No Regrets (The Ferrari Family Book 2)

by Hazel Parker

  But the instant I woke up, it was like I had awaken into my worst nightmare.

  I was drenched in a puddle of nervous sweat. My stomach roiled against my father’s cooking from the night before. I imagined every worst-case scenario that could play out.

  Instead of using the bathroom, I wound up throwing up in it first thing in the morning.

  It didn’t make me feel calmer, but at least I’d literally gotten something out of my system. I moved about the rest of my morning with trembling legs, shaking hands, and a nervous fear that no matter how many precautions my father had put in place, I was getting myself into a situation I wouldn’t want to be in. I put on my best professional attire but skipped on breakfast—I knew it would come up just like dinner from the night before had.

  I peered out my window at half-past seven, already ready for the workday. Sure enough, a limo waited outside. This was real.

  I walked downstairs, clutching my purse close to me, and tried my best to put on a friendly smile. The window rolled down, and a man in sunglasses and a suit leaned forward.

  “Chelsea Polozzi?”

  “Hi, yes, that’s, um, that’s me.”

  The man got out of the limo, walked around, and opened the rear door for me. I examined him as he did, looking for a gun or weapon or anything else to indicate malicious intent, but as far as my eyes could see, he was just like any other limo driver. I got in and felt the door shut behind me firmly but gently. He got into the front seat, and seconds later, the limo was moving.

  “Where are we going?” I asked in as friendly a tone as I could.

  The man looked at me in the rearview mirror, looked back at the road, and had the divider window rolling up seconds later.

  Just like that, I was alone. My fate was no longer in my hands. It was up to this limo driver and whoever had hired him.

  For the first few minutes, I looked out the window, observing the highway and other cars driving by, but eventually, I just felt too sick, too worried, and too concerned to do that, so I lay down my head. I closed my eyes, trying to catch up on some rest, even though it was probably messing up my hair.

  This went on like so for probably fifteen, twenty minutes. It was long enough that I began to feel like I could have fallen back asleep. Only when the limo made a right turn and slowed down did I start to feel like I was at my destination.

  I sat up, looked out the window, and gasped.

  “No way.”

  Chapter 11: Brett

  Monday Morning

  I woke up feeling like a bag of Jell-O inside a bag of Jell-O.

  Today, my future wife would arrive at the office.

  And no one would have any idea that anything was happening other than I’d hired a new assistant.

  My mood had remained relatively stable through the weekend, thanks in part to the genuine excitement and happiness we felt for Nick and Izzy. But now that the day had come when I would have my Izzy, I suddenly began to have a lot of doubts about it. For starters, why couldn’t I have gotten my Izzy the way Nick got his—through normal, everyday conversation?

  What did it say about me that I was all but getting a mail-order bride to satisfy my grandparents’ request? What did it say that I was marrying for money? Maybe my grandparents were right. Maybe I did need to grow the fuck up and find myself a woman. Even if I couldn’t do it in time to meet their archaic demands...well, maybe their demands weren’t so archaic. Maybe they had a point.

  I found myself going to my phone and back several times in my apartment, deciding whether I wanted to send Uncle Nick a note asking him to cancel the plans or not. About the only thing that really kept me from pulling the trigger was the feeling that it was just too late to stop the reaction. Maybe at some point, if I hated myself, I could negotiate a buyout, but while the Ferrari Estate was worth tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, I myself was not worth nearly that much.

  I had already cast my fate forward. I had to accept what was to come. But boy, the regret and shame I felt that morning were not what I expected to feel.

  I got to the office far earlier than I normally did, ahead of everyone except my grandfather, who liked to arrive at sunrise as part of his daily routine. I sat in the car, trying to think of how I could calmly and collectively explain the presence of my new hire. My grandfather knew I’d put in a request for someone, but he was pretty hands-off with hiring people; we were expected to handle our roles as entrepreneurs, taking on help as we needed it and not as the company did.

  And what about my father? And Layla? And...and…

  Fuck, I should have thought this through a little more. But I guess that was the fate I had sealed for myself by allowing my greed to take hold of me. I just hoped I got lucky and actually wound up falling in love with the woman who walked through the door; the odds were stacked pretty heavily against me.

  I walked up to my grandfather’s office and knocked twice.

  “Yes?” he said, but this time in a more pleasant tone than he usually had.

  I opened the door and peered inside. I had never seen my grandfather so relaxed in his life. He had his feet kicked up on his desk, reading a paper copy of the San Francisco Chronicle. He had a cup of coffee to his right, and he looked so at ease that it was like he was in his own man cave.

  “Brett!” he said in surprise with a laugh. “I did not expect you at this hour! What brings you in?”

  “Well, I figured I’d catch you before you got busy,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know I hired someone new. An assistant to help me with the paperwork and logistics of my job. Think it’ll make me a better sommelier.”

  My grandfather displayed no reaction. I might as well have told him that there was a new bagel shop that had opened in the nearest shopping center.

  “As long as it benefits the winery, I’m all for it,” he said.

  “OK, great.”

  I didn’t know what else to say, so I removed myself, wished him well, and closed the door with a sigh of relief. The man most responsible...OK, no, I was most responsible, but the man who had set up the rules for this spot had not suspected a thing. And if he did, then he had a far better poker face than I.

  I went to my office, trying to make sure the place looked as clean and professional as I could make it. It was funny, in a way. This girl, whoever she was, was arranged to be married to me, and yet I was doing everything I could to make sure that her first impression was positive. Maybe I was being a nice guy, or maybe my nerves were really starting to get to me.

  I spent a good hour cleaning up before I felt like I could breathe and sit easily at my desk. It was just now barely before eight a.m., roughly an hour before the assistant would show up. I wondered what it was like from her end, what she would be expecting.

  You’re at work, doing whatever it is you normally do...let’s say she’s an office assistant somewhere. You do whatever you normally do, and then someone comes up and says you can marry a total stranger for fifteen million dollars, but no one else can know about it. I can’t tell you anything, but I can promise you fifteen million.

  If she’s not a fucking nervous wreck when she shows up, then she’s the coolest, calmest person alive.

  There was a part of me that thought it would be funny to speak with an old man voice at first, as if to joke about it, but that seemed inexplicably crass and mean-spirited. Arranged or not, this was my wife…

  My wife.

  Never had those words seemed so real.

  I was going in loops in my head. I was feeling compulsive about those thoughts. But I couldn’t fucking help it. I was going to be a mess all day at work.

  I grabbed my phone and pulled up Uncle Nick, again. By now, I had accepted—or at least not resisted—the notion that there was going to be no changing course. My assistant was coming in an hour, I was going to propose to her in six months, and I was going to be married to her in one year.

  I texted him, “Just making sure everything is all set.” It was lame and it wa
s weak, but it was the one way I thought I could give Uncle Nick an opportunity to tell me I was off the hook. I held no hope that I was, but—

  The text bubble popped up.

  “Yep. All up to you now, kid.”

  Well, that was not exactly reassuring. Up to me? What if I fucked this up? What if I blurted something out and grandma and grandpa found out? What if, what if, what—

  “Damn, this place looks clean!”

  I literally jumped out of my seat at the feminine voice from my doorway. It took me laying eyes on my sister to see it was not my assistant, not my future wife, just Layla. I actually put my hands over my chest to try and calm myself down because my heart rate was skyrocketing.

  “You all right?” she said. “You act like you’ve never seen me in your life before.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in Europe or something?”

  Layla cocked an eyebrow at me and laughed.

  “You saw me two days ago; don’t you think I would have said something?”

  I found myself tongue-tied, unable to complete a full sentence. The contrast between the two of us was so ridiculously stark, it could have served as a comedy show if I wasn’t feeling so overwhelmed.

  “I, uh, I, uh, well, just, you know, you go to Europe, uh, France, and you know, Paris—”

  “Brett, are you drunk?”

  “What?” I said with a laugh. “The fuck would I be drunk?”

  “Or maybe you’re high?” she said. “It’s Monday morning, this place looks cleaner than my office, and now you can’t even speak properly. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing?”

  The fact that I asked it as a question and not as an emphatic statement probably did not help my cause in the slightest, not that there was anything I could have done to help my cause.

  “I’m not even going to list all of the ways in which I could call bullshit on you. Instead, I’m just going to call generic bullshit on you and ask again. What is going on?”

  It was right on the tip of my tongue—“I paid someone off to be my wife and she’ll be here any second.” If Uncle Nick knew how close I was to uttering those words, he would have sought a way to freeze time, fly from Las Vegas, and slap me across the cheek while berating me for being a fucking idiot. If I was acting this way on day one, day five was probably going to be head-slapping bad.

  “I paid someone to be my, uh, my assistant, and she’ll be here any second.”

  It wasn’t much of a save, but at least it was a technically true statement.

  “Oh, really?” Layla said. “You have a new assistant? And she’ll be here any second?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, congratulations, I know you’ve been slammed.”

  Did...did she just buy that?

  “What are you going to have your assistant do to help?”

  “Oh, you know, just the usual,” I said. “Scheduling. Paperwork. Logistics stuff. Nothing too crazy.”

  “Uh-huh. And what’s her name.”

  “Sa...Samantha!”

  “You forgot her name?”

  I pretended to be embarrassed that that was the reason why I looked so flustered.

  “So, this Samantha assistant, tell me more about her.”

  I bit my lip. I had a feeling Layla knew I was lying and was just enjoying driving the knife deeper and deeper into me. She was fucking good at that when she wanted to be.

  “What school did she go to? Where did she work before this? I assume these are things you know about her, right?”

  “Of course,” I said with a smile. “They’re just eluding me because, you know, her resume isn’t right in front of me.”

  “Oh, of course,” Layla said, walking into my office and leaning forward on my desk. “And let me ask you this about her then. Is she real? Or are you going to stop bullshitting me?”

  There was no point in fighting.

  “You are never this stressed,” she said. “We’ve had people cycle through these doors before plenty of times, and you never get this stressed. At most, you express concern that they like the place, but you don’t turn into a hot mess.”

  “I know.”

  “Seriously, what’s going on? Are you OK?”

  Her tone had gone from jesting to serious, and that’s when I knew I couldn’t keep up this façade to her. Layla was too perceptive.

  “All right,” I said. “If you really want to know—”

  And then I paused. I heard something in the hallway. Something that was coming far too early.

  Heels clicking against the floor.

  No other woman in the office besides Layla wore heels. We knew this because my grandfather had made it a rule that women couldn’t wear high heels, saying the clicking sound annoyed him. He couldn’t prevent customers from doing anything, but it was too early for customers. Only someone who was allowed to be here early but was too green to know the rules…

  My wife. My future wife.

  I stood up, making sure my clothes were smoothed against my skin and my jacket was snugly fit. I made sure my black tie was properly tight against my shirt collar. It was all coming down to this.

  Layla didn’t say a word. She was in my peripheral vision, but I didn’t see her anymore. The only thing my eyes focused on was the door ahead.

  The clacking came closer...and closer...and closer. I gulped. In a matter of seconds…

  Her shadow appeared on the ground…

  For a split second, I saw a black heel appear.

  And then…

  “No way.”

  Chapter 12: Chelsea

  Brett.

  Brett...Ferrari?

  Brett, the asshole at the bar who had tried to sleep with me and then gotten weird about it?

  Brett...that Brett. That Brett was my boss now.

  This could not be real. This...I mean, was this some sort of reality TV show that I didn’t know I was on? Was this...was this like a test before the real guy? Did the real family know I had spent time with Brett and now wanted to see how I’d handle myself early on a Monday?

  Just...what?

  I froze in place, unable to so much as twitch the corner of my mouth in response to this. “Froze” was not hyperbole for how little I moved in that spot. In all the time I had spent guessing who this guy might be, I never would have assumed it was the hot player at the bar that I happened to run into.

  “Hi, how are you?”

  The girl next to him...who was that?

  I mean, I had seen her when I walked in. I knew she was there. But I hadn’t processed her until now.

  She was strikingly beautiful; she had jet black hair, fierce brown eyes, and a presence that suggested she had control over Brett if she wanted to exercise it. But if I was hired to eventually be the wife...the wife! The wife of Brett Ferrari, then what was the role of this woman? Was I forcing her out? Was she...she couldn’t have been a coworker, right? Why else would she be sitting so casually, so easily, so...powerfully on his desk?

  “Why, Layla, I’d like you to, uh, meet my new assistant, Chelsea. Chelsea...Chelsea.”

  “Really, that’s her name?” Layla said. “Chelsea Chelsea Chelsea? You hired a new assistant and couldn’t even take the time to learn her full name?”

  “It’s Chelsea Polozzi,” I said, which drew a bit of a glare from Layla. “Chelsea Polozzi…”

  I repeated my own name like it could be wrong. In fairness to me, with who I was currently looking at, could I assume anything that I thought was real was actually real?

  “Chelsea Polozzi,” Layla said, standing up from Brett’s desk. “My name is Layla Ferrari. I’m Brett’s sister and one of the lead business development people here. If you ever need any help with anything, just let me know.”

  “Will do, definitely, of course!”

  Layla smiled at me, but I knew that if the goal was to draw as little attention as possible, we were doing a miserable job of it. She turned back to her brother, and though I could not see her face, her tone told
me what it was.

  “Brett, I’ll leave you to your devices so you can get back to work,” she said. “Do me a favor and don’t scare her off like you did the last two. We need more women at the company.”

  Bemused expression.

  Wait, the last two? What—

  Layla nodded to me, wished me luck, and told me to come visit her later one last time. I gawked at her as she left—her confidence and presence were truly admirable, things that I could really never hope to emulate.

  And then Brett got up, shut the door to his office, and all masks got dropped.

  “This can’t be real,” I said. “This is a fucking joke, right? Are you some sort of test?”

  “You think you can’t believe it, how do you think I feel?” Brett said.

  He shook his head and rubbed his hair with his hand, clawing at it as if he was going to yank it out.

  “Well, I’m pretty sure Layla has already figured out that you’re probably more than just an assistant,” Brett said. “Whole thing is kind of funny, I guess.”

  “Funny?” I said.

  No, it was not. I did not find this funny in the slightest. The guy that had acted so bizarrely to me at the bar—twice—was now the guy I was supposed to marry?

  I suppose the only saving grace was that my future ex-husband was incredibly hot and could be suave when he wanted to, so in lighter moments, I might even enjoy pretending to be married. But right now, the only thing I wanted to pretend about was being back home, eating ice cream, and being far, far away from this fucked up mess.

  “If that’s so funny, why did you try to play all suave, charming man at the bar?”

  Brett stumbled over his words, never getting more than a single full sentence out. I had never seen him look so flustered and confused, though to be fair, “never” only covered maybe a few hours’ worth of interaction.

  “Look, I’m just trying to make the most of this, OK?” Brett said. “You have to admit this is sort of absurd.”