Chapter 70: Fear

Tom never expected this... Whatever Sienna was on about, he couldn’t deal with it at the moment.

Which man would expect any sort of confrontation after a hot car sex, which almost got exposed?

He just wanted to take a shower and hit the bed.

"I should just ignore her." Tom decided, not even curious a bit about what she might be fuming about. Or maybe he was just too tired to deal.

With that decision, he stepped out of the Mercedes, shut the door behind him then walked ahead.

Sienna was still waiting with that transparent anger. For a second she only watched him come up the driveway then she lashed out when he was closer.

"So this is what you’ve been up to," she began.

Tom’s step slowed. His plan of ignoring her shattered immediately as Sienna looked at her phone and shook her head.

"What’s that?" Tom demanded.

She moved then, closing the distance between them with fast and angry steps, and she lifted her phone into his line of sight.

The image on the screen was unmistakable even before he fully focused on it: his black Mercedes under the fueling station lights, the timestamp in the corner, and a woman in an oversized gown and face cap opening the passenger door before sliding inside.

His lips parted slightly in shock but he recovered immediately, knowing that it wasn’t too strange. She was bound to find out sooner or later.

"So, why are you worked up over it?" He asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.

The question threw Sienna off balance for a second. And the genuine look of confusion on his face made her anger became more red.

"A disguised woman entering your car at a station far enough from anywhere convenient to look intentional..." Her eyes flicked from the phone to his face as she laid emphasis on each word.

"Do you have any idea what you’re playing with?" she gritted out.

Tom’s gaze flickered to the image again, and he let his gaze stayed there for a moment longer, then rose to meet hers. When she drew breath to raise her voice again, he spoke first;

"What I know is this is my business and we agreed that you will stay out of it." The words were quietly said but they still stopped her.

The agreement...

Sienna’s mouth closed hard, as her fury knocked against the terms she had accepted with her own hand.

Tom watched the struggle move through her expression, seeing the instinct to demand, to corner, to force the conversation into the shape she preferred, colliding with the reality that she no longer had unlimited rights to do so.

"You know that whatever I do outside the appearances we arranged is not your business, why then are you still monitoring me?" he demanded firmly although his voice was still quiet. As if he wasn’t angry about the confrontation. As if the matter of discourse wasn’t even anything worth his energy and that irritated Sienna further.

Her fingers tightened around the phone as she gritted out; "I was making sure you didn’t create a problem that would land on me."

His quiet voice had succeeded in forcing hers to do likewise.

"By tracking my car?"

"By knowing when you’re being reckless." She turned the screen slightly, as if the photo itself were evidence that justified everything.

"That’s Stella Marchetti. Not some nameless girl from a bar. If this gets out, it won’t be gossip for a day. It’ll become a scandal. For her. For me. For the launch. For every name standing close enough to get pulled into it." she literally growled.

Tom looked at her for a long second then scoffed, believing that was enough to have her understand that he didn’t see this as a problem.

Sienna’s scrowl deepened, not understanding why he scoffed.

"Then delete the picture. Make sure nothing leaves your phone. And stop following my movements. Won’t that solve everything?" he offered her an explanation.

"That leaves no problem, does it?" He added with a nonchalant shrug.

The silence that followed had weight. Somewhere down the street a dog barked once and went quiet again.

Sienna stared at him as if waiting for the older version of Tom to surface, the one who absorbed her temper and folded around her urgency. That version did not appear. What stood in front of her held the boundary and made her look at it.

She opened her mouth but no words came out of it then she swallowed hard.

"...How do you even get to know Stella Marchetti?" she asked, much quieter now.

"That isn’t your business either."

He stated firmly then stepped past her and went into the house.

Sienna remained on the entrance steps, blinking in shock and disbelief.

’Tom Harlow and Stella Marchetti?’

When she had caught him with Davina, she had concluded that Davina was just a horny bitch who couldn’t control herself after getting drunk, she had made herself believe that that was the case because there was no way in hell, Davina would open her mouth for some random man without nothing to their name, sucking their cock with clear eyes.

But now Stella Marchetti? Even disguising to meet up?

Surprise and disbelief came first, cold and disorienting. Then anger followed, thicker and less honest than she wanted it to be.

Then she told herself it was about risk, about her image, about the launch and the investment and the fact that his name was still legally tied to hers. That should have been enough. It had to be enough. And still the question remained under all of it, irritating and persistent: how had he reached a woman like that at all?

~~~~~~~~~

Morning arrived without drama, at still yet...

Tom sat on the edge of the bed with his phone in his hand, already opened Stella’s conversation.

The first version of the message he had typed had been too direct. The second had sounded forced. He erased both and stared at the empty field, still feeling the residual tension from the fueling station under his ribs.

He only wanted to know whether she had managed Adrian. Whether the cover had held or whether the night had collapsed after he left her to repair it alone.

Before he could begin a third attempt, the System chimed.

[What exactly is Host doing?]

Tom’s thumb paused over the keyboard. "Checking on Stella."

[Why?]

"To see if she handled her fiancé."

[Because you feel responsible?]

He exhaled through his nose, expecting that question to be unnecessary. "Yes."

There was a short pause from the system and when it chimed now, its tone sounded sharp;

[Then correct your posture,]

[Guilt is a lover’s reflex. You are not walking a soft romance route. This is Netori. The objective is displacement. Preferential pull. The transfer of attention, need, and emotional priority away from the original man and toward you.]

Tom’s jaw tightened slightly.

[If what you have been doing was effective,] [you will not even need to be the hero who helps her save anything. A woman whose control is slipping does not always wait to be asked whether she survived the consequences. She reaches out when she has taken care of it herself.]

The words settled over Tom with an uncomfortable landing.

Then as if on cue, his phone began to ring.

Stella’s name lit the screen.

For a moment he only stared at it, his hand shaking slightly around the phone. Relief and dread arrived in his mind together, tangled so tightly he could not separate them.

She was calling which might mean the cover had held, or that everything had come apart and he was about to hear the shape of the damage.

The phone kept ringing but the fear that he had ruined something irreversible held him still...