Isabella
The phone rings once. Twice.
My heart hammers against my ribs with each pulse. He’s not going to answer. It was a fake number, a cruel joke, and I’m just a fool who fell for it.
On the third ring, a voice answers. A low, calm rumble that I remember from the bar.
“Bella.”
He says my name not as a question, but as a statement. Like he was expecting my call.
The sound throws me off. My carefully prepared speech dissolves on my tongue.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Who else would it be?” There’s a faint sound in the background, a metallic clang. “You have my card.”
“I do,” I say, my voice small. I clear my throat, forcing the authority back into it. “I need to see you.”
“Is that so?” A pause. Not hesitation. Assessment. “Where are you?”
“I’m not sure. But I can be anywhere.”
“Stay put,” he says. “I’ll find you.”
“No.” The word is sharp, a reflex. “I’ll find you. Where are you?”
Another pause, longer this time. I can almost feel him smiling on the other end of the line. A slow, dangerous smile.
“Do you have a pen?”
He gives me an address. It’s in a part of town my driver actively avoids. The industrial district, a place of warehouses and iron filings and forgotten factories.
“I’ll be there in an hour,” I say.
He doesn't say goodbye. He just hangs up.
I sit in my car for a full minute, the address a blinking cursor on my phone’s navigation screen. I don’t have his last name. I don’t know what he does. The tabloids called him a mechanic. Chloe called him ‘the help.’
This address seems to confirm it.
Good. That makes this easier. That makes him exactly what I need.
I don’t drive there myself. I call a car, one of the discreet black sedans the Rossi company keeps for sensitive errands. I don’t want my own license plate tracked to this part of the city. I am a ghost moving through my own life.
As we drive, the polished glass towers of my world recede in the rearview mirror, replaced by brick and corrugated metal. The air changes. It smells of grit and labor.
The car pulls up outside a long, low building made of cinder blocks. The paint is peeling, and the large roll-up doors are streaked with rust. A faded sign hangs crookedly above the main entrance: ‘MORETTI’S AUTO REPAIR.’
My stomach twists. Moretti. He has a last name after all. A name that belongs on a greasy sign in the worst part of town.
Perfect.
“Wait here,” I tell the driver, my voice colder than I feel.
My heels click on the cracked pavement, an alien sound in a world of engine growls and the hiss of air tools. I push open a small side door and step inside.
The smell of oil, gasoline, and hot metal hits me first. It’s a vast, cavernous space. Cars in various states of disassembly are propped up on lifts like wounded animals. Tools are scattered on workbenches. It’s organized chaos.
And in the center of it all, there he is.
Chase.
He’s not wearing a suit. He’s in a simple black t-shirt that strains across his shoulders and dark, grease-stained jeans. He’s leaning over the exposed engine of a vintage sports car, his back to me. His focus is absolute.
He doesn't seem to have heard me come in.
I stand there, watching him. This is a different man from the one at the party. Wilder. More real. There's a smudge of black grease high on his cheekbone. His hands, the ones Chloe said looked ‘rough,’ are deft and sure as they move across the machinery.
He is devastating.
I clear my throat.
He doesn’t startle. He just straightens up slowly, wiping his hands on a red rag. He turns, and his eyes find me across the concrete floor. That same unnerving, assessing gaze.
“Bella,” he says. His voice is the same, but it sounds different in this space. It belongs here.
“Chase.”
He cocks his head, a hint of dark amusement in his eyes. “You look out of place.”
“I am,” I admit. “This isn’t exactly my usual scene.”
“No,” he agrees. “I imagine not. Champagne and chandeliers are more your speed.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You said that on the phone.” He tosses the rag onto a workbench and starts walking toward me. He moves with a quiet, deliberate grace that has nothing to do with tailored suits or penthouse parties. It’s an inherent power. “So talk.”
He stops a few feet away, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him. Close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes.
My resolve wavers for a second. This is insane. I’m about to make a deal with a complete stranger in a garage.
Then I think of Chloe’s smug face. My father’s cold dismissal.
My spine stiffens.
“I have a proposition for you,” I say, my voice all business.
“I’m listening.”
“I need a boyfriend.”
One of his eyebrows lifts. “And you came to a garage to find one?”
“I came to you. I need someone to pretend to be my boyfriend. For one month.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. The movement makes the muscles in his biceps tighten. “Pretend? Why?”
“My reasons are my own.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.”
His refusal to play along is irritating. In my world, you don’t question the ‘why’ when the ‘what’ is laid out so clearly. “Let’s just say I need to present a certain image for a short period of time.”
“An image,” he repeats, his voice flat. He glances down at my expensive shoes, then back to my face. “What kind of image?”
“The kind of image that will drive my ex-fiancé and my stepsister insane.” The truth slips out, raw and bitter.
Something flickers in his eyes. Understanding.
“Revenge,” he says. It’s not a question.
“Vindication,” I correct.
“There’s a difference?”
“There is to me.”
He is silent for a moment, just watching me. He sees too much. He sees the hurt and the anger I’m trying to mask with cool efficiency.
“And you chose me for this… role,” he says, “why?”
“Because you’re perfect.”
He almost laughs at that. “Perfect?”
“You’re not from my world. You don’t know the players. You have no connections, no allegiances. You’re handsome, which helps. But most importantly, you are completely and utterly unsuitable.”
The words hang in the air between us. An insult dressed up as a compliment.
He doesn’t flinch. If anything, his expression hardens slightly. “Unsuitable for what? For the Rossi family brand?”
“Exactly. You’re everything they would hate.”
“I see,” he says, his voice dangerously soft. “I’m your weapon.”
“I prefer to think of it as a business arrangement.”
I reach into my purse and pull out a bank-certified check. I spent the morning arranging it. It felt like the only concrete thing I could do, the only power I still had.
“This is a business arrangement,” I say, holding it out to him. “And I pay my partners well.”
He doesn’t take it. He doesn’t even look at it.
“What is it?” he asks, his eyes still locked on mine.
“It’s two hundred thousand dollars,” I say, my voice clear and steady. “Half now, half at the end of the month.”
For the first time, I see a genuine reaction from him. A flicker of something in his eyes. It’s not greed. It’s not shock. It’s amusement.
A slow, humorless smile touches his lips.
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” he repeats, as if tasting the words. “To be your arm candy for thirty days.”
“To be my devoted boyfriend,” I correct. “In public. At events. Wherever I need you to be.”
“And what do I have to do? Hold your hand? Laugh at the right jokes? Look menacingly at your ex?”
“All of the above.”
He takes a step closer. The air crackles. “You walk in here, into my place of business, and offer to buy me like a prize bull for a month.”
“I’m offering you an opportunity,” I counter, my heart starting to beat a little faster. “This is life-changing money. It could solve a lot of problems. Fix this place up. Expand.”
My eyes sweep around the garage, taking in the rust, the old equipment. It’s a deliberate gesture. A reminder of his station. Of mine.
He follows my gaze, then brings his eyes back to me. The amusement is gone. Replaced by something cold and hard.
“You think you know what my problems are, Bella?”
“I know what two hundred thousand dollars can fix.”
“You have no idea,” he says, his voice a low growl.
I feel a prickle of fear. I have miscalculated. I thought the money would be the end of the conversation. The ultimate persuasion.
Instead, it seems to have insulted him.
“Is it not enough?” I ask, my composure starting to fray.
He laughs then, a short, harsh sound that echoes in the high-ceilinged space. “Oh, it’s enough. It’s more than enough. The question isn’t about the money.”
“Then what is it about?”
“It’s about what you said. Revenge. Vindication.” His gaze is so intense it feels like a physical touch. “I want to hear it. I want you to tell me exactly what you want to see happen to them.”
I hesitate. Admitting the depth of my petty, ugly desires out loud feels… shameful.
“Tell me,” he commands.
“I want them to see me happy,” I whisper.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “That’s not it. That’s the lie you tell yourself. What do you really want?”
I look into his dark eyes, and the truth spills out of me, a torrent of poison.
“I want him to regret it. I want him to look at me, with you, and realize what he threw away. I want her to feel small. I want to see that perfect, smug smile wiped off her face. I want to walk into a room and not feel like the victim. I want to be the one they whisper about, not out of pity, but out of fear. I want to burn their world down.”
The words hang in the silence, ugly and raw. I expect him to look at me with disgust. To see the monster I’ve become.
Instead, his expression softens almost imperceptibly.
“Alright,” he says.
My breath catches. “Alright? You’ll do it?”
“I’ll do it.”
Relief washes over me, so potent it makes my knees weak. I extend the check to him again.
He ignores it.
“But not for your money,” he says.
I stare at him, confused. “What? Then for what?”
“For my own reasons,” he says, his voice leaving no room for argument. “I have one condition.”
“What is it?”
“I’m in charge.”
“In charge of what? This is my plan.”
“It was your plan,” he corrects. “Now it’s ours. No money exchanges hands. And when it comes to our… dates… you do what I say. We go where I say. No questions.”
He’s taking control. Flipping the entire power dynamic I had so carefully constructed.
I’m handing my revenge, my one and only weapon, over to a stranger. A mechanic from the wrong side of town.
I should say no. I should walk out of this garage and never look back.
But I look at his face. At the quiet confidence, the unnerving intelligence in his eyes. He is not a man who loses.
And I am so tired of losing.
“Fine,” I say, my voice a thread. I lower the check.
“Fine,” he echoes.
A slow smile spreads across his face. It reaches his eyes this time, and it’s terrifying.
“Then we have a deal, Bella Rossi.”
