Depth of Desire (Epilogue)

First Press is a free, steamy extended epilogue to Depth of Desire, set six weeks after Diego and Samantha's happy ending. This billionaire family romance novella features an olive harvest on the de la Vega estate in Andalusia, all four brothers and the women who love them, a proud patriarch growing weaker, a first pressing he refuses to miss, one scorching night in a bed built for one, and the first glimpse of the couple at the heart of the series finale.

I've spent my whole life underwater. Nobody warned me about olives.

Six weeks after the glass hall opened, Diego's phone rings. It's Kate, who runs his family's estate. The first pressing is on Saturday, and his father has asked if he's coming.

Rafael de la Vega has never asked before.

So we go. Eight hundred hectares of groves, a mill that smells of cut grass and diesel, villages on the hills, and every de la Vega there is. Four brothers, four women who don't scare easily, and a rule that nobody eats at the first-oil lunch until they've picked.

I fall off a ladder in front of all of them. That isn't the worst part.

The worst part is the old man on the terrace under a blanket, who doesn't get up when his son arrives. I've spent years measuring slow decline while people with money tell me everything's fine. I know what I'm looking at. So do his sons. Nobody says it.

Then there's Juanma, charming to everyone on the estate except the one woman who has never been impressed by him. And she doesn't hide what she thinks of him either.

One harvest. One night at the mill. One family deciding where they'll be at Christmas.

I came here to stand beside Diego.

I never expected to be the one his father asked for.