Chapter 7 I'm Not in Your Class

Julian's mouth twisted.

"Your fiancé," he said. "Wow. You'll really say anything to get me to marry you, won't you?" He let out a short laugh. "So what's the deal? I agree to marry you, I become your fiancé, and then I get the watch and you forgive me? Is that how this works?"

Elena stopped folding.

How did a man get this sure of himself? Did he honestly believe she couldn't live without him?

Julian shook his head slowly. He looked at her with something close to pity.

"I thought you understood," he said. "I thought you knew there was a line between us that doesn't move. I thought you were smarter than this. But you keep pushing and pushing for a ring. I'm honestly disappointed in you, Elena."

He walked out. The bedroom door slammed hard enough to rattle the mirror.

Elena stood there with a pair of scrubs in her hands.

She'd meant to do it properly today. Sit him down. Tell him it was over. Tell him who her father was, and that she was going home to marry Dante Valenti. She'd owed him that much after three years.

He hadn't let her get a sentence out.

Maybe she'd made him this sure of himself. For three years she'd been the easy one. No checking his phone, no questions about where he'd been, no jealousy out loud, no ultimatums. He'd taken all of that to mean she'd never leave.

She sat down on the edge of the open suitcase and looked at the door he'd slammed.

She could live with a man who didn't love her as much as she loved him. Plenty of people did. She could even live without a ring.

What she couldn't live with was being somebody else's face.

She was Elena Rossi. She wasn't anybody's stand-in.

That evening, Martha set the table for two.

Elena sat down across from the empty chair.

"Mr. Costa won't be joining you?" Martha asked.

"I don't think so."

"I'll wrap his plate, then."

"Don't bother, Martha. Take it home if you want it."

Martha looked at the empty chair, then at Elena, and went back to the kitchen without another word.

Halfway through dinner, her phone buzzed. A message from Julian.

It was a video.

She opened it.

A dim private room. Loud music. Julian was slumped on a leather couch with his head on Bianca's shoulder, his tie pulled loose, his eyes half closed.

"Bee," he mumbled. "You came back. I knew you'd come back. I knew it."

Bianca stroked his hair and laughed softly. "Julian, you're drunk."

Behind them, people were hooting. Elena knew every voice. Nate. Leo.

Then Paige.

"Oh my God, look at him. He only gets clingy with you when he's drunk. You're all he sees, Bianca."

"Seriously, how is Elena still hanging around?" That was Brooke. "Bianca's back. Read the room."

"A girl like that finally lands a guy like Julian? She's not letting go without a fight."

"Bianca, don't worry, we're all on your side," Paige said. "None of us ever liked her. She never got that she doesn't belong with us."

"She's not even our class. He was just having fun with her. Bianca's home now. Time for Elena to pack up and go."

The video ended there.

Elena set the phone down next to her plate and kept eating.

She knew exactly why Bianca had sent it from Julian's phone. Part of it was to plant a flag. The rest was to humiliate her, make her see where she stood, and get her out of the house faster.

What Bianca couldn't know was that none of it landed. Not one word.

The only thing that stung, a little, was Paige.

Two years ago, Paige had slid her credit card across a restaurant table so Elena wouldn't have to. Elena had thought that was kindness. Watching the video, she wondered if it had just been a way to end an awkward moment faster. Paige had never once said a bad word about anybody to their face. Apparently she saved it for later.

Elena picked the phone back up and typed a reply.

"You're right. I'm not in your class."

The answer came almost at once, from Julian's number. Bianca had obviously kept the phone.

"At least you know your place."

Elena snorted.

The Costa Group was a couple of condo towers, a marina, and a cut of the Port of Miami. All of it together wouldn't add up to one of the smaller companies under Rossi Holdings. What the Costas cleared in a year, her father put into a side project without reading past the first page.

The Rossis had run the Brooklyn waterfront for four generations. They owned hotels, a shipping line, and half of Red Hook. Her great-grandfather had made his first deal on the docks before Julian's grandfather ever set foot in Florida.

So, no. She wasn't in their class.

Not one person in that video would ever guess that the Rossi in Elena Rossi was the same Rossi as Vincent Rossi.

She finished her dinner and took her phone to the couch.

She spent the next hour scrolling through designer sites for an engagement party gown. She narrowed it down to three. An Elie Saab in pale silver. An Oscar de la Renta in midnight blue. A Zuhair Murad covered in tiny crystals. She couldn't choose.

She posted all three to Instagram with one line. "Help me pick?"

Ten minutes later, the comments were rolling in.

An account with no picture and no posts, called only "D.", had written: "They're all beautiful. Get all three. Wear a different one every night."

Harper Quinn, her best friend since kindergarten, had written: "OMG FINALLY. Make your man buy all three, he can afford it!"

Kayla, a nurse on her floor, had written: "Dr. Rossi!!! Wait are you getting MARRIED??"

Under those were the likes and the hearts and the "Gorgeous!!" from people she'd gone to school with.

And then a few that stood out.

Paige: "..."

Nate Lombardo: "Girl, you've got some nerve. I'm dying."

Dr. Brittany Shaw, a third-year resident who had never once said good morning to her: "Those are all couture, new season. Before you post to show off, maybe look up the prices. You couldn't even afford to rent one."

And Julian: "?"

Across town, in the back booth at The Vault, Julian was staring at the same post.

He'd come out of the fog an hour ago with a headache and a dry mouth. Bianca had handed him his phone. "Your girlfriend's been busy," she'd said, and turned the screen toward him.

Three couture gowns. "Help me pick?"

"What is she doing?" Bianca leaned against his shoulder to look. "Is this about the ring? Is she trying to tell everyone something?"

Julian read the comments. Make your man buy all three. Are you getting married. He felt the blood go to his face.

He typed a question mark under the post and hit send.

On the couch in Coral Gables, Elena raised an eyebrow. So he'd sobered up.

A text came through a second later. "Delete that."

"No," she wrote back.

"Now you're doing it in public? Pushing me to marry you where everyone can see? And tell your friend to knock it off. 'Make your man buy all three'? Seriously? Did you hear one word I said this afternoon? Enough, Elena."

She read it and put the phone face down on the cushion.

It rang a minute later. She let it ring twice and picked up.

"Take it down," Julian said. Music thumped somewhere behind him. "I mean it, Elena. People are texting me."

"Then don't answer them."

"Do you know how this makes me look?"

"It's three dresses, Julian. Nobody said anything about you."

"Your friend literally said..."

"My friend wasn't talking about you."

He laughed, short and mean. "Who else would she be talking about?"

Elena didn't answer that. She hung up.

Not long after, she heard a car in the driveway. Then the front door.

Julian walked in.

Bianca walked in right behind him.