Chapter 2 - The Ring on the Curb
The torn halves of the twelve-million-dollar sponsorship contract floated away in the black rainwater rushing down our Highland Park gutter while my husband stood paralyzed under the porch lights.
For five full seconds, the only sound on the estate was the November wind howling off Lake Michigan through the bare oak trees.
Then Matteo DeSantis stepped onto the bottom stone step and held his black umbrella directly over my head to shield me from the freezing downpour.
His dark, heavy-lidded eyes stayed locked on my bleeding lip for a heartbeat before lifting past my shoulder to stare at Chase with an intensity so cold and lethal that Chase instinctively backed up a step into the foyer.
"Get in the car, Missus Whitaker," Matteo said, his deep voice cutting effortlessly through the storm.
"Wait a second, DeSantis, hold on right there," Chase shouted, his arrogance evaporating into raw panic as he realized who was standing at his gate and what had just gone into the storm drain.
Ignoring Brielle tugging on his arm, Chase ran halfway down the wet stone steps in his leather loafers with both hands raised in desperate explanation.
"Mister DeSantis, you do not understand what you just walked into—Vivian and I were just having a heated argument because I found out she met with you behind my back, and if that folder was the primary sponsorship deal for the Daytona opener, we can come inside and resolve this right now," Chase stammered through the rain.
Matteo did not raise his voice, nor did he take his hand off the open door of the Maybach while his bodyguard Luca stepped around the front fender with one hand inside his tailored coat.
"I drove up to Highland Park tonight because your wife spent ninety minutes six weeks ago convincing me that Chase Whitaker was a disciplined man worth twelve million dollars of my family’s capital," Matteo said in a quiet tone that made Chase freeze on the wet flagstones.
"In the last thirty seconds, I have learned that your wife was wasting her breath trying to save an ungrateful coward, and if you take one more step down this driveway toward her tonight, your next comeback will be learning how to walk without kneecaps," Matteo added softly.
Chase’s face went as white as chalk under the floodlights as I stepped into the warm cream leather cabin of the Maybach and Luca closed the heavy armored door behind me.
As the car glided silently away from the curb and turned south toward the expressway, the adrenaline that had kept me standing in that foyer finally faded, and my hands began to tremble in my lap.
Matteo sat across from me in the rear captain’s chair, unbuttoned his charcoal overcoat, and pulled a clean white linen handkerchief from his pocket.
Instead of handing it to me and looking away the way a polite acquaintance would have done, he leaned forward, tilted my chin up gently with two warm fingers, and pressed the folded linen against the split corner of my lip himself.
"He hit you twice," Matteo said quietly, his dark eyes noticing the red mark blooming high on my left cheekbone above my cut mouth.
"The first time was when I reminded him that I slept beside his hospital bed for thirty-nine nights after his crash, and the second time was when I refused to apologize for saying it," I answered in a steady voice.
"You came to my office at midnight six weeks ago carrying three years of hand-calculated aerodynamic data to beg for his company’s life, and he used a street photograph of me walking you to your car as an excuse to move his publicist into your house," Matteo said as he reached for a black leather intelligence binder resting beside his seat.
"How did you know she was his publicist," I asked in surprise.
"Because I did not drive out to Highland Park in a November storm just to deliver a sponsorship check, Vivian," Matteo replied calmly as he opened the binder across my knees.
"Before I invest twelve million dollars into any distressed business, my forensic auditors strip every bank account and county filing down to the bone—and at five o’clock this afternoon, they uncovered what your husband and Brielle Sutton actually did four months ago when their affair started," Matteo explained.
I looked down at the certified bank documents under the soft amber reading light of the cabin, and the breath froze completely in my lungs.
Four months ago, on the exact week Chase had kissed my forehead and called me the reason he was still driving, he had taken out a four-million-dollar predatory bridge loan from a Cayman Islands lender called Baron Capital to buy a secret Gold Coast condo for Brielle.
Even worse, Chase had transferred ownership of Whitaker Motorsports’ race cars and licenses into a brand-new Delaware shell company called Sutton-Whitaker Racing—and he had forged my signature as the sole personal guarantor on the four-million-dollar debt using my pre-marital engineering firm and our house as collateral.
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"That bridge loan defaults at five o’clock this Friday afternoon," Matteo told me quietly as my cell phone began ringing nonstop inside my bag with Chase’s name flashing on the screen.
"Your husband never intended to use my money to pay off that debt, Vivian—he and Brielle staged tonight’s fight to drive you out of the house before Friday so that when he intentionally defaults on the loan in forty-eight hours, federal marshals will seize every penny you own and arrest you for bank fraud while he and Brielle walk into Daytona debt-free."
