All Chapters of The Wrong Bernardi: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

25 Chapters

almost is what you do best

Rhysand stayed silent.I remained standing beside the table, one hand on top of a stack of documents, the other holding a pen. A tiny, utterly useless weapon if a man as tall as Rhysand Bernadi decided to stand too close and breathe in a way that threatened economic stability.He slid one hand into his trouser pocket. “Security access,” he said at last. “For this wedding, every key vendor has to go through a background check before the final contract.”I looked at him like he had just said something that did not make the skin at the back of my neck painfully aware he still remembered the shape of my name without an honorific.“Yes,” I said, opening the security folder with a movement that was far too calm. “We’re used to working with vendor screenings. Florists, catering, production crew, lighting, transportation, all of them can be put on the vetting list.”“Not can. Will.”I gave him a thin smile. “I love it when men come into my office to explain verbs to me.”His eyes did not chan

The Warmest Version of Him

A little after noon, my house smelled like garlic, butter, tomatoes surrendering elegantly in a pan, and one small child who should have changed clothes two hours ago but was still roaming around in his preschool uniform like a miniature CEO fresh from a board meeting.“AIDEN.”“VROOOOOM!”“Aiden de Cruz, if those bike wheels touch my wall again, I’m going to send you to preschool alone in an Uber with an apology note for the driver.”He shot past the kitchen island on his little red bike, his chubby legs pedaling fast, his black fringe falling over his forehead, his preschool tie already crooked like he had just walked out of an illegal toddler racing club. One side of his cardigan was caught at his waist, one sock had slipped down to his ankle, and his face, God help me, his face looked far too handsome for a boy who had just nearly crashed into a barstool that cost as much as a sane person’s electric bill.“Mami, I’m a professional racer!”“You’re a professional at raising my blood

What Trust Can Do

After lunch, my house became the peaceful version of itself.Not actual peace, of course. I did not live in a monastery. I lived with Aiden de Cruz, a four-year-old who considered the word quiet a capitalist concept that needed to be resisted.But at least there were no bike wheels insulting my marble, no botanical sculpture from India whose life was being threatened, and no Bernadi man standing in my conference room asking for my home address in a low voice, as if privacy were an appetizer.The television was on in the living room, playing an old telenovela that somehow always made more sense than my life. On-screen, a woman in a red dress slapped a bearded man with enough force to rearrange a family inheritance.I leaned back on the sofa, one leg tucked beneath me, my hand wrapped around a mug of tea that had gone cold. My hair was twisted messily on top of my head. Lipstick gone. Earrings off. I had traded my office blazer for soft knit pants and a thin cream sweater, the kind of o

Breathe, Boss

The house seemed to go an inch quieter.Aiden was still chattering about his secret garage. Elma was still breathing with the peaceful ease of a woman who had not read the words off-site in a work message.But something inside my chest closed a drawer.Slowly.Click.Gracie.No doubt Rhysand had not written his name in big letters across the invitation to war. No. The man was not stupid. The man did not need to drag me there with his own hands when he could make the path look like work.Gracie was asking.Gracie trusted me.Gracie with her gardenia perfume and warm smile, Gracie who had laughed when I told her swans bite, Gracie who had hugged me as if I were not the woman who had once woken up in her fiancé’s bed five years ago and escaped before sunrise.I stared at the message until the letters began to look too neat.Santa Barbara estate.Private walkthrough.This afternoon.Rhysand will be there.I set my phone down on the countertop, then picked it up again because leaving the t

The Family Telenovela

By dinner, I was in my kitchen with garlic on my hands and denial in my bloodstream, cooking Colombian food like I hadn’t just spent the afternoon beside my beautiful client and his fiance, a man who kept brushing up against every locked thing inside me.No one needed to know.Not Elma, who was now sitting in a patio chair with a thin cardigan and the face of a woman who had promised not to eat too much, then lost to the smell of hogao.Not Saba, who had arrived from Stanford two hours ago with her hair thrown into a careless ponytail, an oversized gray hoodie, cargo pants, sneakers that looked like they had once kicked down the door of an energy lab, and a laptop bag stuffed with thick books on oil futures, renewable transition, and possibly one expensive lip gloss she had bought while pretending not to care about beauty.Not Aiden, who was sitting in his chair with the iPad propped up in front of his plate, his fringe falling over his forehead, his cheeks puffed out because he was c

Locked, Armed, Awake

Dinner unfolded the way every de Cruz family dinner did, which meant it was never really dinner. It was more like a talk show with food and emotional threats. Mama gave instructions from the iPad on how to cut an avocado. Papa asked whether my home security system had been updated. Javier complained about a meeting in Bogotá with mining people who, according to him, still believed email was witchcraft. Saba told us about a Stanford professor who wore ugly sandals while explaining energy geopolitics, as if his feet were not actively destroying his academic credibility.Elma, who had started the night trying to be polite, eventually reached for her third maduro and stopped pretending she was not part of this family.I sat in the middle of it all, feeding Aiden, feeding myself, laughing at the right moments, throwing in comments when necessary, dodging Saba’s questions with the kind of diplomatic skill that deserved its own line on my résumé.I took a breath and gave Aiden another bite b

The Ocean Kept Answering

I leaned against the kitchen island. The kitchen was clean, the pan was already in the dishwasher, the leftover ajiaco was packed into glass containers, and I had managed to save the last of the hogao from Saba before she could spoon it up like dessert. I had dimmed the kitchen lights. Only the pendant lights above the island were on, soft yellow reflecting off the white marble.Ahead of me, the large glass windows reflected the beach.Night made everything look more expensive and more secretive. The ocean moved dark beneath the moonlight, thin white lines of surf breaking in the distance like lace thrown onto the water. The coastal houses on either side had been reduced to dots of light. The wind stirred the sheer curtain near the terrace door I had left cracked open to air out the smell of dinner.Beautiful.Annoying, how the world could stay beautiful even when the inside of your head was still putting away knives.I lifted my glass again.In the surface of the window, my own face

Coffee, Carbs, and Legal Demands

At six in the morning, the house was still wearing its innocent face.The sky outside the kitchen windows was not fully light yet. The line of the ocean was still bluish gray, the waves moving slowly under the first lift of morning, and the coastal houses in the distance looked like expensive boxes that had not quite woken up. My kitchen had a slight chill to it, the marble beneath my bare feet still holding on to the last of the night, and the coffee machine hummed like the only rational creature in this house.I came downstairs before Aiden woke up.That was strategy, not a healthy habit.If that child woke up first, the morning turned into a press conference in pajamas, legal demands, and “Mami, where’s my race car?” repeated until God Himself considered sending an invoice.I set my phone on the countertop after opening the security camera app for the third time since I had opened my eyes.Garage. Empty.Main gate. Empty.Back terrace. Clean.Side balcony. Agave moving slowly in th

No. It can't be

Almost two hours after leaving home, I pulled into Santa Barbara with a stiff back, my second coffee gone cold in the cupholder, and a newly formed belief that anyone who drove slowly in the left lane should lose the right to choose their car color.I had driven myself.Obviously.The black SUV and driver from the Bernadi team had been waiting outside my house at 2:45, punctual in a way that felt vaguely threatening. The man behind the wheel wore a dark suit, a clear earpiece, and the expression of someone who could probably evacuate a small family from a war zone without spilling his coffee.I sent him back.Politely.More or less.Nina received three messages from Bernadi security afterward, two phone calls, and one email titled TRANSPORTATION PROTOCOL, which I immediately filed in a digital folder named Rich Men Experiencing Boundaries.Now my white sedan wound its way up a narrow road above the Santa Barbara coastline. The ocean stretched out to my left, deep blue beneath the afte

Forty-Seven Acres, No Way Out

In the front courtyard, water moved quietly through a stone fountain. Pink bougainvillea climbed one wall, wild enough to make the old architecture feel alive. The massive wooden front doors stood open, watched by two members of the household staff and a security officer who seemed to consider smiling an information leak.“Maya!”Gracie came out from beneath one of the stone arches before I had the chance to introduce myself to anyone.She looked like a summer campaign that somehow did not make other women want to set the billboard on fire. A butter-yellow linen dress skimmed her calves, thin leather sandals on her feet, her blonde hair pulled into a low knot with a few loose pieces around her face. Sunglasses rested on top of her head. In one hand, she carried a beige folder of venue notes that was still firmly closed and looked as though it had not been touched since it came off the printer.Of course it had not.Her face already told me everything.She had fallen in love with the h

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