THE PADDOCK CONTRACT PRINCESS

CHAPTER 17

Jealous Eyes

The message remained on the dark monitor long after the security system reset, and Sofia could not stop thinking about the choice of words. Whoever had sent it knew about her investigation, knew about Mateo, and knew enough about Vantari’s internal systems to make the warning credible. Lucien ordered the security team to preserve every access log before anyone touched the network again, then asked Sofia to leave the data room with him. She followed, but the unease in her chest told her that the threat had changed the rules of their arrangement.

They returned to the penthouse after midnight, where the city lights glittered below the windows like another universe. Lucien poured water for both of them and stood across the kitchen island instead of crowding her, a deliberate distance that Sofia recognized as respect. She told him she was beginning to understand why his family had survived for generations despite its secrets, because everyone seemed trained to hide information until it became dangerous. Lucien replied that survival was not the same as trust, and Sofia realized he was admitting that his own family had taught him the wrong lesson.

The next morning, the paddock was already buzzing about Sofia’s appearance beside the Vantari pit wall. Reporters wanted comments about the race, her engineering instincts, and the increasingly convincing relationship between her and Lucien. She answered only the technical questions and refused every attempt to turn her into a romantic accessory, which made the headlines even more enthusiastic. By lunchtime, several outlets were calling her the woman who had changed Vantari’s fortunes.

Alessandro found her near the hospitality entrance and asked whether she had survived the attention. Sofia laughed and said she had survived worse, which made him grin. He offered to show her his team’s new simulator facility if she ever wanted to compare engineering approaches without the pressure of a contract. Sofia thanked him but said she was not looking for another team, and Alessandro answered that he had not asked her to leave Vantari, only to see what else existed.

Lucien arrived before the conversation could continue, and his expression immediately cooled. Alessandro greeted him politely and mentioned the simulator invitation, while Sofia watched Lucien calculate a response that would not become a public incident. Lucien finally said Sofia could make her own decisions, but the tightness in his voice contradicted the words. Alessandro smiled and told Sofia that freedom was apparently a subject worth defending around Vantari.

Sofia followed Lucien away from the hospitality area and waited until they were alone before confronting him. She said jealousy made him look exactly like the controlling billionaire the public already believed him to be, and he admitted that he disliked seeing another man flirt with her. She expected denial, but his honesty left her momentarily speechless because it sounded less like possession and more like vulnerability. Lucien then added that disliking something did not give him the right to control it, and that distinction mattered to him.

That evening, Margaux invited Sofia to a private family gathering at a Monaco residence overlooking the harbor. The guest list included several Vantari investors, relatives, and people who had known Henri for decades, making Sofia understand that the event was partly social and partly a test. Caterina welcomed her warmly, but Elias greeted her with a smile that contained no warmth at all. When someone mentioned Mateo Reyes, the room became noticeably quieter.

Elias eventually asked Sofia whether her father had ever explained why he worked with the Vantari family. Sofia answered that Mateo had left behind more questions than answers, then asked Elias the same question. His smile did not move, but his eyes sharpened as he said Mateo had been brilliant enough to become dangerous when he stopped accepting instructions. Lucien immediately interrupted and said the conversation was finished, yet Sofia heard the warning hidden inside Elias’s words.

After dinner, Sofia found Lucien alone on the terrace, staring toward the harbor. She told him that every time someone mentioned her father, he looked as though he already knew the ending to a story she had only begun reading. Lucien said he knew fragments, not the whole truth, and that some fragments had been deliberately kept from him. Sofia asked whether he was afraid of what they would discover, and he answered that he was more afraid of discovering that the people he trusted had been lying to him all his life.

Sofia wanted to comfort him, but before she could, a flash appeared from the street below. Someone had photographed them through the terrace railings, and the person disappeared before security reached the entrance. Lucien pulled Sofia behind him instinctively, then immediately stepped aside when he realized what he had done. On the terrace table, Sofia found a photograph that had been slipped beneath her glass, showing Mateo standing beside Elias twenty years earlier with a handwritten date on the back. The date was three days before Project Sovereign officially began.

Sofia turned the photograph over twice, as though the paper might reveal something if she looked at it from another angle. Lucien took it carefully and recognized the building behind them as an old Vantari research facility outside Milan. He said Henri had always claimed Sovereign began in Monaco, which meant either the family history was wrong or someone had rewritten it. Sofia slipped the photograph into her folder and said she was done accepting convenient versions of the past.

They agreed to investigate the Milan facility before Elias could learn what they had found. Lucien promised to arrange access through a retired engineer who owed Caterina a favor, while Sofia promised nothing except that she would keep digging. Their hands touched when they reached for the same folder, and neither moved immediately. The moment lasted only seconds, but Sofia understood that jealousy was not the most dangerous thing growing between them; trust was.

Neither was ready to admit how much it mattered.