Love,Written In Ruins-Chapter 48: Ruin Me

Andrés was driving like a man fleeing an apocalypse—or like a man who had just been informed his older brother had been replaced by a body double with softer morals and a disturbing generosity streak.

He gripped the steering wheel of his own car—a matte-black beast—so hard he thought the leather might actually split. The engine roared with a frequency that usually soothed his nerves, but today his mind was a chaotic mess of disbelief. If the world wasn’t ending, could someone please, for the love of all things holy, explain why Luciano was giving away his favorite McLaren? And not just giving it away to a business associate or a high-ranking lieutenant, but to a total stranger in the name of she is the "best friend of my fiancée."

Andrés had just stepped out of the shower that morning, water still dripping from his hair, when Ian knocked and entered with that carefully neutral expression he used when delivering bad news disguised as instructions.

"Mr. De La Vega asked me to give you the transfer papers," Ian had said, handing over a slim folder.

​"For what?" Andrés had asked, a towel still looped around his waist, suspicion already blooming in his chest like a noxious weed.

"The McLaren."

The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush a lesser man. Andrés had blinked. Once. Twice. "Say that again. Slowly, Ian. Use small words so I don’t accidentally kill you."

​"So you can take it to the new owner," Ian added calmly, unbothered by the threat. "She’s... Miss Winters’ best friend."

Andrés had laughed then. A short, cynical bark that echoed off the marble walls. "You’re joking. This is a hazing ritual. Luciano is behind the door with a camera, isn’t he?"

Ian hadn’t blinked. He didn’t even twitch.

​"And where exactly am I meeting this miracle worker? This woman who has managed to charm a supercar out of the coldest man in Califonia?" Andrés asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"The Sweet Spot."

That was the moment Andrés had been certain the world was ending. The Four Horsemen were likely currently saddling up in the garage. And as if the car massacre wasn’t enough, Luciano had casually mentioned—casually, as if discussing the weather—that he was going to the movies with Eloise later.

​​"The movies," Andrés groaned now, rubbing his temples as he felt a migraine beginning to blossom behind his eyes. "My brother, the man who treats the Geneva Convention like a casual checklist, is currently sitting in a dark theater eating popcorn like a commoner. The De La Vega legacy is being dismantled by a woman with a soft smile and a penchant for rom-coms."

​​"Like what the actual hell," Andrés muttered, swerving through a yellow light and ignoring the chorus of horns behind him.

Luciano loved that McLaren. He loved its aerodynamics, its cold precision, its predatory stance. It was the only car Luciano hadn’t allowed Andrés to "borrow" more than once. In fact, Andrés had been so fond of the car—and so desperate to annoy his stoic older brother—that he had commissioned a customized "Listo" silver fox charm. It was a masterpiece of sterling silver, a tiny, smirking fox that Andrés had surreptitiously attached to the McLaren’s key fob during a family brunch.

Luciano had hated it with a passion that bordered on the theatrical.

​Which, of course, made Andrés love it more.

Luciano had called the charm childish, irritating, and "an affront to the car’s aesthetic." Every time Luciano removed it and placed it on the kitchen island with a silent, murderous glare, it mysteriously found its way back onto the keys. Andrés had perfected the art of irritation; it was his primary contribution to the family dynamic. It was brotherhood. It was a silent, high-stakes war of the fox.

If only Andrés knew that the fox was the primary reason the car was being gifted, he would have probably vomited blood.

Luciano hadn’t just given away a three-hundred-thousand-dollar vehicle to be generous; he had given it away because it was the only way to permanently excise that damn silver fox from his life. If there was no McLaren, there were no keys. If there were no keys, there was no fox. Luciano was a man of radical solutions.

But Andrés was blissfully unaware of this petty motivation. To him, this was proof that Luciano had finally lost his mind to the "Eloise Effect."

​He pulled into the parking lot of The Sweet Spot, the matte-black paint of his car looking like a bruise against the suburban backdrop. He let out a dry, cynical laugh when he saw the neon sign. Pastel pink. Fluffy clouds. It looked like a unicorn had thrown up on a storefront.

​​"The Sweet Spot," he echoed, his mind immediately wandering to much less innocent interpretations of the phrase. "The owner must have a twisted sense of humor or a very unfortunate lack of self-awareness."

He checked the folder on the passenger seat. He was here to get a signature and leave. He expected to find a woman sitting by herself—likely a mousey, terrified girl who looked like she’d spent the last forty-eight hours crying for Eloise.

He walked through the pastel-colored doors, his eyes scanning the room with the predatory efficiency he’d honed in the trenches of the De La Vega empire.

Then he saw Eric—the golden boy, the one who had always hidden behind money and his mother’s shadow—pointing at him with a trembling hand.

Andrés stopped.

His mouth curved into a slow, humorless smile. So that was how this afternoon was going to unfold.

​Then, the woman sitting across from Eric turned around.

​The air left Andrés’s lungs as if he’d been hit by a freight train. The folder in his hand suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, and for the first time in his professional life, his knees actually buckled. The world stopped. The ticking of the clock, the hum of the freezer, the sound of Eric’s whimpering—it all vanished.

​The pastel walls of the ice cream shop blurred and faded, replaced by the neon-drenched, sweat-soaked atmosphere of two years ago.

​He had been at the House of Yes—the kind of club where the weird, the wealthy, and the beautiful went to disappear. He had been standing in the alleyway behind the club, leaning against a graffiti-covered brick wall, smoking a cigarette as he dealt with a particularly annoying business call regarding a shipment of "construction materials" held up in Jersey.

​Then, she had appeared.

​She hadn’t seen him. She was pacing the narrow alley, her heels clicking on the damp pavement, her phone pressed to her ear.

​​"El, I’m telling you, I’m doing it today," she had said into the receiver, her voice filled with a fierce, reckless determination that sent a spark down Andrés’s spine. "I’m going to find the most handsome guy in this place—someone who looks like Jade—and I’m going to have sex with him."

Andrés had paused, his own phone call forgotten. Jade? He knew the name. It was the main character of that dark romance novel everyone was obsessed with—the one the writer had just killed off in a brutal cliffhanger that had caused a literal protest on social media.

"Jayla, it’s just a character!" a muffled voice—Eloise’s voice, though he hadn’t known it then—replied through the phone. "You don’t have to do this."

Andrés had frozen, the cigarette halfway to his lips. He watched her as a slow, wolfish grin spread across his face. She was a vision in a short, black leather skirt and a shiny tank top that caught the dim alley light. Her hair was a wild halo of curls, and her red lipstick was a defiant streak across her face.

"He is not just a character, El!" Jayla had snapped back, her eyes flashing with a grief that was both absurd and strangely beautiful. "He was my favorite person in the entire series. The author is a sadist. So, yes, I’m doing it. I bought strawberry-flavored condoms. In fact, I bought one of every flavor. I’m going to find my Jade, and I’m going to ruin him."

​Andrés had choked on his smoke, a ragged cough escaping him.

​Jayla hadn’t even looked his way. She was too deep in her fictional mourning, her mind already set on her hunt.

​The fact that this woman was willing to sleep with a total stranger to spite a book character had amused Andrés more than anything in years. And what was he, if not a man who loved a challenge? He had been at the club to find a distraction. A clean night. No names. No strings.

​Apparently, he didn’t need to look far. He had found her because his distraction had just walked right into his alleyway.

He had watched the curve of her legs in those heels, the way the red lipstick made her mouth look like a challenge he wanted to accept and then conquer. He had spent the next three minutes imagining exactly how he would dismantle that outfit and which "flavor" they would start with.

​"Don’t worry, El," she’d said. "I’ll tell you every single detail tomorrow. Every. Single. One."

She had gasped when he stepped out of the shadows and said, "I volunteer."

Eloise had squeaked something incoherent on the line as Jayla’s phone slipped from her fingers and clattered to the wet pavement. She spun around, eyes wide, heart slamming against her ribs like it was trying to escape.

The man leaning against the graffiti-scrawled wall was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a black button-down rolled to the elbows, sleeves straining against his forearms. The dim alley light caught the sharp cut of his jaw, and eyes so icy blue they looked luminous in the shadows. He was smoking lazily, the cherry of his cigarette glowing as he exhaled a slow plume toward the night sky.

He looked exactly like Jade—dangerous, beautiful, and utterly unbothered by the world.

"I volunteer," he repeated, voice low and rough, laced with amusement and something far hungrier.

Jayla’s mouth went dry. "You... heard all that?"

"Every word." He pushed off the wall, flicking the cigarette away. Sparks scattered across the ground like dying stars as he stepped closer. "Strawberry-flavored condoms, huh? Bold choice. A bit sweet for my palate, but I’m willing to compromise."

Heat flooded her cheeks, but she lifted her chin, refusing to back down. "I’m not joking."

"Neither am I." He stopped just close enough that she could smell smoke and expensive cologne—something dark, spiced and masculine. His gaze dragged down her body, slow and deliberate, lingering on the red lipstick, the leather skirt riding high on her thighs. "You want to ruin someone tonight, cariño? Ruin me."