Semua Bab Forbidden Never Felt This Good: Bab 121 - Bab 130

0122~Aria~Joan.Standing in the entrance of my father’s estate.In lingerie.Which was in red, Luca's favourite colour. It was a see through cloth. She wanted to impress Luca then she should have done it in the bedroom as this wasn't her husband's house.I was disappointed in her, and she has a child. She would really go to any length to make it obvious she was Luca's wife. With securities around.She was looking directly at me.And I understood immediately.The same way I had understood the drive, the ring, the staged moments that always seemed to arrive with perfect timing. Joan operated with intention. Always. She created situations, waited for reactions, and then built her next move from whatever she got.This was one of those situations.She had dressed for a reaction.Definitely giving her none. I had plan to give her a constructive criticism because this wasn't her house and she has no right to display such a thing but seeing that she wanted a reaction, I wasn't going to give

0124~Aria~Three days passed in that strange way days do when you are moving too fast to feel them properly. Work, hospital, home, sleep. Repeat.My father called it a recovery. Dr. Rajveer called it premature optimism. I called it Vittorio Santoro refusing to be kept anywhere he had not chosen to be. By the second day, he was asking Marguerite to bring him specific files. By the third, he had called two board members from his hospital bed and had opinions about both conversations.Dr. Rajveer discharged him on the condition of complete bed rest at home, with Marguerite running a schedule my father thought demeaning and she considered the minimum necessary. He came home in a wheelchair, clearly unhappy about it, and immediately began negotiating the terms of the rest from the moment he crossed the threshold. Marguerite did not negotiate. I was grateful for her in a way that had reached a new level.---The night Luca cleared his throat, I turned and found him standing in the corridor

0126~Luca~Vittorio had put us in a suite.I had seen the room allocation at the front desk and kept my expression exactly neutral.Internally, I was not filing it without reaction.I thought back to Vittorio at the estate entrance, seated in his wheelchair, watching everything with that quiet awareness he never lost. I remembered the small nod he had given me when no one else was paying attention. At the time, it had seemed like acknowledgment.Now, I revised that interpretation.The man was not resting.The man was still running things. It was definitely intentional.Aria had called him from the lobby. I had stayed far enough away to give the appearance of privacy, but I had watched her anyway. The control in her posture had been precise, but the frustration was there if you knew where to look. She was being controlled by her father, and she knew it, and there was nothing she could do about it.The call had ended before she was finished.That was Vittorio’s way.She had looked at m

0128~Aria~Stay away from Luca.That was the decision. It was clear and simple.My brain tried to respond immediately, and I shut it down before it could finish forming whatever argument it was about to make.Not helpful, I told myself.I sat up in the quiet of the Shanghai morning.Stay away from Luca. Be professional. Focus on the work. Go home.Four days. That was all this was.I could manage four days.He was not in the suite.I noticed it the moment I stepped out of the bedroom. The sitting room was empty. The door to the adjoining room was open, the bed already made, his things gone.He had been up before me.I stood there for a moment longer than necessary.The words from the night before were still somewhere in me. I could not decide what I wanted to do with that information. I pushed the thoughts away. I just boxed them, like everything else I was not dealing with right now.Breakfast. Then work.That was the plan.….Céline sat beside me, already focused, her tablet open a

0130~Luca~ I couldn’t sleep.That wasn’t new. Sleep had become something I negotiated with instead of something that simply happened, and Shanghai had done nothing to make that easier.Being in the same space with Aria too didn't help. I lay in the adjoining room.What happened was still replaying in my head. One minute she gripped my chest to kiss me back and the next she pushed me away like I was a plague. She still felt it.That was the first truth.She was still protecting herself.That was the second.Both existed at once, and I had been living inside that contradiction for weeks. Shanghai had simply made it impossible to ignore. A pool, a skyline, her in a bikini, and suddenly restraint.I turned over.---I got up at five.Not because I had anything resembling a plan. Staying in bed, running the same thoughts in circles, was getting me nowhere. Movement felt better than stillness when my mind refused to cooperate.I dressed quietly and stepped out.The corridor was empty. I