Eleven
1051 Words
Chapter 11 — The Car Outside
Lorenzo
I was still awake when Victoria called. I'd known I would be. Sleep had become a luxury I
couldn't afford since Daniel Cross walked into her lobby wearing Isabella's money like
cologne.
"I need to see you,
" she said. No greeting. No hesitation.
"Tonight.
"
"Where are you?"
"Jamal's. There's a car outside.
" A pause.
"It's been there for twenty minutes.
"
Something in my chest went cold and very still, the way it did right before I made a
decision I wouldn't take back.
"Don't go near the windows. I'm coming.
"
"Lorenzo—
"
"Ten minutes.
"
I was already reaching for my jacket.
Matteo found me in the hallway, still in the shirt he'd worn to dinner, hair
uncharacteristically flat like he'd been lying down when I started shouting for the car.
"What happened?"
"Someone's watching Jamal's building.
"
His humor disappeared entirely, which told me more than anything I could have explained.
"I'm coming.
"
"No. Stay here. If this is Isabella escalating, I don't want both of us exposed.
"
"Lorenzo.
" He caught my arm before I reached the elevator.
"You've been protecting
everyone else in this story since you were nine years old. Let me actually help.
"
I didn't have time to argue, and some small, tired part of me didn't want to.
"Call security.
Have them meet us there. And call Daniel's last known number — see if it's even active
anymore.
"
"You think he's cut loose from her?"
"I think a man who still carries twelve-year-old grudges doesn't do anything for free,
including this. I want to know what he thinks he's being paid for.
"
The drive to Jamal's building took eleven minutes that felt considerably longer. The black
car was gone by the time we arrived — of course it was — but Victoria was waiting in the
lobby, arms crossed, dressed like she hadn't slept either, and the moment she saw me
something in her shoulders dropped half an inch.
I hated how much that mattered to me.
"Tell me everything,
" she said, before I'd even reached her.
"Not the version where you
protect me from it. The whole thing.
"
Victoria
He told me in Jamal's kitchen, at two in the morning, while Jamal made tea none of us
drank and pretended not to listen from the next room, failing at it loudly enough that I
knew he wanted me to know he was there.
Isabella Conti. Daughter of a shipping family whose business had overlapped with the
Valentieris' for two generations. They'd been together on and off for three years, ending
— according to Lorenzo — eighteen months ago, cleanly, by his account. Not cruelly. Just
over.
"Cleanly for you,
" I said.
He didn't argue.
"I should have seen it differently. I told myself I had.
"
"And now she's decided I'm the reason you're not coming back.
"
"She's decided you're the proof I never actually left her the way I said I did. That's worse,
for her. If it were only jealousy, it would burn out. This is different. She's rewritten the
story so that waiting for me isn't delusion — it's loyalty.
"
I studied him across the kitchen island — the exhaustion under his eyes, the careful
stillness of a man who'd had entirely too much practice holding his face together.
"The
photo in my office.
'You were never supposed to remember.
' What did that mean? You told
me what it meant about us — our summer. But say the rest. What was she actually afraid
I'd remember?"
Lorenzo was quiet long enough that I heard the kettle click off in the next room.
"That I loved someone before her,
" he said finally.
"Completely, and before I had the
vocabulary to call it that. I think somewhere in the last eighteen months, she heard me say
your name. Not deliberately. In my sleep, maybe, or to Matteo. And she understood, before
I did, what it meant that I was still saying it.
"
Something in my chest cracked open in a way I didn't have the energy to defend against,
not at two in the morning, not after a car had sat outside my best friend's apartment for
twenty minutes deciding whether to be seen.
"That's not an answer that makes me feel safer,
" I said.
"I know.
" He didn't reach for me. I noticed that — the restraint of it, like he'd decided
somewhere on the drive over that comfort wasn't his to offer until I asked for it.
"But it's
the true one.
"
Jamal appeared in the doorway then, done pretending.
"Here's what I know for a fact,
" he
said, setting three mugs down like punctuation.
"A woman who hires men to photograph
CEOs leaving their own office isn't love-struck. She's dangerous. And you two can have
your soft-eyed confession hour some other night — right now I want to know what we're
actually doing about the car outside my building.
"
Lorenzo's jaw tightened.
"We find out what Isabella wants specifically. Not generally —
specifically. Does she want me back, does she want Victoria gone, does she want the
Hayes–Valentieri deal dead. Those are three different problems requiring three different
solutions, and until I know which one I'm fighting, I'm guessing in the dark.
"
"And Daniel?" I asked.
"Daniel I understand better than she thinks I do.
" Something hardened in Lorenzo's
expression, old and settled, the look of a man revisiting a debt he'd never forgiven himself
for leaving unpaid.
"My father ruined something for his family that was never fully
repaired. I don't think Isabella bought his loyalty. I think she's the first person who ever
offered him a chance to collect.
"
The room went quiet. Outside, the city kept moving, indifferent to all of it.
"Then we don't just need to protect ourselves from her,
" I said slowly.
"We need to
understand what's actually owed. Because people don't stop collecting debts just
because the other person's ready to move on.
"
Lorenzo looked at me like I'd said something he hadn't let himself think yet."No,
" he said quietly.
"They don't”.
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