His Chubby Obsession

Chapter Thirteen: Not Vincent

I made it three steps toward the door before I stopped, some instinct pulling me back to the window instead, needing to see with my own eyes what was coming up the driveway rather than hide from it blind.

Enzo hadn't moved from the porch. He stood at the top of the steps, feet planted, one hand still resting at the small of his back, watching the car roll to a stop at a careful, deliberate distance — not the fast, aggressive approach of someone hunting, but the slow, telegraphed approach of someone who wanted it understood, immediately, that they weren't a threat.

It wasn't Vincent's car. I knew Vincent's car, the black sedan Bruce had bought him two years ago, the one that had chased us down a dark road what felt like a lifetime ago and was really only days. This was a different car entirely — a town car, older, the kind that belonged to someone who valued discretion over showing off.

The driver's door opened slowly. A man stepped out, hands visible, empty, raised slightly at his sides in a gesture so deliberately non-threatening it was almost its own kind of message.

"Enzo Romano," he said, calm, formal, an older man's voice, steady in a way that suggested he'd delivered difficult messages to difficult men his whole career. "I'm not here to cause trouble. I work for Niel Spears. I have a message for Mrs. Smith."

My whole body went cold at the name, and then colder still at hearing myself called that — Mrs. Smith — a name I hadn't been able to stand hearing even before I understood exactly how little it had ever meant.

"You can turn around and drive back the way you came," Enzo said, voice flat, final.

"I understand the hesitation. I'd have the same one, in your position." The man didn't move closer, didn't reach for anything, just stood there in the gravel with his hands still visible. "I'm alone. No weapon. You're welcome to search the car. Mr. Spears was very specific that this needed to be handled quietly, and with respect, or not at all."

I came out onto the porch before Enzo could stop me, some part of me needing to see this for myself instead of standing behind glass.

"Emma — " Enzo started.

"I'm okay," I said, though I wasn't entirely sure that was true. "Let him talk."

The driver's eyes found me, and something in his expression shifted — not surprise, exactly, more like confirmation, like he'd been shown a photograph beforehand and was simply checking it against the real thing.

"Mrs. Smith. My name is Harold. I've driven for Mr. Spears for eleven years." He inclined his head slightly, an old-fashioned courtesy that felt strange against everything else happening around us. "He asked me to come alone, and to make clear that this was not sanctioned by, or shared with, your husband."

"Why would I believe that," I said.

"You don't have to believe it tonight. You just have to hear it." Harold reached slowly into his jacket — Enzo tensed beside me, a coiled stillness I could feel without looking at him — and withdrew nothing more dangerous than a plain white envelope, which he held out at arm's length, not stepping any closer than he already was. "Mr. Spears would like to meet with you. Privately. No lawyers, no Bruce, no Vincent. He said you'd understand why he can't simply call."

"Because Bruce is listening to everything," I said quietly, understanding landing cold and sick in my stomach. "Because he's already gotten to my mother's phone. Because there's nowhere safe left to just call."

"That would be my guess, Mrs. Smith, though Mr. Spears doesn't share his reasoning with me."

Enzo stepped slightly in front of me, not quite blocking me, but close enough that his shoulder was between me and the driveway. "Why would the old man want to meet her at all? He's the one who set this whole marriage up like a business deal in the first place."

Harold's expression didn't change, but something in his voice did — a careful weighing, like a man deciding how much of his employer's business he was actually permitted to share.

"I only carry messages," he finally said. "But I've worked for that family a long time, Mr. Romano. Long enough to know when Mr. Spears is troubled by something. He has been troubled, this past week, in a way I haven't seen from him before." He looked back at me. "He asked me to tell you one thing, specifically, if you seemed hesitant. He said to tell you — " Harold paused, as if even repeating it felt like it carried weight he wasn't fully comfortable transferring, " — he knows this was never really about Charlotte."

The words landed in my chest like a stone dropped down a well, the sound of it echoing longer than it should have.

Never really about Charlotte.

I thought of the terms Bruce had recited through the crack of his office door — stay married for five years, produce an heir, maintain the perfect family image — and the cold, clinical satisfaction in his voice when he'd said it, like reciting a contract instead of describing a marriage, a child, a whole stolen decade of my life.

If it was never really about Charlotte, what had it been about? What had I actually been for, all this time, if not even for the one thing Bruce claimed I'd finally delivered?

"I don't understand," I said, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be.

"Neither do I, Mrs. Smith. I only carry the messages." Harold set the envelope gently on the porch railing, careful not to come any closer, and stepped back toward his car. "There's a time and a place inside. Mr. Spears will be there tomorrow evening, alone, if you choose to come. If you don't, no one will hold it against you. He asked me to be very clear about that as well."

He got back into the car without another word, executed a slow, careful turn in the gravel, and disappeared back down the driveway the same unhurried way he'd arrived, taillights shrinking into the dark until the night swallowed them whole.

I stood there a long moment, staring at the envelope on the railing, not yet willing to touch it.

"You're not seriously considering this," Enzo said beside me, his voice low, tight with something that wasn't quite anger but was standing close enough to it.

"I don't know what I'm considering yet." My hand hovered near the envelope, not quite touching. "But Enzo — he's the only person in this whole story who might actually know what it was really for. Not the marriage everyone told me it was. Whatever it actually was, underneath."

"And if it's a trap?"

"Then at least I'll finally know the truth before it closes around me instead of after." I picked up the envelope, finally, my fingers trembling slightly against the paper. "I've spent five years not knowing. I'm done not knowing."

Enzo didn't say anything to that. He just stood beside me in the dark, jaw tight, watching the empty driveway like the danger might still be circling somewhere out there in the night, waiting for its next chance.