Under Contract

Chapter 19: Quiet Jealousies

The next morning, Sofia Vespucci was waiting for me on Anton’s desk.

Not in person.

In pastry form.

There was a white bakery box tied with pale string sitting beside my laptop when I walked into Anton’s office, and for one absurd second I just stood there staring at it like it might explain my life if I looked hard enough. A small card rested on top in neat, elegant handwriting.

For Melody Richardson.

You were too polite to take enough dessert.

— Sofia

I picked up the card and laughed under my breath before I could stop myself.

It was such a normal gesture. Warm. Thoughtful. Almost maternal.

Dangerous, in its own way.

Because now her house no longer felt like an accidental evening I had somehow survived. Now it felt remembered.

I untied the string and lifted the lid. Lemon cake. The same one she had insisted I take more of after dinner while Vincent told her she was bullying guests and Anton stood near the front door wearing that impossible white T-shirt and watching me like I was one more thing in the room he was refusing to touch.

I shut the box again a little too fast.

That memory needed less oxygen, not more.

“Elena brought that up fifteen minutes ago,” Lara said from the doorway. “I would like the record to show that I work very hard and nobody’s sophisticated mother has ever sent me lemon cake.”

I slid the card back into the box. “Maybe be more charming.”

“Cruel. Also, Vincent dropped it off himself.”

Of course he had.

I turned toward her. “He did?”

She gave me a look that was far too knowing for this hour of the morning. “Yes. Smiled, handed it over, said his mother would be offended if it didn’t make it to you intact, and left.”

I moved toward the desk and set my bag down. “That sounds like him.”

Lara leaned one shoulder against the frame. “Does it?”

I ignored that.

Mostly because I didn’t trust what my face might do if I didn’t.

The office still carried traces of Anton even when he wasn’t there. Order. Sharp lines. Controlled silence. My notebook sat on one side of the desk where I had left it the night before, and the charger he’d had brought in for me was coiled neatly beside it. Everything about the room said his name even when he was nowhere in sight.

That should have made Vincent’s cake feel out of place.

Instead, it made the whole morning feel stranger. Softer at the edges and more complicated in the center.

Lara pushed off the doorframe. “You have two rollout calls, one press follow-up, and Vincent wants to know if you’re free for lunch.”

I looked up. “Did he say lunch?”

“He said, and I quote, ‘Tell her I’m rescuing her from the architectural violence of this building’s executive dining options.’”

That pulled a smile out of me before I could stop it.

Lara saw it immediately.

“Right,” she said. “That’s deeply interesting.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It is to me.”

“You need more hobbies.”

“And you need less denial.”

I pointed at the hallway. “Out.”

She grinned and left.

I spent the next two hours trying to be a serious person. It went moderately well. I reviewed launch metrics, pushed back on a vendor timeline, corrected a legal draft that was trying much too hard to sound harmless, and answered three separate emails from media people who had somehow convinced themselves my entire professional existence existed to clarify their lazy assumptions.

But under all of it, my thoughts kept slipping.

To Sofia’s house.

To Vincent’s easy warmth.

To Anton at the end of the table, speaking less than everyone else and still somehow occupying more space.

To the moment on the front path when he’d looked at me and said, You stared.

That one kept circling back with humiliating persistence.

At twelve-thirty, Vincent appeared at the door.

He didn’t knock. He leaned lightly against the frame, hands in his coat pockets, and looked at me with the kind of calm amusement that made everything around him feel less sharp.

“Are you working,” he asked, “or staging a private war against your inbox?”

“Both.”

“Tragic.” His gaze moved to the pastry box. “My mother will be pleased to know you didn’t reject her peace offering.”

I glanced at it. “It was lemon cake. I’m not a sociopath.”

“Good. That narrows the field.”

I laughed despite myself and closed my laptop. “You said lunch?”

“I did. And before you refuse out of habit, I’ve already chosen somewhere with decent coffee and no investors.”

That sounded dangerously close to exactly what I needed.

So I went.

Lunch with Vincent was a mistake in the way some mistakes were only called that because they made everything else harder afterward.

He took me to a small place three streets over from the building, warm wood and low music and the kind of menu that pretended not to be expensive. We got a corner table, and for almost forty minutes I forgot to be braced.

That was Vincent’s particular talent.

He didn’t pull at things. He created space around them.

We talked about work first because that was safe. The event. Media narratives. Expansion pressure. He had opinions, good ones, but he never tried to overpower mine. Then he told me his mother had spent breakfast talking about me in a tone that suggested I had already been quietly adopted.

I nearly choked on my coffee. “That’s alarming.”

“She likes you.”

“She barely knows me.”

Vincent smiled a little. “That has never stopped her.”

I looked down at my cup to hide the heat in my face. “She’s lovely.”

His expression softened. “She is.”

There was a pause then, not awkward exactly, just more thoughtful than before.

“She was happy Anton came,” I said carefully.

Vincent let out a quiet breath through his nose. “That was the first time in months.”

I looked up. “Why?”

He turned his glass slowly between his fingers. “Because my brother is very good at convincing himself that distance is efficiency.”

That sounded familiar enough to sting.

“And yet he came,” I said.

“Yes.” Vincent’s gaze lifted to mine. “And then found you at the table.”

“I know.”

We kept talking after that, but the air had shifted. Not darker. Just more aware. At one point he asked whether I’d come back to his mother’s house if invited again, and I told him that depended entirely on whether Anton would be changing clothes at future dinners.

Vincent nearly laughed himself out of his chair.

“God,” he said, still grinning, “I wish I could have taken a picture of your face.”

“Vincent.”

“I’m only saying, it was deeply humanizing.”

“For who?”

“For all of us.”

I covered my eyes for one second. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No,” I admitted. “I don’t.”

When we walked back to the building, I was still smiling.

That was unfortunate timing.

Anton was in the lobby.

He stood near the reception desk speaking to someone from legal, dark suit, dark tie, one hand in his pocket. Perfectly composed. Perfectly unreadable. The kind of man who looked as if he had never once laughed too hard at lunch in his life.

His eyes lifted the second Vincent and I came through the glass doors.

The smile faded from my mouth before I could stop it.

Anton’s gaze moved over both of us in one clean sweep. Not lingering anywhere obvious. Not giving away anything at all. Then he finished whatever sentence he was saying to legal and stepped aside just enough for us to pass.

Vincent nodded at him first. “Anton.”

“Vincent.”

Then his eyes came to me.

“Miss Richardson.”

The formality of it hit harder in public.

“Mr. Vespucci.”

Vincent made a quiet sound that was probably internal suffering.

Anton didn’t acknowledge it. “The revised investor memo is on my desk. I expect your notes before four.”

I looked at him for a beat too long. “Of course.”

Then he inclined his head once and kept walking.

That should have been the end of it.

It wasn’t.

Because the whole ride up, I could still feel the cool precision of him. The distance. The polished public tone. The fact that he had looked from Vincent to me and given me nothing. Not a flicker. Not a question. Not even irritation.

Vincent glanced at me as the elevator climbed. “He’s in a charming mood.”

I folded my arms. “He’s always in a charming mood.”

“That isn’t true. Sometimes he’s almost human.”

I snorted softly despite myself.

Still, the rest of the afternoon felt wrong.

Not dramatic. Not loud. Worse.

Anton was everywhere and nowhere at once.

I worked from his office because that had somehow become normal, and around three Elena came in with a stack of documents for me to review. She set them down, then hesitated when she noticed the lemon cake box still open at the edge of the desk.

“Should I move that?” she asked.

“No, it’s fine.”

She nodded, then added, “Security also sent up the updated access list for approval.”

I barely looked up from the memo I was annotating. “Leave it there.”

She did.

It wasn’t until ten minutes later, while reaching for a financial packet underneath the pile, that I saw the heading on the top sheet.

Restricted Entry Update.

My eyes moved once across the first few lines.

Then froze.

Daniel Collins.

The paper sharpened in my hand.

There were notes underneath. Building access denied. Reception flagged. Security circulation updated. No contact through affiliated staff. Any attempted entry to be escalated immediately.

I read it twice.

Then a third time, slower.

No part of me was relieved first.

I was angry first.

Cold, immediate anger that started low and clean and familiar.

He had done it again.

Anton.

I stood so fast my chair rolled back into the credenza.

By the time I made it into the hallway, Elena was halfway to the elevators with another file in her hand. She saw my face and stopped.

“Where is he?”

Her expression didn’t change. “Conference two.”

“Alone?”

A pause. “Not for long.”

That was enough for me.

I crossed the floor with the paper still in my hand and didn’t bother knocking when I reached conference two. The glass door opened harder than it should have and struck the stopper with a crack.

Anton looked up from the table.

He was alone.

Good.

The room was all late-afternoon glass and city glare, which made his expression even harder to read. One file open in front of him. Phone to the side. Jacket still on.

His eyes flicked to the paper in my hand.

Then back to my face.

“Close the door, Melody.”

“No.”

One of his brows lifted.

I stepped farther into the room anyway. “You blocked Daniel Collins from the building.”

“Yes.”

No denial. No hesitation.

That almost made it worse.

“You had security and legal involved.”

“Yes.”

“And no one thought it might be relevant to mention that to me?”

His gaze held mine. “I was going to.”

“When?”

“When I had the full picture.”

I laughed once, sharp and furious. “Of course.”

He leaned back slightly in his chair, not relaxed, just controlled. “If you came here for outrage, at least make it accurate.”

“You made a decision about my life without asking me.”

“I made a decision about who enters my building.”

“It involved me.”

“Yes.”

The absolute calm in his voice made anger spark hotter under my skin.

I threw the paper onto the table between us. “You don’t get to do that.”

His eyes dropped briefly to the sheet, then lifted again. “He attempted contact more than once.”

That stalled me for half a second.

“More than once?” I asked.

“He called reception. He contacted event staff. He used one of your company addresses three days before the lobby incident.”

I stared at him.

Somewhere under the anger, something colder moved.

“What did he say?”

Anton’s jaw shifted once. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“He used apology as access. That is all you need.”

I took another step toward the table. “You don’t get to decide what I need.”

Something changed in his face then. Not much. Just enough for the room to feel smaller.

“No,” he said. “Apparently I don’t.”

I should have softened at that.

I didn’t.

“Then stop acting like you do.”

He was silent for one beat.

Then he stood.

I hate how every room changed when Anton stood up. How the air reorganized itself around him. How even in anger some buried part of my body still recognized him before my mind decided what to do with that recognition.

He came around the table slowly, not crowding me, just near enough that the distance between us began to feel intentional instead of accidental.

“Collins is a man who believes proximity is permission,” he said. “I don’t.”

I let out a disbelieving breath. “Really? Because from where I’m standing, the differences are getting annoyingly selective.”

That landed.

His eyes sharpened. “Be careful.”

I folded my arms. “No. You be honest.”

For a second, neither of us moved.

Then Anton said, quieter, “I handled him because he was using your past to get near you.”

“That was my decision to make.”

“And if you had told me not to intervene?”

I stared at him. “I shouldn’t have to answer a hypothetical to prove a boundary.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No, Anton, it’s not, because the point is you never gave me the choice.”

His gaze didn’t leave mine. “You’re right.”

The simple admission hit hard enough to throw me off balance.

I blinked. “What?”

“You’re right,” he said again. “I did not give you the choice.”

I had prepared for denial. For argument. For one of his infuriatingly elegant explanations that turned control into reason.

Not this.

The anger in me faltered just enough to let hurt in beside it.

“Then why?” I asked, and hated how much more honest that sounded.

His expression shifted almost imperceptibly.

“Because by the time I had the report,” he said, “I was already angry.”

There it was.

Not polished. Not strategic.

Just true.

I looked at him and felt my pulse begin that ugly, traitorous climb it always did when he stopped performing.

“You were angry,” I repeated.

“Yes.”

“At him?”

Something dark moved through his face. “Primarily.”

Despite myself, I almost smiled.

It vanished quickly.

“That doesn’t make this better.”

“I know.”

“You still should have told me.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

He held my gaze for a long second. “And I would do it again.”

The room went silent.

There it was.

The real Anton.

Not the careful one from the office. Not the restrained one from the hallway. Not even the son in the white T-shirt at his mother’s table.

This was the core of him. The man who heard threat and moved before permission had the chance to slow him down.

My throat tightened with anger and something far more dangerous.

“That,” I said quietly, “is exactly the problem.”

He looked at me with no sign of retreat. “I know that too.”

I laughed once, but there was no humor in it now. “Do you ever hear yourself?”

“Yes.”

“And you still think this is acceptable?”

“No.” His voice dropped. “I think it’s necessary.”

I turned away before I did something stupid, like stay rooted there long enough for the force of him to become the only thing I could hear.

The city flashed in the conference room glass, bright and distant.

When I spoke again, my voice was steadier. “You cannot protect me by erasing me from the decision.”

Behind me, he said nothing.

That silence told me more than an argument would have.

I turned back.

Anton had not moved. His hands were loose at his sides, expression unreadable except for the tension in his jaw.

“Do you know what the worst part is?” I asked.

His eyes lifted fully to mine.

“Part of me is glad you did it.”

Something flickered in his face then. Fast. Dangerous.

“I know,” he said.

That nearly destroyed my temper all over again.

“Stop knowing me when it’s convenient.”

The corner of his mouth moved in a way that was not even close to a smile. “If I only knew you when it was convenient, we would both be having a much simpler life.”

I hated that I felt that line in my stomach.

I hated him for knowing I would.

“You are impossible,” I said.

“So I’ve been told.”

I should have left then.

Instead I stood there another second, held in place by anger, awareness, and the brutal fact that he was still looking at me as if every word I said mattered too much.

Finally I took a step back toward the door.

“This doesn’t become romantic just because your motives were protective.”

His gaze sharpened. “I’m aware.”

“Good.”

I reached for the handle.

“Melody.”

I stopped.

Did not turn.

His voice came lower now, stripped of the corporate steel he wore for everyone else.

“He doesn’t get near you again.”

I closed my eyes for one brief second.

There it was again. The thing in him that was almost impossible to separate from the thing in me that answered it.

Not softness.

Certainty.

When I looked back, his expression had gone still, but his eyes had not.

“You don’t get to promise things on my behalf,” I said.

“No,” he said quietly. “But I can promise them on his.”

That line followed me all the way out of the room.

I made it back to his office on pure adrenaline and anger, shut the door harder than necessary, and stood there trying to slow my breathing. The lemon cake sat on the desk where I had left it, bright and innocent and absurdly domestic against the severity of Anton’s space.

A minute later there was a soft knock.

Before I could answer, Vincent stepped in.

He took one look at my face and stopped. “That went well, I assume.”

I stared at him. “Did you know?”

His expression changed. “About Collins?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated.

That was answer enough.

My laugh came out flat. “Unbelievable.”

“Melody—”

“No. Don’t defend him.”

“I wasn’t going to.” Vincent stepped farther inside and shut the door behind him. “I was going to say he should have told you sooner.”

I folded my arms. “That sounds almost noble.”

His mouth tilted slightly. “Don’t ruin it.”

I looked away toward the windows. The city had started turning gold in the evening light, and for one irrational second I wanted to be anywhere but between the Vespucci brothers and their impossible ways of caring.

Vincent came to stand on the other side of the desk. His voice softened. “Are you all right?”

It was such a simple question.

Such a gentle one.

And for some reason that was what made my throat tighten.

“Not really,” I admitted.

Something warm and sad moved through his expression.

“My family has a terrible habit,” he said, “of doing things for people when we should be speaking to them instead.”

I let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “That may be the most diplomatic thing anyone has ever said about Anton.”

Vincent’s eyes held mine. “I wasn’t only talking about Anton.”

That made me still.

There was something there in his face. Not a confession. Not pressure. Just honesty, standing quietly in the room between us and waiting to see whether I would run from it.

I didn’t.

But I didn’t move toward it either.

The silence stretched.

Then Vincent glanced at the cake box and rescued us both. “For what it’s worth, my mother would consider emotional crisis an excellent reason to eat more lemon cake.”

I looked at him for one second, then laughed in spite of everything.

“Your mother may be right.”

“She usually is.”

He left a few minutes later, and I stood alone in Anton’s office with Sofia’s cake, Daniel’s access report, and Anton’s voice still lodged under my skin like a bruise.

He doesn’t get near you again.

It should have only made me angry.

Instead it made everything worse.

Because the truth I didn’t want to look at too closely was this:

Vincent made me feel safe.

Anton made me feel defended.

And only one of those things felt like standing too close to fire and wanting warmth anyway.