All Chapters of Forbidden Never Felt This Good: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

0042~Aria~Saturday arrived quietly.No alarms, no schedule pushing through the door before I was ready for it, no back-to-back demands before I'd even had coffee. Just morning light coming through the curtains at a reasonable hour and the particular stillness of a weekend that hadn't decided what it wanted to be yet.I lay in bed for a few minutes and simply allowed it.My father had Luca occupied with something, I had heard voices in the study corridor early, the low murmur of men working through problems that don't pause for weekends. That was fine. I had spent enough weeks following the schedule, to the office, to the careful choreography of having someone monitor my every movement, that the idea of a few uncomplicated hours felt like something I hadn't realized I was hungry for until it arrived.I needed groceries and toiletries. The kitchen had flagged several things running low and I had been meaning to sort it for days, I wanted some things I could have as snacks and the week

0044~Luca~The meeting wrapped by early afternoon.Vittorio's inner circle had gathered in the main conference room, eight men around a table, the kind of men who don't need things explained twice and don't ask questions that don't need asking. We went through everything. Jean's confirmed affiliations with the Viper gang, the extent of the network, which of his contacts had been identified and which still needed tracing, what the removal of their Underboss meant for the organization's next move. There were loose ends. There always are. But the immediate threat had been addressed and everyone in that room understood the message that had been sent.When the room cleared, I checked my phone.Russo’s updates from the outing were logged in sequence, timestamps, locations, nothing flagged. Clean trip. I scrolled through and was almost at the end when one entry made me stop.Minor incident in supermarket. Miss Santoro in brief contact with unknown male. No threat assessed. Situation resolve

0046~Aria~I didn't get a response from him. I didn't waste, I moved to action quickly. I pressed two fingers to his neck the way I had learned in a first aid course at Harvard that I had taken mostly because it fit my schedule and had never imagined I would actually need, okay and partly because I knew the kind of family I'm in. I found his pulse. Faint. Present. There."Okay," I said to myself. "Okay."I was already at the door. "Someone call the doctor. Now. The estate doctor, right now."Luca was in the corridor.Of course he was. I didn't have time to wonder how he had gotten there so fast, whether he had been nearby or not.“What happened?” Luca questioned. I just looked at him and said hurriedly, "My father. He's not responding."He called the doctor as soon as I said that.I went back to my father's side and sat on the edge of the bed and put my hand on his arm and kept it there. His breathing was shallow in a way that made my chest tighten every time I counted it. In, out.

0048~Luca~Fear gripped my heart clean."Aria?"My voice came out slightly less controlled than I would have liked. I was on my feet before I had fully decided to stand, phone still in my hand, running a fast calculation of how long she had been standing there and what direction she had come from and how much of that call she had been close enough to catch.She looked at me with an expression that was tired and open in the way people get after they've cried and come through the other side of it. Her eyes were slightly red at the edges. She had clearly come straight from her father's room."There you are," she said simply. "I was looking for you. Dad is awake. Come."That was it. No follow-up question. No tilted head or careful pause that would tell me she was holding something she had just heard. She turned and started back down the corridor, and I stood there for one second with my heart still doing what it was doing, and then I followed her.She didn't hear it. Or she heard it and

0050~Aria~"Pierre?"He smiled. The same one from the supermarket, unhurried, and genuine. "Aria." He said it with the tone of someone who had just watched something click into place and found it more satisfying than he expected. "I had a feeling we'd cross paths again. I just didn't picture it quite like this.""Neither did I," I said honestly."So you're Aria Santoro." He tilted his head slightly. "The new CEO.""That's me.""Interesting." He looked genuinely pleased about this, not in the calculating way some people look pleased when they realize they have a useful connection, but in the way of someone who has just discovered that a good story has an extra chapter. "Small world.""Apparently."He extended his hand properly this time, the formal version. "Let me introduce myself correctly. Pierre Beaumont. And this—" he gestured to the man beside him who had the neat, attentive quality of someone very good at his job, "—is my assistant, Landon."Landon nodded. "Miss. Santoro.""L