Yesterday

"Cancel all of it."

That's the only instruction I give Kim, my secretary, when I get to the office. Caterer, florist, venue, dress. No explanation needed. No eye contact.

She stares at me like I just asked her to kill Santa, then nods and walks off with her phone already at her ear.

I've barely sat down when my dad knocks on my open door. He's in the navy suit, the one that says serious business, and he's holding two coffees like a peace offering.

"Morning, baby."

He hands me one of the cups.

"You're bringing me coffee now. Maybe I should call off weddings more often," I joke.

He laughs, his own cup stopping halfway to his mouth.

"Too soon?"

He nods. "Too soon."

"The Vieri merger closes today."

Now it's my turn for my coffee to stop halfway.

"Today? Really? After weeks of 'we'll circle back,' today?"

"They called at six this morning. Signing is at ten." He rubs his jaw. "Alessandro is coming himself."

I put the cup down. Alessandro Vieri doesn't come to signings. His lawyers do. His lawyers have lawyers, and I'm pretty sure those lawyers have lawyers too.

"I can take the day off," I say. "Nobody would blame me."

"Nobody would." He turns his cup in his hands. "But he asked for you. By name."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Very comforting, Dad."

"Ten o'clock. Boardroom," he says as he walks out.

I want to say no. Throw my phone in the middle of the sea. Lock myself in a bathroom stall till noon. But this deal has my fingerprints all over it. I cannot fuck this up. I'll be damned if the Vieri name takes something else from me.

Two years with his son, and I've met Alessandro Vieri exactly four times. A charity gala, the engagement dinner, the Christmas dinner he left before dessert, a funeral. Every time he shook my hand, said something polite, and I forgot his face by the time I reached my car. I remember thinking Leandro got his looks from his mother.

So when I walk into the boardroom at five to ten, wearing three layers of concealer and no hours of sleep, I'm not ready.

Fourteen chairs. A long glass table. The Vieri lawyers on one side, ours on the other, and at the far end, one man standing at the window with his back to the room.

He turns when I come in.

Nobody announces him. He has a way of doing that himself. The lawyers on his side sit up a little straighter, and I catch myself doing the same.

He's forty-seven. I know that from a file somewhere, but he doesn't wear it like any forty-seven-year-old I know. Dark suit, no tie, gray at the temples that looks like a decision he made. His eyes go around the room once, then settle on me.

Not on my face exactly, on the concealer. I think. I'm almost sure.

"Mr. Valdés," he says to my dad, and they shake hands. It's the handshake of two men who respect each other.

Then he turns. "Miss Valdés."

"Mr. Vieri."

"Alessandro is fine." A pause, small enough that I might have imagined it. "We were almost family."

"Almost is the right word."

"Yesterday made that clear."

Yesterday.

I've told exactly one person about yesterday, and he's standing next to me.

I sit. Alessandro doesn't sit until I do. I don't think anyone else cares to notice, but I do, and I'm annoyed that I do.

His lawyer opens a folder. "Mr. Vieri, if we could begin with section one..."

Alessandro lifts two fingers off the table. The lawyer stops mid-sentence like someone pulled his plug.

"I'd like Miss Valdés to take me through the final terms."

My dad shifts. "Our team can walk you through it, Alessandro."

"I'm asking her."

He doesn't raise his voice. It isn't a request, and everyone in the room knows it.

So I read.

I go page by page, the way I've done a hundred times, and I keep my voice level, which takes more acting than I ever trained for. Payment structure. Transition schedule. Leadership terms. He listens with one hand flat on the glass and his eyes on me, not the pages, which is deeply unhelpful for my concentration.

It's page eleven when I stop.

Clause 14.2. Buried in a subsection on transition governance, in the kind of language that makes your eyes slide right off it.

*Vieri Group retains sole approval over any future sale of Valdés Advisory shares to an outside party.*

I read it again, slower.

"This wasn't in the draft I signed off on."

His lawyer goes very still. "It was added in the final revision."

"By who?"

Nobody answers. My dad's pen has stopped moving.

"By me," Alessandro says.

I look up. He hasn't blinked.

"You don't get to veto who buys my father's company," I say. "Not alone."

"Then what do you propose?"

My heart is going hard, but I set my pen down like it isn't. "Mutual approval. Valdés gets the same right over any outside sale of Vieri shares. Or the clause comes out."

"Ariadna," my dad says quietly. It isn't a warning. It's the voice he uses when he wants to see how far I'll take it.

"Or nothing," I say.

The air conditioning has never been so loud.

Alessandro studies me for a long moment. Then he turns his head, just slightly, toward his lawyer.

"Strike it. Rewrite it. Mutual."

"Sir, with respect, the board..."

"Now."

Twenty minutes later there are signatures on every page, and his is the last. Quick, slanted, like it was nothing. He caps the pen and shakes my dad's hand again, and this time the grip is shorter, almost friendly.

Then chairs scrape, the lawyers gather their folders, and everybody around me somehow has somewhere else to be.

Alessandro stops beside my chair. He doesn't lean down. He doesn't have to.

"When you leave tonight, don't drive yourself."

I look up. "Excuse me?"

"Take a driver. Or let your father take you."

"Is that a threat, Mr. Vieri?"

"No, Ariadna." He says my name like he's said it a hundred times before. "It's the opposite."

He walks out. Nobody stops him, nobody even tries.

My dad drifts over, hands in his pockets, eyes still on the door.

"Fifteen years I've known that man," he says. "I'm still M

r. Valdés. You got his first name in twenty minutes."

"Maybe he likes me."

"Maybe."

He doesn't sound like he believes it, and honestly, neither do I.