Chapter 8
I stand on the deck and stare out to the blue sky as the sun recedes for just some time. Oddly, I have never noticed how blue the sky is until today. It reminds me of the sapphire blue eyes of my baby. So vibrant and full of life.
I grin widely for the first time in a fucking long time. My baby, I repeat in my head. She doesn’t know she’s mine. But soon she will and she’ll know there’s nothing she can fucking do about it.
I’ll see her tonight.
I stroll along the deck for a few seconds before I grow impatient and pull out my phone. I call my father.
“I just arrived,” I say, staring about. “Place is pretty deserted. Did the venue change sometime between the last thirty minutes?”
“Valentino Lorca is aware that you’ve arrived,” my father tells me calmly. “Serena will be there to bring you inside the cabin we’re at shortly.”
“Who the fuck is that?” I ask and my father lets out a long exhale.
“Serena Lorca, Valentino’s daughter who just arrived from Ibiza where she used to stay with her mother.”
I don’t need to know all of this and my father knows. Why this woman would be bringing me to my father and not some of Valentino’s or our men has suspicion written all over it.
“When will she be here? The sun is merciless.”
“Hello?” A voice interrupts.
I turned to see a brunette behind me. Oh good. She’s here.
“Never mind,” I say to the phone.
My father hangs up and I turn to fully face the woman. I remember her now, Our families have always been close. As kids, she always used to hide behind the shadow of her
brothers, especially for formal meetings between our families, How one person would be
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comfortable living in shadows is very mind–boggling.
“Isabella?” I ask her and she colors in embarrassment.
“Serena,” she replies.
But my words had been deliberate. I know what’s going on. I know what my father has up his sleeves and Serena needs to know that I will forget what she looks like once I leave this deck. Whatever plans my father has to ruin her life by getting her tied with me will not work. Not like this is for her. I barely knew she was alive before coming up this deck.
I make a motion for her to lead the way. She does. We walk on in silence for two minutes.
“How big is this boat?”
“I–I don’t know.”
But that was not the question.
I wanted to know why it seems that we’ve been walking in circles.
“It’s summer and it’s baking outside. I want to know how long I would have to cook in my suit,” I tell her. “Are you this lousy a host?”
A serious flush covers her face and I feel uncomfortable as she stares at the floor and then
back up my face.
“I’m really sorry,” she says. “We’re just a few more meters from the entrance to the lower
deck.”
She apologized. She fucking apologized. No. Fucking no.
If I didn’t have my sights on elsewhere, it still would have been a no on my part if my father planned to tie us both in a relationship. What the fuck?
We make it to the cabin below deck and my father is seated with another man around his age. Only, this one smiles more than him. The man smiles like it’s fucking Valentine’s day everyday with him. Unlike his daughter, his hair is jet black and his bushy mustache moves very often as his mouth crinkles in a smile. Valentino Lorca.
As soon as we join the room, Serena Lorca goes to her father’s side and proceeds to
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Chapter 8
disappear from everyone’s attention.
My father and hers are in a discussion about the pointless masked ball my father holds at our home every year. Apparently, those in our circles would take any excuse to show off their wealth at a social event, hence, we always have quite a turnout. My own father personally loves that ball.
Also, apparently, Serena will be there. Valentino Lorca chips this in as he and my father
laugh raucously over some incident that happened the last time.
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