Chapter 2 - The Man in the Black Maybach
The torn halves of the twelve-million-dollar sponsorship contract floated away in the black rainwater rushing down our Highland Park gutter while Chase stood paralyzed under the porch chandelier.
For five seconds, nobody breathed except the wind howling off Lake Michigan through the bare oak trees.
Then Matteo DeSantis stepped forward onto the bottom stone step, holding his oversized black umbrella directly over my head so not another drop of freezing rain touched my hair.
His dark, heavy-lidded eyes stayed locked on my bleeding lip for a heartbeat before lifting past my shoulder to fix Chase with a stare so cold and murderous that my husband instinctively took a half step backward into the foyer.
"Get in the car, Missus Whitaker," Matteo said, his deep voice cutting smoothly through the sound of the storm.
"Wait a minute, DeSantis, hold on right there," Chase shouted, his arrogance evaporating into sudden, raw panic as he realized who was standing in his driveway and what had just gone into the storm drain.
Paying zero attention to Brielle tugging frantically on his sleeve, Chase ran halfway down the wet stone steps in his indoor loafers with his hands raised in desperate explanation.
"Mister DeSantis, you do not understand what you just walked into—my wife and I were just having a heated domestic misunderstanding because I found out she met with you behind my back, and if that folder was the primary sponsorship agreement for the Daytona season opener, we can talk about this inside 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 as his driver, a six-foot-three former marine named Luca, stepped quietly around the front fender with his hand inside his suit 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 professional worth a twelve-million-dollar investment," Matteo said in a low, lethal tone that made Chase stop dead on the wet flagstones.
"In the last thirty seconds, I have learned two things: first, that your wife is a remarkably persuasive liar when she is trying to save an ungrateful coward, and second, that 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 paper-white under the floodlights, his mouth opening and closing without a single sound coming out 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 Edens Expressway, the adrenaline that had held my spine straight in that foyer finally gave way, and my hands began to tremble in my lap.
Matteo sat across from me in the rear captain’s chair, unbuttoned his charcoal wool coat, and drew a clean white linen handkerchief from his breast pocket.
Instead of handing it to me and looking away the way a polite stranger 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, noticing the faint red mark blooming high on my left cheekbone above the cut on my mouth.
"The first time was when I reminded him that I sat beside his hospital bed for thirty-nine nights after his crash, and the second time was when I refused to apologize for it," I answered, surprised by how steady my voice sounded in the quiet cabin.
"You came to my office at ten o’clock at night six weeks ago wearing a rain-soaked trench coat and carrying three years of hand-calculated aerodynamic data to beg for his company’s survival, and he used a street surveillance photo of me walking you to your car as an excuse to move his publicist into your bedroom," Matteo said, his dark eyes narrowing as he studied my face.
"How did you know she was his publicist," I asked, pulling back slightly in surprise.
Matteo reached into his leather briefcase beside the seat and pulled out a thick black corporate intelligence binder stamped with the silver crest of DeSantis Logistics Risk Management.
"Because I did not drive out to your house in the middle of a November storm just to hand-deliver a sponsorship check, Vivian," Matteo revealed calmly.
"Before I put twelve million dollars of my family’s capital into any distressed company, my forensic auditors strip every bank account, county lien, and corporate filing down to the studs—and at five o’clock this afternoon, they uncovered what your husband and Brielle Sutton actually did four months ago when their affair began," Matteo said as he opened the binder on my knees.
I looked down at the certified documents under the soft amber reading light of the Maybach, and the breath froze completely inside my lungs.
Four months ago—on the exact week Chase had kissed my forehead and thanked me for saving his career—he had taken out a four-point-five-million-dollar high-interest commercial bridge loan from a predatory Cayman Islands lender called Baron Capital to fund his luxury lifestyle and buy a secret Gold Coast condo for Brielle.
Instead of securing the loan with his racing team’s assets, Chase had transferred ownership of Whitaker Motorsports’ race cars and corporate licenses into a brand-new Delaware company called Sutton-Whitaker Racing LLC—and he had forged my signature as the sole personal guarantor on the four-point-five-million-dollar debt using my pre-marital design consulting company and our Highland Park house as collateral!
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"The loan defaults at five o’clock this Friday afternoon unless the primary sponsorship is signed," Matteo told me quietly as my cell phone began ringing nonstop inside my purse with Chase’s name flashing on the screen.
"Your husband never intended to use my twelve million dollars to pay off that debt, Vivian—he and Brielle staged tonight’s confrontation to drive you out of the house before Friday so that when he intentionally defaults on the old company’s loan in forty-eight hours, the federal marshals will seize every penny you own and prosecute you for bank fraud while he and Brielle walk into the Daytona season debt-free."
