CHAPTER 157 - SECURITY BREACH

CHAPTER 157 - SECURITY BREACH
Bella's POV

The pan clinked too loud in the kitchen, a bright, domestic sound that felt obscene against my pulse. Tomato and garlic steamed into the air, thick and honest, and Roberto hummed a tuneless song while he slid plates across the counter. Diego chopped parsley with the casual intensity of someone rehearsing courage. I stood with my back to the stove because turning toward them meant seeing the way Roberto's eyes lit when he talked about loyalty, which made my chest ache like an unexpected bruise.

"She stopped by this afternoon," Roberto said without warning, like he was reading from a weather report. His hands were flour-dusted and steady. "Victoria. Wanted to apologize, she said. Said she was concerned about you and Alex."

The knife slipped in my hand and I almost laughed, the sound breaking into the steam. Concern. The word sat like a velvet glove over a fist. I should have smelled roasted garlic and felt safe. Instead my skin prickled, like someone was watching from the corner of a dark room.

"Concerned?" Diego echoed, voice chopping parsley. He sounded smaller than I expected, cautious about the syllable the way you touch a sleeping animal.

"Yes." Roberto's voice was the kind that meant he believed what he was saying. "Said she thought an older man might complicate things. For your reputation. For the family."

Everything in me tightened. I pictured Victoria in a pale dress, perfectly coiffed hair, a smile that folded other people into her palm. I pictured the cameras in my head again, the flash in the park, the way Alex had spun to shield me. Concern. A vague, polite word wrapped in teeth.

"She seemed sincere?" I asked, because nicotine in my throat wanted to be the kind of woman who could counter with steel. Instead I felt like paper.

"Very." Roberto chopped an onion with theatrical calm. "She asked about your work. She asked about him. Said she wanted closure. Very proper. Very gentle. She left a card."

A card. Another small rectangle of paper sliding across my life like a blade. The room smelled suddenly like lemon soap and fear.

I forced a smile that didn't reach my eyes and reached for a plate, my fingers finding porcelain as if for ballast. "Did she say why she wanted closure?"

Roberto shrugged, which was a more dangerous motion than a full confession. "Just said things needed to be put right between old friends. She said there were stories people deserved to have told correctly."

My mouth was dry. Stories. The word could mean memory, or lie, or a scripted demolition. The private investigator footsteps that had haunted Alex's meetings pressed at the edges of my mind. Had she been gentle because she was practiced, or gentle because she wanted us to lower our guard?

Diego cleared his throat and the sound was a small, fragile anchor. "Did she seem upset by you working for Alex?" he asked, like he feared the answer would split the room in two.

"No," Roberto said. "She said she was concerned for you, as a woman in a public position. Said the press loves a scandal, then laughed. Said she was only looking out."

Her laugh echoed in my teeth. Looking out. It was always the same with her. Charm first, then the net. I could feel a trap closing like the slow click of a door. I thought of Alex in his office, the man who moved through security briefings and dossiers with the same careful hands he used to lift fragile paintings. I thought of him taking my hand in the garden, of his promise to protect me even when the world was a storm.

"Why would she be concerned?" I asked, because asking made it less like confession and more like a question to be solved. "Alex has always been nothing but professional with me. He defends my work. He respects me."

Roberto's face had an expression I couldn't read. Pride, perhaps, mixed with the faint fog of denial that had been his armor for years. "People talk, Bellita. She knows the way things can be misunderstood. She said it in a way that made me think she wanted to help. Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn't."

His uncertainty was a stone I felt in my hand. I wanted to hurl it through a window. Instead I swallowed and kept stirring the sauce because busy hands made for steadier thoughts. I could imagine Victoria placing herself at my father's table like a cat, purring until his defenses lowered. I could imagine her sliding information into the right ears the way honey slips into tea.

"Did she ask about the family?" I tried, because the shape of the conversation mattered. If Victoria wanted to pry at Roberto, she could do damage to the one person who still saw me as his little girl.

"A little," Roberto admitted. "But mostly she asked about you. Said she worried people might take the wrong impression. Said age differences are tricky with the public."

Tricky. My chest stuttered. It was an old language, the one used to make me tiny. It conjured headlines and lunchroom whispers and Roberto's disappointed frown. What was cleverer than a question that sounded like care? The softening. The seed planted.

"Why would she bring this up now?" Diego asked, and the question landed like an accusation between us. We all knew the answer, but saying it aloud made it ring: because she could, because she had reason, because someone was feeding her lines that smelled like opportunity.

We ate with polite forks and sharper thoughts. Conversation moved like a rowboat around me while I watched for ripples. I felt exposed, as if someone had left a window open and the night air had found the hollow place under my ribs.

When the door clicked and Alex walked into the restaurant five minutes late, the room shifted. The low light caught the silver at his temple. He smiled at Roberto with that easy, dangerous kindness he always reserved for family. His eyes went to me and there was a flash of something I could not name. Protection. Possession. A question.

"Everything okay?" he asked before he even sat, voice a soft question and an accusation rolled into one.

I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to warn him that Victoria had come, that she had left a card, that concern was a honeyed blade. But the words tangled in my throat like bad thread. Instead I smiled and handed him a plate, the movement calm on the surface and raw underneath.

No. I thought, and the word almost felt like a promise. If she was closing a trap, then whatever came next would not be easy to escape.