Under Contract

Chapter 18: His Mother’s Table

Pov Melody

I should have said no the second Vincent asked.

Not because I didn’t want to go. That was the problem. I did.

The invitation had come so casually that for a moment I thought I had imagined it. We had been standing near the elevators after a long afternoon of investor noise and revised timelines, both of us too tired to perform much beyond basic civility, when Vincent had tilted his head and said, “Come to dinner with me tonight.”

Just like that.

No strategy in it. No pressure. No dark edge hiding under the words.

Dinner.

Not an event. Not a business meeting pretending to be social. Not another room full of expensive people speaking in coded language over champagne.

Just dinner.

“At your place?” I had asked.

“At my mother’s.”

That had stopped me.

I remembered Anton’s father too clearly. The coldness in him. The quiet disapproval that made a person feel measured and dismissed in the same breath. I had no desire to walk voluntarily into another Vespucci family minefield.

Vincent must have seen something in my face, because his expression softened.

“They are divorced if you thought about my father,” he said. “Very divorced. She’s not part of that world anymore, at least not in the way you’re thinking. And she’s kind, Melody. Actually kind. You won’t be walking into an ambush.”

I had looked at him for a second too long.

That was becoming a habit with Vincent. He was easier than Anton in all the ways that should have made me trust him more quickly. Easier to read. Easier to stand beside. Easier to breathe around.

And lately, easier to say yes to.

“Why do I feel like this invitation comes with emotional fine print?” I asked.

A faint smile touched his mouth. “Because you spend too much time around my brother.”

That was unfairly accurate.

So I said yes.

And by seven-thirty, I was standing outside a beautiful house on a quiet, tree-lined street wondering if I had temporarily lost all instinct for self-preservation.

It didn’t look anything like I expected a Vespucci family home to look.

It was elegant, yes, but not cold. The lights spilling through the windows were warm, not harsh. There were flower boxes under the front windows and a climbing vine that had been trained carefully along one side of the stone. The place looked lived in. Loved, even.

Vincent noticed my expression as he unlocked the gate.

“She likes things that grow,” he said.

I glanced at him. “That sounded strangely significant.”

“It is, in my family.”

I laughed despite myself, and something in his face eased, as if that had been his goal all along.

When the front door opened, I understood him immediately.

Their mother was beautiful in the kind of way that had nothing to do with perfection. Soft silver threaded through dark hair. Elegant posture. A face that had known both love and disappointment and had chosen warmth anyway. She took one look at me and smiled like she had already decided I was welcome.

“You must be Melody Richardson,” she said, reaching for both my hands before I could even fully introduce myself. “I’m Sofia. Come in before Vincent starts pretending he’s the gracious one.”

“Mother,” Vincent said mildly.

She ignored him. “That means yes.”

I laughed, and this time it came easily.

The inside of the house matched the outside. Bookshelves, low lamps, art that felt chosen instead of purchased for effect. There was music playing somewhere deeper in the house, quiet strings threaded under the scent of garlic, coffee, and fresh bread.

It should not have hit me as hard as it did, the simple kindness of it.

For the first time in days, I felt my shoulders loosen.

Sofia led me into the kitchen as if I’d been coming there for years. Vincent took a bottle of wine from the counter without being told and opened it while his mother asked me if I preferred sparkling or still water, whether I hated olives, and if Vincent had warned me that she cooked too much whenever she was nervous.

I smiled into my glass, and Vincent groaned softly.

It was easy.

That was what got me.

Easy in a way nothing around Anton had ever been. Even when Anton was being good to me, there was intensity in it, purpose, heat. Vincent’s world, at least here, felt quieter. Softer at the edges.

Dangerously comforting.

Dinner hadn’t even started when the doorbell rang.

Sofia looked up from the stove with immediate brightness. “That will be him.”

Vincent froze beside the counter.

I noticed it at once. “Who?”

Then Sofia was already wiping her hands on a dish towel and moving toward the hall, smiling in a way that made something sharp flick through my chest.

Then Vincent muttered, “Oh, that’s unfortunate.”

I stared at him. “Vincent.”

He looked back at me with real apology this time. “I didn’t know.”

Too late.

Anton walked in a second later.

For one impossible beat, no one spoke.

He stopped just inside the doorway, one hand still on the frame, wearing a dark coat over a black sweater, expression unreadable right up until he saw me.

Then everything in his face stilled.

Not surprise exactly.

Something colder. More focused.

I felt my own body lock in response.

Sofia, completely unaware that she had just detonated her own dining room, touched Anton’s arm with obvious affection. “You came.”

His eyes were still on me. “Obviously.”

Vincent set down his wineglass. “I genuinely didn’t know you were coming.”

Anton’s gaze shifted to him. “Mom insisted, she said she will drag me here personally if I won’t show up today.”

“That’s reassuring,” Vincent said. “You only look like murder in tailored wool when you’re delighted.”

Sofia turned sharply. “Enough, both of you.”

The command was gentle, but it worked.

Of course it did.

Anton looked at her, and something in him changed at once. Not softened exactly. But reorganized. The hard edge remained, only quieter. Contained differently.

“I said I would come,” he told her.

“And for months, I assumed that meant next year.” She touched his cheek in a way that should have looked absurd on a man like him and somehow didn’t. “Take off your coat.”

He obeyed.

That alone would have stunned me even if I hadn’t still been trying to recover from the sight of him standing in a family home, looking like he belonged to something human.

His eyes came back to me as he folded the coat over one arm.

Vincent made a face. “Should I leave you two alone so you can continue pretending the nineteenth century never ended?”

Sofia cut in before either of us could answer. “Nobody is pretending anything. Sit down. All of you.”

So we did.

Dinner was almost worse than a fight would have been.

A fight at least had structure. You knew where the danger was. Dinner required smiles, small talk, passing dishes across a table while pretending your pulse wasn’t jumping every time Anton’s hand came into your line of sight.

Sofia sat at the head of the table and asked me about work, but in a real way, not the patronizing version successful older people sometimes used when they wanted to appear interested in younger women. She asked about product design, scaling pressure, and whether I still liked the thing I was building now that so many other people had opinions about it.

I liked her immediately for that question alone.

Vincent, for his part, was infuriatingly good at keeping the conversation alive without forcing it. He teased his mother, made dry comments whenever the room grew too tense, and somehow kept me included without making it obvious he was doing it.

Anton spoke less.

That was somehow more distracting.

He answered when spoken to. He asked his mother about the restoration project she was involved in, reminded Vincent of a date for some foundation board obligation neither of them wanted to attend, and once corrected a detail about one of my rollout numbers before I had a chance to do it myself.

He didn’t look at me often.

He didn’t need to.

Every time he did, I felt it.

At one point Sofia looked between her sons and sighed. “You used to be impossible in completely different ways when you were younger. It was almost charming then.”

Vincent smiled. “I was delightful.”

Anton lifted his glass. “You were dramatic.”

“And you were born forty-two years old.”

Sofia pointed her fork at Vincent. “That is still true, and you know it.”

I laughed before I could stop myself.

Anton’s eyes shifted to me at the sound.

It lasted less than a second, that look, but it did something low and dangerous to the center of me. Not because it was warm. Because it wasn’t. Because it held too much awareness and far too much memory.

I reached for my water too quickly.

The rest of dinner passed in careful layers.

I learned that Sofia had once studied art history and later restored archives for private collections because she preferred dead things that told the truth over living people who didn’t. Vincent told me that as if it were a normal family anecdote. Anton muttered, “Accurate,” and kept eating.

I learned Vincent had inherited her taste in music and her tendency to notice the emotional weather in a room before anyone else admitted it existed.

Anton, apparently, had inherited his father’s discipline and none of his mother’s patience. Sofia said that lightly, but not carelessly. Anton only said, “I inherited what was useful,” and the air shifted for half a beat before Vincent redirected it.

By the time dinner ended, I had almost convinced myself I could survive the evening.

That was when Sofia insisted on coffee.

“I make it properly,” she said, rising from the table. “Not like whatever industrial solvent the three of you drink at work.”

Vincent stood to help her. “That is because some of us enjoy efficiency.”

“You enjoy bitterness,” she corrected.

Anton stayed where he was.

So did I.

That left us alone at the table for the first time all night.

I became abruptly fascinated by the candle between us.

“You seem surprised,” Anton said.

I looked up. “About what?”

“My mother.”

There was no accusation in his tone. If anything, it was drier than that. Almost amused.

“A little,” I admitted.

His gaze rested on me. “In what way?”

I should have lied.

“Because she’s warm,” I said. “And you came from the same house.”

One of his brows lifted.

I added, because apparently I had decided self-preservation was not for me tonight, “That sounded harsher aloud.”

“It was clear enough.”

I should have let the silence take it.

Instead I said, “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Neither did I.”

The answer came too quickly to be false.

Something in my chest loosened slightly.

Then Vincent and Sofia returned with a tray of coffee, dessert plates, and enough spoons to suggest she considered under-caffeinating guests a moral failure.

What happened next took less than three seconds.

Sofia set one cup near Anton, turned to pass another toward me, caught the sleeve of her own blouse on the tray handle, and sent a full stream of coffee directly across the front of Anton’s sweater.

“Oh no,” she gasped.

Vincent barked out a laugh before he could stop himself.

I put my cup down so fast I nearly knocked over my own water.

Anton looked down at the spreading stain on his chest.

Then he looked up at his mother.

“It’s fine.”

Sofia looked horrified. “It is not fine. It’s hot.”

“I’m not dying.”

“Anton.”

He exhaled once through his nose. “Mother, I’m perfectly all right.”

But she was already in motion, snatching up the stained napkin and dabbing ineffectively at black wool while Anton sat there with the resigned expression of a man who knew resistance was useless.

“Take it off,” she said.

Vincent actually choked on his coffee.

Anton turned his head slowly toward him. “Be careful.”

“Sorry,” Vincent said, not sorry at all. “That was just extremely immediate.”

Sofia straightened. “I’m getting you a shirt.”

“You are not-”

She was already gone.

The room went quiet.

Anton looked at the empty doorway she’d disappeared through and then, with the expression of someone accepting operational defeat, stood.

Vincent leaned back in his chair. “Please tell me you’re actually going to obey that.”

Anton met his brother’s eyes. “Would you prefer I sit here wearing coffee?”

“I would prefer every moment of this to continue.”

I should have looked away.

I know that.

I did not.

Anton reached for the hem of his sweater and pulled it over his head in one efficient motion.

My brain, embarrassingly, stopped functioning.

I had seen Anton in fitted shirts, dark suits, expensive coats, sleeves rolled up, collar loosened, all the armor he wore in public. That should have prepared me.

It had not.

He was broader than he looked under tailoring, all hard lines and restrained strength, the kind built quietly rather than for show. There was a pale scar near one side of his ribs that I had never seen before, and another faint mark near his shoulder that disappeared before I could fully take it in.

Vincent noticed where my eyes had gone and smiled in pure wicked delight.

“Well,” he said, “this has become educational for everyone.”

My face went hot.

Anton turned his head toward me.

Not quickly. Not sharply.

Worse.

Slowly.

His gaze caught mine with humiliating ease.

I looked away far too late.

Vincent laughed softly under his breath. “And there it is.”

“Would you like to live through dessert?” Anton asked him.

“I’m only saying,” Vincent went on, entirely undeterred, “it’s very touching that you still follow instructions when Mother gives them.”

Anton tossed the sweater onto the back of his chair. “And yet you’re still talking.”

Sofia returned then with a plain white T-shirt folded over one arm, saw Anton standing there bare-chested, and nodded as if the scene were entirely unremarkable.

“There,” she said, handing him the shirt. “Better.”

He took it without complaint and pulled it on.

The white cotton should not have been more distracting than the black sweater.

It absolutely was.

It fit too well. Too simply. There was something unfair about seeing a man like Anton Vespucci in an ordinary shirt in his mother’s dining room, looking less polished and somehow more dangerous.

Sofia reclaimed her seat and looked around the table with satisfied innocence. “Now. Coffee.”

Vincent caught my eye and had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing again.

I hated him a little.

I drank my coffee too quickly.

After that, the evening turned softer at the edges. The disaster had somehow broken the formal tension of the meal. Sofia told a story about Vincent getting locked in the conservatory as a child because he’d insisted on “improving” the irrigation system. Vincent denied crucial details. Anton corrected him with ruthless precision.

Then Sofia told me Anton used to sort his books alphabetically by publisher at age twelve.

I looked at him over my cup. “That explains far too much.”

“It was efficient,” he said.

Vincent made a noise of disbelief. “You were a small tyrant.”

“I was organized.”

“You labeled your desk drawers.”

“That sounds responsible,” I said.

Anton’s gaze shifted to me, and there was the faintest change in his expression. Almost approval. Almost.

It unsettled me more than it should have.

Eventually Vincent stood to help his mother clear the dessert plates despite loudly insisting he was being exploited. Sofia ignored him and carried half the dishes into the kitchen anyway.

That left Anton and me alone in the dining room.

Again.

This time the silence landed differently.

Maybe because of the shirt.

Maybe because he had become, against all logic, more human in the last thirty minutes.

Maybe because I was still far too aware that I had stared.

Anton looked down at his coffee and said, “You’re quieter than usual.”

I wrapped both hands around my cup. “Your family is a lot.”

A brief pause. “That’s fair.”

I glanced toward the kitchen, where Vincent’s voice drifted in and out beneath Sofia’s. “Your mother is lovely.”

Something in Anton’s face eased. Not much. Just enough to matter.

“Yes,” he said.

The answer came with no irony, no distance. Just truth.

I liked him a little for that.

Which was clearly another mistake.

Before I could say anything else, Vincent called from the kitchen, “Melody, if you don’t come save me, I’ll be trapped drying porcelain for the next hour.”

I stood too fast. “That sounds like a domestic emergency.”

Anton’s mouth shifted at one corner.

Not a smile.

Close enough to be dangerous.

I escaped to the kitchen before I could think about it too hard.

By the time I left an hour later, I was no calmer than when I had arrived.

Just more tangled.

Vincent walked me to the front hall while Sofia disappeared to wrap up leftovers I had insisted I did not need and she had absolutely refused to let me refuse. Anton was somewhere behind us, speaking to his mother in the kitchen, his lower voice threading under hers in a way that did strange things to the room.

Vincent reached for my coat and held it open for me.

“You survived,” he said.

“Barely.”

“I’d apologize for the surprise, but honestly the look on Anton’s face was a rare gift.”

I laughed softly. “You really didn’t know he was coming?”

He shook his head. “I swear. Mother has been trying to get him here for months.”

“That’s terrifying.”

He smiled. “You see why she wins.”

Sofia reappeared with a container in one hand and kissed my cheek before I could protest. “Come again soon,” she said. “Next time under less theatrical circumstances.”

I promised I would.

Then I turned toward the door and found Anton already there, coat back on, one hand on the frame.

“I’ll walk her out,” he said.

Vincent’s brows rose slightly.

Sofia noticed nothing suspicious at all, which probably meant she noticed everything.

“All right,” she said, far too innocently.

Anton opened the door.

Cold evening air slipped into the warm hall, and I stepped out onto the front path with him behind me.

The door clicked shut.

We stood in the quiet for a second, the house glowing softly behind us.

“I didn’t plan that,” he said.

I looked at him. “Which part?”

“You. There.”

That answer pleased me more than it should have.

“I know,” I said. “Vincent already gave a sworn statement.”

Anton glanced toward the street, then back at me. “And yet you stayed.”

The words landed low.

“I was having dinner,” I said lightly.

“With my mother.”

“With Vincent.”

His gaze sharpened almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”

There it was.

Not much. Just enough.

I folded my arms against the cold. “Your mother likes him more than you.”

“She likes everyone more than me.”

“That’s not true.”

He looked at me.

I immediately wished I had not said it in that tone.

The silence stretched.

Then Anton said, “You stared.”

Every coherent thought left my body.

I stared at him now for a completely different reason. “Excuse me?”

His expression remained almost absurdly calm. “At dinner.”

Heat climbed my throat so fast it felt humiliating. “You are impossible.”

“You did.”

I turned toward the gate. “Good night, Anton.”

He moved with me, not blocking my path, just near enough to make the air feel close.

“Melody.”

I stopped.

His voice was lower now. Quieter.

“When you do that,” he said, “it becomes difficult to remember your argument about mistakes.”

My pulse kicked hard.

I looked at him and saw nothing soft in his face. Nothing easy. Just that same controlled intensity, sharpened now by the intimacy of the evening and the fact that in his mother’s house, with his brother at the table, with coffee on his sweater and a white T-shirt on his back, he had somehow become harder to resist instead of easier.

“That sounds like a you problem,” I said.

Something dark and brief moved through his eyes.

“It is,” he said.

He opened the gate for me.

I stepped through it, then turned back once.

The porch light caught one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow. Behind him, through the glass, I could see warmth and family and the soft domestic life that had shaped men so different they hardly looked like they belonged to the same blood.

And there Anton stood between those worlds, impossible and composed and far too aware of me.

“Good night,” I said.

His gaze held mine.

“Good night.”

I walked to my car with my heart beating much too fast.

And halfway home, I realized the most dangerous part of the evening had not been seeing Anton in his mother’s house.

It had been realizing I liked him there.