All Chapters of The Rival I Let In: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

Most of the night I lay in bed replaying the will reading in my head, the lawyer's voice, Vesper's carefully hidden satisfaction, my grandmother's handwriting on that envelope. By the time it was morning, I was more exhausted than when I had gone to bed, and that rage in my chest hadn't faded at all. If anything, it had settled into something colder.Nevertheless, I still got dressed for the office. Grief or not, will or not, Castellane Group had a scheduled negotiation session that morning, and I wasn't about to hand Vesper one more reason to say I wasn't ready. I should have guessed who would be sitting across the table. Marchetti Holdings was negotiating a distribution partnership with us, and of course Julianii was there in person, dark suit, sleeves not a millimeter out of place, sitting like he owned whatever room he walked into. He didn't look at me when I came in. That was almost worse than if he had."Miss Castellane." He said it evenly, the way he always did, like my

We met at Castellane House three days later to work out the details neither of us had bothered to discuss in his office.I'd spent most of those three days telling myself this was purely logistical. A business arrangement with a personal cover story. Nothing about it needed to feel complicated.Julianii arrived precisely on time, which I was already starting to expect from him, and I led him into the study. It felt strange having him there, in the one room in the house that still smelled faintly like my grandmother's perfume, but there wasn't anywhere else that felt appropriate for this particular conversation."I've made a list," I said, sitting behind the desk and sliding a sheet of paper across to him.He picked it up, scanning it with the same focused expression he used on contracts. "A list of rules.""If we're going to do this, we need boundaries. Clear ones.""Go on, then. Walk me through them."I folded my hands on the desk. "No unnecessary touching. Whatever is required for a