Page 103 of Titus

“Mm,” I said, pretending to drink my water and not drool. “How do I do what?” I said, reaching for a grape.

“Perform on such a grand scale for elites who insist it will never be good enough?”

I shrugged, looking out at the water. “Who knows?” I looked back at him. “How do you do it? Run empires and all, and go to the beach like it’s any other day?”

He smiled at me and adjusted his Ray Bans. “The running empires thing is most likely just inherited from my father,” he chuckled. “The whole beach thing is taking more effort to make it seem as if it’s any other day.” He tossed his empty sandwich bag back into the cooler. “But I believe I was the one asking the questions.”

“Right,” I answered. “I honestly don’t know. My mother was a perfectionist. Nothing was out of place in her kitchen, and no plate left her sight without some elaborate design. I watched her and the rest of the family’s staff constantly solve endless problems, each time coming up with the quickest, cleverest solutions while keeping to impossibly high standards. Then there were many events,” I smirked at him, knowing he would understand this part intimately. “I overheard negotiations and watched how elites behaved, and I quickly learned to anticipate the needs of the ultra-wealthy before they became requests. I guess I just understood luxury without ever belonging to it.”

“And it makes a lot more sense now why you are the way you are and why you are highly sought after as well,” he replied. “If you don’t mind me asking, who was the family she worked for?”

“My mother, Isabella, worked for the Valdéz family outside Madrid.”

For several seconds, Titus said absolutely nothing. Then I watched as he dragged one hand across the back of his neck and looked out toward the water like he was piecing something together in his head.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath.

“Do you know them?” I asked, initially surprised, before remembering that if there was a powerful family in any neighborhood, all the others knew about them. “Well, of course you probably do.”

He looked back at me. “Catalina, the Valdéz family isn’t just some wealthy family in Spain.”

I frowned slightly. “I mean… I know they’re wealthy.”

His laugh was low, almost disbelieving. “Wealthy?” He shook his head. “The Valdéz family owned parts of European luxury hospitality before most people even grasped what that market would become.”

“Really?”

“Yes, the Valdéz family built power differently from families like mine,” he explained calmly. “Old European money. Political connections. Quiet influence.” His eyes held mine. “The kind of people who could destroy business deals at dinner parties without ever raising their voices.”

Holy shit.

I blinked. “You know them personally?”

A slow smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “My father hated them.”

“Hated?” I repeated.

“Without a doubt,” Titus chuckled softly. “My father, Herbert Hawk, spent years trying to expand Hawk Enterprise across parts of Spain and Southern Europe. The Valdéz family blocked several acquisitions.”

I stared at him. “Oh damn.”

“They embarrassed him publicly once,” he continued. “It cost him an expansion deal he’d spent years building.” His smile deepened. “I don’t think he ever emotionally recovered from it.”

I laughed before I could stop myself.

“You find this amusing?” he asked with an amused expression.

“A little,” I admitted.

“Trust me, my father didn’t.”

I looked back out toward the ocean, suddenly seeing pieces of my childhood in a different light.

The massive estates and the endless private dinners. The politicians and businessmen constantly surrounding the family. I’d grown up around that and never fully grasped the level of power attached to it.

“That’s insane,” I said quietly.

“No,” Titus answered calmly beside me. “What’s insane is that the daughter of the woman who worked for the Valdéz family somehow ended up completely unimpressed by me.”