anton’s fist hitting the desk cracked through the room.

Glass rattled.

Even the fan seemed to pause under the force of it.

“Enough.”

I had never heard that tone from him before.

Not in our arguments.

Not in meetings.

Not in the controlled, infuriating back-and-forth he used on me every day.

This was different. Colder. Sharper. Stripped of polish.

His father stepped closer until they were nearly chest to chest.

“You defend her?” Senior said. “After everything? Pull this deal, or I pull your board access.”

My stomach dropped.

That was not a bluff. Or if it was, it was practiced enough to sound like muscle memory.

Anton didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

“Touch my deals,” he said, “and you’re done here.”

Silence crashed over the room.

For one suspended second, no one breathed.

His father stared at him, stunned not by the threat itself but by the fact that Anton had made it so plainly. Then his gaze cut to me again, full of contempt sharpened by calculation.

“You’ll see,” he said to Anton. “This girl is a mistake. And so are you.”

Then he turned and stormed out, slamming the door hard enough to shake the glass wall beside the desk.

The office went still.

Too still.

My heart was pounding so hard it felt stupidly loud in the silence. Anton stood facing the door, shoulders rigid, jaw locked tight enough to show the strain there. For the first time since I had met him, he looked less like a man in control and more like a man holding control by force.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

I also didn’t know why it hit somewhere uncomfortably familiar.

A father who used humiliation like strategy.

A room charged with old power.

A younger version forced to stay standing inside it.

Different story. Different building. Same shape.

Anton turned toward me.

For a second his expression stayed cold, unreadable, as if whatever had just happened had sealed him behind glass. Then he seemed to actually see me standing there, and some of the edge shifted.

Not gone.

Just contained again.

“Sorry,” he said.

The word sounded unfamiliar in his mouth.

He exhaled once and glanced toward the desk, at the scattered papers, the open folder, the evidence of a war neither of us had invited into the room.

“The old man doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he said. “He thinks money can only be made by people who already have it. Men like him mistake inheritance for intelligence.”

I folded my arms, partly because I needed them somewhere. “That’s one way to build a motivational family culture.”

The corner of his mouth almost moved.

Almost.

I took a step closer before I could reconsider it. “Mr. Vespucci... maybe it would be better if I worked from my own office from now on.”

The suggestion sounded reasonable.

Professional.

Safe.

Anton’s answer came immediately. “No.”

I blinked. “That was fast.”

“It was meant to be.”

He came around the desk, not quickly, but with a certainty that made it impossible to pretend he hadn’t already decided. When he stopped in front of me, there was still enough space between us to count as appropriate.

Barely.

“This changes nothing,” he said.

“Your father seems to disagree.”

“My father is not relevant to this deal.”

“He walked in here and called me a distraction.”

His expression darkened at once. “He was out of line.”

“That’s a polished way to describe what just happened.”

“It’s the version that keeps me from going after him again.”

That shut me up for a second.

Not because the words were dramatic.

Because I believed him.

My pulse kicked once, hard enough to annoy me.

Anton looked down briefly, and when he lifted his gaze back to mine it had lost some of its ice. Not softened, exactly. Just less armored.

“Stay,” he said.

The word landed lower than it should have.

Then his hand brushed mine.

It wasn’t a grab.

Not even a hold.

Just the lightest contact at the side of my fingers, there and gone in a second.

Still, it hit like static.

My breath caught before I could stop it.

His eyes flicked down, as if he had noticed.

Of course he had.

“Call me Anton,” he said quietly. “Not Mr. Vespucci.”

There were probably a dozen smart responses available to me.

I used none of them.

“Anton,” I said.

Softly.

Testing it.

His gaze held mine for one charged second too long. Then it dropped, just briefly, to my mouth before returning to my eyes.

“Better,” he said.

The room changed again.

Not dramatically.

Not enough to become something else.

But enough that the fight from minutes ago no longer felt like the only thing between us.

That should have sent me backward.

Instead I stayed where I was.

I hated that I understood him a little better now. Hated that I could see the outline of something raw under all that control. Hated, most of all, that it made him feel less like an impossible billionaire in an expensive office and more like a man carrying a family legacy he didn’t entirely want but refused to let crush him.

That kind of recognition was dangerous.

For both of us.

“Stay,” he said again, voice rougher this time. “And don’t start running because of him.”

I lifted a brow. “Running wasn’t my plan.”

“Good.”

He stepped back first.

The distance helped.

A little.

“Finish your code,” he said.

There he was.

Cold order. Controlled tone. A command dressed as normalcy.

Oddly, I was relieved to hear it.

I nodded once and returned to the desk.

The keyboard sat where I had left it. The fan still whirred. The pizza box was still open, stupid and ordinary in the middle of everything that had just happened. My screen glowed with the same clean architecture I had been working through ten minutes earlier, but none of it looked quite the same now.

Not because the office had changed.

Because the pattern had.

I knew something about Anton I hadn’t known before. Something ugly around the edges. Something human. Something that looked, in a way I didn’t want to examine too closely, a little too familiar.

I sat down and set my hands on the keys.

Behind me, I could hear Anton gathering the scattered papers, restoring order piece by piece.

In front of me, the code waited.

And somewhere between the fan noise, the aftershock in my chest, and the name I had finally said out loud, I understood that whatever this thing was between us, it had shifted.

Not solved.

Not softened.

But shifted.

Which was probably worse.