Chapter Twelve KAI'S POV
1238 Words
The board meeting Monday afternoon lasted forty minutes.
Thomas didn't show. He sent his lawyers instead, which was either a power move or an admission that he didn't have enough to fight the certificate directly. They raised the spirit of the clause argument, our lawyers dismantled it with the actual language of the document, and the meeting ended with the inheritance structure intact.
Derek called it a clean win. I called it round one.
Thomas never sent lawyers unless he was preparing something bigger.
I got back to the apartment at three to find Isla on a call with her design team, standing at the kitchen counter with a pencil tucked behind her ear and a floor plan spread in front of her. She pointed at the coffee machine without looking up. I made two cups and left hers beside the floor plan.
She mouthed thank you without breaking her sentence.
I took mine to the home office and called Elena.
She picked up immediately, which meant she'd been waiting.
"I'm sorry," she said before I could speak. "I know that doesn't fix it. But I need you to know I tried not to. He had three years of receipts, Kai. From the casino in Monaco, the private games in the Meatpacking District. If that information reached the board or the press—"
"It would have been managed."
"You don't know that."
"I would have managed it." I kept my voice even. "That's what I do, Elena. You should have come to me."
"You were already dealing with the Crane situation and the inheritance clause and I didn't want to be another problem." Her voice thinned. "I'm always another problem."
"You're not."
"I told Dad about the marriage because he already knew something was happening. He'd had someone watching you. If I'd said nothing he would have used it differently, worse than he did." A pause. "I was trying to control the damage."
I sat back. "He had someone watching me?"
"A PI. For about two weeks before the marriage. He knew about Isla already, about her connection to you through Marco. He was building a case to use the clause against you before you could satisfy it."
Which meant Thomas had been planning this longer than I'd realized. The board meeting today wasn't the play. It was a test, seeing how quickly our lawyers could respond, mapping our defense.
"He's going to come at the marriage directly," I said. "Try to prove it's not genuine."
"Yes." Elena hesitated. "He has photographs of you and Isla at the construction site Friday. The argument, Brandon showing up. He's going to frame it as a crisis marriage, that you exploited her vulnerability."
"Our lawyers anticipated that."
"His lawyers are better than our lawyers, Kai. You know that."
I did know that. Thomas had spent thirty years building a legal team specifically designed to protect his interests, which currently meant dismantling mine. "What does he actually want? The company?"
"Control. He wants to be the one who decides when you're ready to run it alone. He's never believed you were." She said it quietly, like it still hurt her to say it. "He doesn't want the company back. He wants you to need him."
I didn't respond to that. Some things didn't need a response.
"Come early Wednesday," I said. "Before the gala. Isla wants to meet you properly."
"She does?"
"Her words, not mine."
A pause. "She sounds like someone who knows how to handle difficult families."
"She has Marco. It's trained her."
Elena laughed, small and genuine. It was the first normal sound the conversation had produced. "I'll be there at six. And Kai? I really am sorry."
"I know." I meant it. "We'll figure out the rest."
I ended the call and sat with the information for a few minutes. Thomas had a PI on me for two weeks before the marriage. Which meant he had documentation of Isla coming and going from my hotel site, possibly of the incident with Brandon, potentially of our movements since Friday.
I went back to the kitchen.
Isla had finished her call. She was cleaning up the floor plan, rolling it carefully, her back to me.
"My father had a private investigator on me before the marriage," I said.
She turned around. "For how long?"
"Two weeks at minimum. Elena told me." I leaned against the doorframe. "He likely has documentation of the Brandon incident at the construction site. Possibly footage of our movements since Friday."
She was quiet for a moment. "So he can construct a timeline that makes the marriage look reactive."
"Yes. Crisis to contract in under twenty-four hours. It's not a difficult argument to make."
"Even though it's more complicated than that."
"Especially because it's more complicated than that. Simple narratives are easier to sell."
She set the rolled floor plan against the wall. "What do we do?"
"Wednesday is important. Not just being seen together publicly but being seen as people who know each other. Small things read as genuine. How you talk to each other, whether you know how someone takes their coffee, what they find funny." I paused. "We've had five years of watching each other from a distance. We need to convert that into something that reads as intimacy."
"You're saying we need to actually know each other."
"I'm saying we need to demonstrate that we do."
She tilted her head slightly. "Okay. Then ask me something."
"What?"
"Ask me something you don't know about me. Something real." She sat on the counter, which was a habit I'd noticed she had when she was settling in for a conversation. "If we're doing this, we do it properly."
I thought for a moment. "What made you choose interior design?"
She looked mildly surprised, like she'd expected something easier. "My grandmother's house in Naples. She had this small sitting room that she'd decorated herself over forty years. Every piece meant something, every color was chosen because it made her feel a specific way. I used to sit in that room and feel completely held by it." She paused. "I wanted to make spaces that felt like that for other people. Safe. Considered. Like someone thought carefully about how it would feel to be human inside those four walls."
I hadn't known any of that.
"Your turn," I said.
"What's something you've never told anyone?"
The question landed simply but the answer came up immediately, without the usual resistance. "I almost sold the company three years ago. Had a buyer lined up. Spent two weeks seriously considering walking away from all of it."
Her eyes widened slightly. "What stopped you?"
"I was at Marco's for dinner. You were there. You were telling him about a project you'd just landed, your first solo commission. You were so—" I stopped. Chose the word carefully. "Alive. And I thought, if I sell the company I have no reason to be in rooms where you are."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"That's the most romantic and most problematic thing I've ever heard," she said finally.
"I know."
She looked at me for a long moment. "I'm glad you didn't sell it."
"So am I."
She slid off the counter. "Same time tomorrow. More questions."
"Agreed."
She picked up her floor plan and went back to work.
I stood in the kitchen for a moment longer than necessary.
- Writer
