by Kat Ransom
“That’s all the more reason I should be with her,” I argue.
I can’t stand the thought of Em suffering like this, it’s unbearable. Nothing is worth this.
“You’re only going to ruin her life, either now when she is young and can rebound and live a full and happy life, without you. Or, down the road. You’ll turn into your father, cheat on her, divorce her, take away everything that matters to her.”
“I would never do that,” I shout.
“You don’t have a choice, it’s who you are!”
“No, I would never hurt Emily.”
“Even if not intentionally, Cole, there’s no denying it. Deviant behavior is genetic. It’s literally in your DNA. You can’t escape it. You’ll only ruin her. She deserves better than that, and you know it.”
“That’s not true.”
Fuck, it can’t be true. I am not Stan. I would never, ever hit Em, cheat on her, fucking rape her. My stomach coils just thinking it.
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. These are facts. After Kristy told us, I looked it all up. I will show you research papers if you don’t believe me. You can’t change what you are. You’ll end up just like your piece of shit father and your whore of a mother. I won’t let you take Emily down your trail of destruction.”
“I love her,” I blurt out because, in the movies, this changes everything. It makes insurmountable obstacles fade away into the ether.
“If you love her, you will stay away from her. You’re toxic. If you loved her, you wouldn’t take her away from her family, her friends, let her miss out on college.”
“Then I’ll quit racing and come home. I’ll go with her wherever she wants to go to school.”
“And then what, Cole? Really? You’ll never be welcome here. So you’re going to take away her family, her friends? You’re going to deprive her of having children one day because you certainly can’t pass on your defective family genetics.”
“She doesn’t even want children!”
“Yes, she does, you idiot. She only told you she doesn’t because that’s what you needed to hear. She’s always wanted to be a mother.”
“That’s not… no,” I stutter.
This can’t be true, we talked about it. She even brought it up.
“Use your head, you know how kind and nurturing she is. You know she’s plenty smart enough to tell you whatever she needs to.”
Of course, she is kind and nurturing, but—would she lie? Fuck, we’re only eighteen. It didn’t seem like that big of a conversation to have at the time.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I pace back and forth in my bedroom, thankful Dante is not home to overhear this.
“I only want what is best for her.”
“So do I,” that’s all I’ve ever wanted. But she… she was happy with me. I saw it. I felt it.
“She’s my daughter, I have no reason to lie to you. If you were what was best for Emily, I wouldn’t be making these calls to you. But you are not, will never, be good for Emily. You will ruin her life. I am begging you to do the right thing and leave her alone. Let her grieve and move on. Let her go to college. Let her meet a man who will take care of her, treat her well, raise a family with her.”
“I can’t,” I slide down my wall and collapse in a heap.
“And that’s how I know you’re just like your father. Selfish, a ruiner, an absolute monster who claims to love someone only to destroy everything they care about.”
Bile creeps up my throat, and I start dry heaving. “I’m going to be sick.”
“If you stay away, I will protect her. I’ll even update you on how she’s doing, from time to time. I’ll do everything in my power to ensure she gets the life she deserves. But you have to promise me, Cole. Stay away. Do not be your father. Don’t let Emily end up like your mother. It will happen. You will do it her. Because you’re exactly the same. Everyone knows it.”
The phone slides out of my limp hand, vomit fills my mouth, and my heart stops beating.
Twenty One
Autodromo Nazionale Monza - Monza, Italy
“No matter how hard you try, you can't stop us now.” - Rage Against the Machine - Renegades of Funk
Emily
I wish Edmund was here. Edmund would believe me. He did believe me. He knew there was something wrong with these tires, too.
“…a gross breach of protocol,” Olivier bangs his fist on the table and glares at me.
His nice-guy act came to a rapid halt as soon as we stepped foot on the circuit grounds in Italy. No more trying to ask me out, no more ‘oui oui, mon cher’ bologna.
They’ve found the mutilated tire we hacked up, and now he’s pissed.
“Do you have proof that it was Imperium who took the tire?” Silas asks Olivier. He’s calm and collected, seemingly unfazed by Olivier’s completely accurate accusation.
Unlike me, doing my best to be quiet and not implicate myself.
My foot starts tapping under the table. Cole moves his leg over next to mine and puts a hand on my knee under the table, still looking straight ahead at Olivier.
“Who else would it be besides her?” Olivier points at me. “The new girl, making weird demands for proprietary information, acting like she knows everything.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the vein in Cole’s neck pulse. While part of me would enjoy watching him climb over the table and choke Olivier to death, that would end badly for all involved. But he stays still, controlled, his thumb caressing my knee under the table his only movement.
“I have to say, I’m not sure why we’re having this conversation if Concordia has no proof of who stole part of a tire,” Silas folds his hands together on the table and gives Olivier a shit-eating grin.
Olivier bangs his hand on the table again and stands up so abruptly his chair flies back, “I will find out!”
Cole lifts his free hand and gives him a little toodle-oo wave, and Olivier storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Now it’s just the three of us. Given Silas has set back in his chair and his eyes bead between Cole and I, I know we’re not out of the woods yet.
“Well?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest. ‘Tell me you at least got answers from the bloody chunk of tire you stole.”
“Technically, the tire itself wasn’t really stolen,” Cole starts.
“Don’t push me, Ballentine. Emily, what have you found?”
“We’re still running tests, it takes time,” I fess up. “The only thing I can tell you so far is that the hydrophilic silica levels seem very out of whack, but we need to identify all the other compounds and then simulate how they react with one another.”
I don’t tell Silas that I’ve been holed up having mind-blowing sex with Cole for days now or that I should probably be in Cambridge with Professor Tillman, speeding things up. I’ve been staying in touch, though, and well, even at the best labs in the world, things take time.
“Hydro-what, what the hell does that mean?” Silas purses his lips.
He may have stood up for his team in front of Olivier, but, apparently, one does not get to be Team Principal by being a push-over. Silas is an intimidating man, by all accounts. Yet Cole sits here, as usual, calm, collected, yet commanding the room.
If everyone has a superpower, Cole's ability is appearing intimidating as fuck all the while maintaining total composure.
“The silica in tires is where the magic happens. Every company has a secret blend, and they guard it like a nuclear code. But the Concordia tires, they’re not like any we’ve seen before. When we blend silica with rubber, generally speaking, we can decrease wear resistance while increasing grip. When we add silane, we can really start manipulating the magic triangle.”
“What?” Silas bites.
“The balance between grip, rolling resistance, and wear. Altering the silane levels lets us manipulate the sweet spot. We can have low hysteresis at low frequencies and high hysteresis at high frequencies. That idea blew t
he magic triangle out the window…”
“I’m losing my patience, Emily.”
‘I’m sorry, I’m trying to explain it. It’s going to take more time to dissect the silica and silane in these tires and identify the other hundred compounds that are bonded together at molecular levels. But I know it has something to do with that.”
“Oh, you know it?” Silas asks sarcastically, somewhat pompously.
I’m again reminded that this is a male-dominated sport, and I’m the new, meddling, girl.
“Edmund brought Emily aboard because she’s brilliant, and this is her jam,” Cole leans forward and interrupts with a booming voice that rocks me back in my chair. “Neither of us knows what she’s talking about, but she does. If she says the tires are fucked, the tires are fucked.”
My eyes go wide as Cole stares down Silas, who is peering at him through slanted eyes and tapping the table deciding how to proceed.
“Are the tires fucked, Emily?” Silas finally asks.
“Yes sir, the tires are fucked,” I answer.
He goes back to tapping the table with one hand, rubbing his chin with the other.
I have no idea if I am going to leave this table with a job at this point.
I do know that I am right, though. I am not some stupid girl, no matter how Olivier or the other chauvinistic pigs walking around this paddock act sometimes.
“Give her time,” Cole interjects.
“No more stealing tires,” Silas waves his finger between Cole and me. “And in the meantime, figure out how to unfuck the tires we do have because we’re losing points all season to this shit.”
“Yes, sir,” I nod.
As soon as Silas leaves the room, I wrap my arms around Cole’s sculpted shoulders and bury my head in his neck. I inhale in his familiar spicy scent and feel my blood pressure come back down.
“What’s this for?” He wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me off my feet for a second.
“For standing up for me, believing in me.”
For always having my back, for being selfless, for treating me like I have a brain in addition to tits, for listening even when I don’t make sense, for trusting me even when I know I don’t make sense, for being the silence and calm amongst all my inner noise.
He kisses me, and I catch a faint hint of the minty hypotonic beverage concoction Liam is always making him drink gallons of.
“As much as I’d like to continue this, you need to get back to Shady Acres,” he pulls away and tells me.
He’s still ragging on our hideous hotel suite. His righteous indignation over it is as comical as the decor.
I sag my shoulders and pout. “Do I really have to go? I don’t think the dress I have is acceptable for a gala in Milan, of all places. You know I hate parties and…”
He stops me with another kiss, which I have to admit, is a surefire way to shut me up.
“Dresses, shoes, all that shit, will be at our room in,” he checks his watch, “an hour. Pick whatever you want. You’ll be the most beautiful woman there even if you choose a burlap sack.”
“Are you serious?”
This is not my life, I work in a lab, or on car parts, with my hair pulled up and often safety glasses.
“Mm-hmm,” he nuzzles me. “But I’m going to make it up to you. After the race, we’ll be learning to make cheese in the Italian countryside.”
“No,” I push his shoulders back so I can see his eyes. They tell me he’s dead serious, about the dresses, the gala—the cheese!
“Yes,” he grins, “No Reservations, season nine, episode one-thirty-six.”
He slaps me on the ass, turns to leave, and while I stand there slack-jawed, he exclaims for everyone in the hallway to hear, “Wooing, Emily. Prepare yourself.”
“I want to find a man who looks at me like that,” Dante’s younger sister, Angelina, sighs. She points to Cole, who is sitting next to me at our banquet table.
Dante rolls his eyes, “Him? Absolutely not. He looks like he’s either going to drag her back to a cave or eat her alive.”
“Both,” Cole’s lips turn up around his glass, and he gives me that smoldering, panty-dropping grin that hooked me nearly a decade ago.
All night he’s not taken his eyes off me. Not when he was schmoozing the sponsors who put on this charity event. Not when he let Dante cut in and dance with me. And not even when I nearly tripped in the heels that I’m not accustomed to when Nova the Tennis Bitch strutted past us.
Apparently, she was nearby in Milan, though Cole couldn’t guess if it was because there was a sporting event or she’s here as someone else’s arm-candy.
Didn’t know, didn’t care, he’d said.
His eyes have stayed firmly on me, in a dress by a designer I can’t even pronounce that two Italian bombshells squished me into.
They spoke no English when they rolled a rack of dresses into our Shady Acres suite. But I was able to communicate ‘I have no idea, please help me’ and help me they did.
It’s floor-length, Ferrari red, which seemed appropriate, with a plunging neckline and a slit to the top of one thigh. This is a ‘fuck me dress’ if Klara has ever seen one. But classy, I was clear, I think, with the stylists who just kept clapping and exclaiming ‘si, si’ when I put it on.
They came with shoes, make-up, and even jewelry. The diamond earrings they mandated could probably have paid for my college degrees.
I can tell you all about Cole’s Brioni tuxedo, though, because holy shit, I don’t care what it costs—it’s well worth it.
Cole is right. Nice things are nice.
And, watching him command the room all night looking like 007, I am going to do very not-nice things to him tonight.
All the furniture is going down.
“Will you dance with me again, Cole?” Angelina begs. She’s fifteen and obviously smitten, not that I can blame her.
With Sophia Loren’s cheekbones and long, wavy black hair to her waist, she’s going to break hearts one day. Dante is already ready to lose his mind hovering around her like a guard dog. He likes to show it by slugging her in the arm and biting the head off anyone who looks at her, but the love Dante has for his sister is endearing.
And making her crazy.
Cole looks to me to ask if he can accommodate Angelina, and of course, I nod and smile because it wasn’t that long ago I was a teenager.
While I didn’t long to be at a ball like Cinderella, every girl dreamed of Prince Charming in a tuxedo.
“Stay away from my sister, asshole,” Dante tries to smack Cole’s shoulder as he helps her up.
Angelina stomps her foot and swats Dante’s hand away, so embarrassed by him.
I giggle because I’ve had umpteen glasses of champagne. Plus, it’s utterly adorable that Dante brought his little sister as his date since this is his home country.
Such tough guys, all of them.
“I’ll be back,” I tell Dante. I don’t think he heard me though because he’s mumbling threats under his breath as Angelina rests her head on Cole’s chest on the dance floor.
I make hand signals to Cole that I’m going to the restroom. He sends me a sexy little wink.
After figuring out the logistics of how to pee in a ball gown, I make my way out of the restroom stall, heady with a delightful champagne buzz and eager to get back to the gorgeous man who is hellbent on wooing me.
As if Cole hasn’t owned every piece of me for a quarter of my life and needs to woo me.
Rinsing my hands off, I check the makeup job the Italian ladies did on me. It’s holding steady.
A stall door opens, and, of course, Nova emerges.
She looks like she just walked off a runway in Milan, her perfectly toned athletic legs jutting out from her silver gown and towering several inches above me in heels I’d break a leg in.
Nope, don’t think it. He loves you, not her.
“Well, if it isn’t Plain Jane,” she snickers in a Russian accent, sizing me up through the bathroo
m mirrors.
I wonder if she’s drunk or just a nasty bitch.
“Sorry, do I know you?” I play stupid, refuse to take the bait.
“Cole knows me very well,” she fluffs her fiery red hair.
“That’s nice, make sure to stop by and say hello,” I make my way to the door.
Screw you, fire-crotch.
“You think you can keep a man like Cole satisfied?” She escalates when she hasn’t gotten her way thus far.
“He seems plenty satisfied, but thank you for asking,” I snip back at her, then kick myself for stooping to her level.
“Please, look at you. Mousey little girl, how long do you think before he grows tired of you? Little brown house mouse,” she laughs.
Don’t do it, Emily. Walk Away.
Hell no.
“Guess he must like mice since he’s asked me to move in with him and marry him,” I shrug my shoulders and give her my most phony, smug simper.
Obviously, I lied, but Cole will never know, and my claws are out. He’s mine. He’s always been mine. Bitch can step off and go back to the frozen wasteland she came from before I shove her own tennis racket up her ass.
“What.” Her face becomes as red as her hair.
Oh, did I hit a nerve?
“Enjoy your evening, lovely dress,” I examine her up and down as if she’s wearing a paper bag. I have no idea what she’s wearing, and I can only hope whatever I’m wearing is even better. Hell if I know.
And then I put my shoulders back, beg my feet to play nicely with my heels, and sashay my mousey ass right out the door.
Strolling down the long hallway like I own the place, I have every plan to wrap my arms around Cole and ram my tongue down his throat every time that bitch looks our way.
“I need you, now,” A throaty growl whispers from behind me. Before I can turn, strong arms wrap around me and pull me into a tiny, empty coatroom.
“Oh my god, what are you doing,” I giggle as Cole attacks my neck and runs his hand up the open slit of my dress.
He tries to kick the door closed, but it’s a half-door, and only the bottom slams shut. He pushes me up against it and dives into my exposed cleavage.