In Love With The Mafia Kings Son

Chapter 4

Letty’s last class was the one she had dreaded the most: Gym. Her fear was immediately justified upon entering the locker room. The space was enormous, polished, and filled with the confident, loud chatter of the elite. Letty quickly changed into the required outfit: black spandex shorts and a matching short-sleeve spandex shirt. The material, unforgiving and thin, clung to her figure—to her petite waist and the defined curves she usually hid. Internally, she felt mortified, exposed to a degree her baggy Detroit clothes had never allowed.

When she walked out onto the massive, sun-drenched gymnasium floor, she was surrounded by a sea of flawless, toned bodies. Letty scanned the crowd and only recognized one safe face: Matt, the coder from the scholarship table. But he was already engrossed in conversation with Leo across the court, and Letty didn't know him well enough to run for cover.

The gym teacher, a man built like a drill sergeant, called the class to attention. “Today, we’re playing Volleyball! I’m mixing up the teams to keep things competitive.”

Letty’s heart sank as the teacher read the names. Fate, it seemed, was determined to keep pushing her into the deep end. She was assigned to a team that included both Isabella and Dante Rossi, along with a good majority of their powerful clique.

The game began. Letty, true to her non-competitive nature, was terrible at sports. She stayed intentionally hung back in the defense, hoping to go unnoticed, an invisible anchor point on the court.

But invisibility was no longer an option.

Letty found herself constantly having to shift position, and with every scramble, she became acutely aware of Dante’s massive presence behind her. He was playing, but he was also positioning. She could sense him even when her back was turned, a powerful, dark heat radiating from the spot he occupied.

Every so often, a shudder went through her as their bodies briefly, gently brushed—the hard, unyielding mass of his arm against her tiny back, the solid strength of his hip against hers. It was accidental, yet entirely deliberate.

And the scent. She was intoxicated by the scent of him: a complex, masculine cloud of sweet tobacco, warm vanilla, and spice, mixed with the light sweat of exertion. It wasn’t gross; it was a potent, heady aroma that made her senses swim and created a tight, electric knot in her stomach. The proximity was a form of psychological dominance.

Mid-game, the teacher shuffled the positions, and Letty was moved to the front of the net—the position most vulnerable to incoming attack. She stood paralyzed, clutching the air with sweaty palms, desperate to survive the rotation.

The next serve came screaming across the net from the opposing side. Letty froze, closing her eyes. She wasn’t fast enough, tall enough, or strong enough to touch it.

A powerful arm shot out, and a large, hard hand clamped securely around her waist.

“Look alive, new girl!” a loud, rough voice commanded directly above her ear.

Letty gasped. Before she could react or even identify the boy, he was exerting pressure. He lifted her off the ground like she weighed absolutely nothing, hoisting her tiny, spandex-clad body into the air above the net.

Her eyes snapped open, and she saw the yellow sphere of the volleyball hurtling straight toward her.

Instinct—the same survival instinct that kept her silent and submissive—took over. She wasn't thinking; she was reacting.

Letty swung her arm and slammed her open palm down. WHAP!

The ball connected with a satisfying thud, slamming straight down onto the floor of the opposing side. The point was won. The game was over.

Her team erupted in cheers and shouts. The boy who had lifted her gently lowered her to the ground, his hand briefly lingering on her waist.

Letty, breathless and shaking, looked around. The boy who picked her up was one of Dante's friends, grinning widely. Even Isabella was watching her, her initial coldness replaced by a smirk and a look of genuine interest. Letty, the shy outsider, had just won the point with a dramatic, athletic, and entirely accidental move.

The gym bell shrilled, ending the chaos.

As the victorious team congratulated each other and began moving toward the locker rooms, Dante passed Letty. His movement was slow, deliberate, and entirely unavoidable. He didn't speak. He simply gently brushed his entire body against her arm and shoulder as he moved past her, a lingering contact that felt like a secret exchange.

Letty looked up, her pulse racing. Their eyes met. His intense chocolate gaze held hers for a searing fraction of a second, and the dark, proprietary smirk was back.

He gave her a deliberate, knowing wink and disappeared into the throng of boys pouring into the locker room.

With her heart still hammering from the adrenaline of the accidental spike—and the far more potent thrill of Dante's touch—she raced into the girls' locker room.

Her movements were quick, economical, and as quick as humanly possible. She ripped off the tight, revealing spandex, stuffing it into her gym bag. She quickly pulled back into the standard school uniform—the plaid skirt and black shirt—prioritizing speed over comfort.

Within two minutes, she had bolted out of the gym doors and was sprinting toward the curb where the public bus was already loading. She flashed her pass and sank into a window seat just as the pneumatic doors hissed shut.

She finally allowed herself to take a deep, shaky breath when the bus started to pull away from the Westwood Academy campus and down the road. The receding opulence felt like a physical weight lifting from her chest.

Letty’s bus ride was her transition back into her safe, silent reality. When she finally made it to the beige stucco apartment complex, she let out a sigh of relief.

The silence that greeted her inside was absolute. Her father's absence was a predictable comfort. She immediately locked the door behind her—a small, unnecessary assertion of control—and headed straight for the kitchen.

She pulled a package of thawed, marinated chicken from the refrigerator, put it in a pan, and slid it into the oven. Next, she ran upstairs to her room, shedding the school clothes like contaminated armor. She dressed in soft, oversized pajamas, twisting her long brown hair into a messy bun high on her head.

Back downstairs, she grabbed a cutting board and a peeler. The simple, repetitive task of peeling the few potatoes she intended to boil, followed by chopping the fresh broccoli for the steaming pot, was deeply grounding. It was a tangible, predictable process—exactly the opposite of her day at Westwood.

She set the timer for the oven and sat down at the small kitchen table, pulling out her textbooks. She had to focus. She had hours of AP homework and scientific papers to review. She opened the Chemistry textbook, determined to lose herself in the sterile comfort of molecular equations and chemical imbalances.

But the silence of the kitchen, usually her ally, was betraying her. It left too much room for noise in her own head.

Stop it.

She tried to read the section on systemic erosion, but the words blurred into the image of Dante Rossi’s face. She saw the light stubble along his jawline, the possessive intensity of his eyes when they met hers in the gym. She heard the rough velvet of his voice calling her "little one."

She shook her head, dragging her attention back to the page. He is the enemy. He is the son of the man who runs the whole system. The system father is here to dismantle.

But then, the distracting, confusing memory returned: the feeling of his solid, broad body pressing against her in the volleyball court, the intoxicating scent of sweet tobacco and spice clinging to the air around her. It was a dangerous, magnetic attraction that felt utterly beyond her control, threatening to erode the very defenses she had spent years building.

Letty squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her thumb hard against the fine print of the textbook. She couldn't afford to be weak, or fascinated, or turned on. She had to be invisible. She had to be safe.

She forced her eyes back open and stabbed her pen at the paper, writing the title of her assignment in block letters, trying desperately to fill the silence with her own sharp focus.