Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 36268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 181(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 181(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
“Choose one,” Miguel said quietly, “or find your racing sponsors elsewhere.”
Aivan went absolutely still. The kind of stillness that preceded violence in their bloodline, though his son had channeled that genetic gift into reaction times that made him untouchable on the track.
“Olivio would fund me.”
“Olivio does what I tell him regarding family matters. And I’ve already told him not to.” Miguel had covered every angle. Had to, with a son who thought ten moves ahead like a chess grandmaster. “Choose, Aivan. Choose a wife, or choose to see if your pride can pay for tires and jet fuel.”
His son’s eyes dropped to the list again. Miguel caught it: the way they snagged on one name, the furrow between dark brows that meant his formidable brain was calculating variables.
Sienah Posada.
It was the only name on the list without a pedigree stretching back generations, without Swiss bank accounts or international business connections. Just a nineteen-year-old girl who’d grown up in their house, quiet as church bells at midnight, pretty as spilled wine on white linen, and desperately in love with a man who’d never noticed her beyond casual politeness.
Selena had insisted on adding her name. “The girl has loved him for years,” she’d argued last night, her small hands fierce on Miguel’s shoulders. “What Aivan needs isn’t another cold arrangement but someone who already sees past his walls.”
Miguel had his doubts. Love without reciprocation was just delayed heartbreak. But Selena rarely asked for anything, and she’d never steered him wrong about matters of the heart.
“Do I get time to consider?” Aivan’s voice stayed flat, but Miguel noticed the way his thumb traced that one name. Once. Twice.
“One month. Then you bring me a name, or you find another way to fund your season.”
His son stood, every movement controlled. The same way he’d moved since five years old, when showing pain meant admitting you could be broken.
“Fine.”
He turned to leave, and Miguel couldn’t help himself: “Aivan.”
His son paused without turning.
“Your mother would have wanted—”
“We’ll never know what she wanted.” Still that flat, dead tone. “She’s not here to ask.”
The door closed with a quiet click that sounded like a gunshot in the silence.
Selena materialized at Miguel’s shoulder, her hand warm against his neck. “You did what you had to.”
“Did I?” Miguel caught her hand, pressed it to his cheek. This woman who’d taught him that love wasn’t weakness but the greatest strength a man could possess. “Sometimes I think I failed him the moment I let him build those walls.”
“He was five. He was surviving.”
“He’s twenty-eight. He’s drowning.” Miguel turned to study the list his son had left behind. A smudge marked where Aivan’s thumb had touched one name. Again and again and again. “Think the Posada girl has a chance?”
Selena’s smile held secrets. The same smile that had undone Miguel fifteen years ago when she’d looked at him over Olivio’s homework and said, “Your son needs more than a tutor, Mr. Cannizzaro. He needs a family.”
“I think,” she said, measuring each word like ingredients in a recipe, “that sometimes the heart chooses when the mind isn’t looking. And our son has been not-looking at that girl for years.”
From somewhere in the house came the sound of quick footsteps on marble. Too light for the guards, too hurried for the older staff.
Sienah Posada. Had to be. The girl moved through their home like a benevolent ghost, always finding things that needed doing, always disappearing before anyone could thank her. Miguel had watched her watch his son, those tragic brown eyes following Aivan’s every move while trying desperately not to be caught looking.
“One month,” Miguel murmured. “Think that’s enough time for a miracle?”
Selena kissed his temple, her lips soft against his graying hair. “I fell in love with you in one evening, didn’t I?”
“That was different. You were saving me.”
“Maybe,” his wife said, gliding toward the door with that dancer’s grace that still made his chest tight after all these years. “Or maybe every love story is about two people saving each other. They just don’t always realize it at the time.”
The door whispered shut, leaving Miguel alone with his cold espresso and the weight of decades.
Through the window, he caught movement in the garden. Aivan’s silhouette against the dying sun, standing motionless by his mother’s rose bushes. The ones Paulette had planted the year before she died, now wild and overgrown because no one had the heart to prune them. Thorns everywhere. Beautiful and dangerous and impossible to tend without bleeding.
His son stood there for several minutes before turning to walk back toward the garage. Same measured steps. Same rigid control. Same walls that had kept him safe and slowly suffocating for twenty-three years.
Choose well, my son, Miguel thought. May you have the courage to choose the one who already sees you drowning...before it’s too late.