Page 82 of Sold to the Silver Foxes

We mean well. She even smiles. But I see her shoulders hunch, as if she’s bracing for the other shoe to fall. She’s grateful—grateful, damn it—because she still thinks our permission matters more than her choice.

I nearly throttle my spoon.

Breakfast dissolves into logistics. Braces, grab-bars, insurance fight predictions. I miss half of it. More than half, probably. Numbers ricochet around me but don’t stick.

Tabitha finally rises. “I promised Erin’s nurse I’d FaceTime before morning vitals.”

I stand too fast, and my chair legs scrape the kitchen’s stone floor. She squeezes my shoulder on the way out, a gentlethanks for understandingthat makes me want to break something. She pads down the corridor and out of sight.

Nico scrolls through emails. Sal collects the oatmeal bowls. They’re acting like this is some kind of normal.

Not on my watch.

I slam a hand on the table. “Conference. Map room. Now.”

The map room is a museum of old ambitions. Floor-to-ceiling cabinets of expedition charts, a bronze sextant, globe lamps glowing pale. Nico stands near a nineteenth-century relief of Patagonia, and Sal closes the door with a quiet click that sounds more final than it should.

I plant myself mid-carpet. “The end of the contract is four days away.”

Sal crosses his arms over a navy cardigan. “You think we’ve forgotten?”

“Everything that happened over breakfast feels like we’re all pretending this isn’t happening,” I snap. “She thinks she has to pack her bags and disappear, and then reappear to have a job at the company. Like she has to pretend to be our girlfriend to work for us or something. How can you both sit there and be calm about this?”

Nico pockets his phone, face calm water over deep churn. “What do you want, Dante?”

“I want her to stay. Not because of that fucking contract, but because she chooses us.” I rub the back of my neck. “But how do we ask? Move in forever, please sign here? That’s just another leash.”

“So you’re worried about locking her in?” Sal lifts a shoulder. “I’m worried she’ll sprint out the door before sunrise to avoid goodbyes.”

I pace past the Dolomites model. “What can we offer that another suitor can’t? Can’t be cash. She never cared about money unless it was for her family. Can’t be adrenaline trips. She’ll smile but say Erin needs a routine. It needs to be something only the three of us, as a package, can deliver.”

Silence, thick as varnish. Nico studies a wall chart of ancient sea routes, lips pressed thin. Sal watches him, then returns his gaze to me, like we’re a tennis match and he’s the line judge.

I pull at my hair in frustration. “We’re billionaires and geniuses, and we can’t figure out how to keep the woman we love? Ridiculous. We’re ridiculous. We don’t deserve her if we can’t figure this out.”

Sal’s voice is gravel-low. “Can’t hostile-takeover a heart.”

“Then an invitation,” I counter, “but one she can’t mistake for charity.”

Sal nods once, slow. “An invitation that says build a future with us, on your terms.”

My brain sparks a dozen half-baked stunts. A proposal skywritten over the villa, a flash-mob dance starring Erin, a ring forged from hospital titanium scraps. Too trivial. Too showy. She deserves substance.

Nico finally turns from the map wall. He looks at us, something sharpening behind his eyes, the way numbers align right before he closes a quarter sixty million ahead.

He sets both palms on the table. “I have an idea.”

35

NICO

The launch hall—threethousand square meters of matte-black concrete and programmable LEDs—used to be a turbine factory. Tonight, it’s the heartbeat of Moretti Brands. Overhead, kinetic light bars sweep like skating blades, and below, two hundred reporters, buyers, and influencers mill around a runway shaped like an infinity loop. The perfect symbol for a line called Muv—fitness, flexibility, momentum without end.

I stand at stage right with the show caller, earpiece in, tablet glowing with cue codes. On the monitor feed the opening film rolls. Slow-motion dancers vaulting over neon hurdles, legs sheathed in our seam-free leggings, hands gripping the convertible day pack that morphs from purse to cross-body. Costas filmed it, Tabitha choreographed it, though only three of us know that second part.

Speaking of—she appears from backstage, tugging at the collar of her midnight-blue jumpsuit (Muv Women’s Series prototype). Stunning on her. Dante insisted she sit in the front row rather than strut the catwalk, to keep scrutiny manageable.

“How do I look?” she whispers.

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