SORRY EX-HUSBAND, I AM NEVER COMING BACK

CHAPTER 12 - DOUBLE CROSSED

WESLEY

The numbers on my screen had stopped making sense twenty minutes ago.

I was staring at the same quarterly projection I had been staring at since morning, and the figures were all where they were supposed to be, laid out in neat columns that told a straightforward story, but my brain refused to engage with any of it. I would read a line, reach the end of it, and realize I had retained nothing, and then I would start again from the beginning with the same result.

I pushed back from the desk and rubbed my face with both hands.

Natalia Carson was the problem. Specifically, the way she had sat at the head of that boardroom table and taken my proposal apart question by question with the focused precision of someone who had been running companies for years rather than weeks. She hadn't been aggressive about it. She hadn't needed to be. She had simply asked the right questions in the right order and waited for me to answer them, and there was something about that combination of sharpness and composure that I could not seem to file away and forget about.

I had been around ambitious women before. I had worked with them, negotiated with them, shared boardrooms with some of the most formidable people in the industry, and none of them had ever cost me twenty minutes of staring at a spreadsheet without reading a single line.

This was a problem.

I didn't operate this way. Women, in my experience, were a straightforward category of human being that occupied a specific and clearly defined space in my life. That space did not overlap with work, with strategy, with the kind of sustained mental attention I was apparently now incapable of redirecting away from a woman I had spoken to a total of four times.

I was still trying to reason myself back to the projection when my phone rang.

Robert.

I answered it.

"I need to see you," he said, without preamble. "Today. Bring nothing, tell no one. One hour."

---

The lounge he had chosen was the kind of place that catered specifically to people who needed to have conversations they didn't want overheard. Low lighting, booths with high backs, staff who were paid well enough to be professionally incurious. Robert was already seated when I arrived, a glass of something amber in front of him, his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up in the way he always did when he was in planning mode.

Ciara was beside him.

I slid into the seat across from them and said nothing, waiting.

Robert leaned forward and got straight to it.

"The original plan isn't moving fast enough," he said. "I've been in that house for weeks. I've scrubbed floors, cleaned bathrooms, made meals, and Natalia hasn't moved an inch in my direction. The woman is made of stone."

"You've had worse odds," I said.

"I don't have time for worse odds," he replied. "Vincent Carson isn't getting any younger and the moment something shifts in that family structure, every asset they hold becomes either locked up in legal proceedings or handed directly to Natalia with full control. If we're not already inside when that happens, we're locked out permanently."

He picked up his glass and set it down again without drinking from it.

"So I need a backup," he said. "A second angle."

I looked at him.

"That's where you come in," he said.

I kept my expression neutral. "I'm already in. The franchise proposal is moving forward. I'm building the loophole you asked for from inside a legitimate structure. That was the agreement."

"The agreement has expanded," Robert said simply.

I waited.

"If Natalia doesn't come back to me, then she needs to fall for someone else who is on our side." He looked at me steadily. "Someone she already trusts. Someone she's already working with."

The lounge was quiet around us for a moment.

"No," I said.

Robert's expression didn't change. "Wesley."

"That wasn't the deal," I said. "You brought me in to find financial loopholes, build a franchise structure that moves money into a separate vehicle, and give you a slice of the Carson portfolio without anyone seeing it coming. That is what I agreed to. Getting personally involved with Natalia was never part of it."

"It is now," Robert said.

"Why?" I asked. "Walk me through the logic, because from where I'm sitting, the financial route is already working. The proposal is approved, I have access to their books, and in six months I can have a structure in place that does exactly what you want without anyone needing to fall in love with anyone."

Robert leaned back and studied me for a moment.

"Because a slice isn't enough anymore," he said. "I've been inside that estate, Wesley. I've seen what Vincent Carson actually has. The full picture, not the public version." He paused. "We're talking about billions. Not a portion of billions. The whole thing. The Carson Group entire, every subsidiary, every holding, every asset that old man has built over forty years."

"A slice of that is still more money than most people see in a lifetime," I said.

"And the whole thing is more than we could spend in ten lifetimes," Robert replied. "Why settle?"

Ciara had been quiet the entire time, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite r******w she shifted slightly in her seat and crossed her legs and said nothing, which was somehow more persuasive than anything she could have contributed.

I looked at Robert for a long moment.

The honest answer was that the plan he was describing was several levels beyond what I had signed up for. Moving money through a franchise structure was sophisticated but it was contained. What he was describing now was a full acquisition by deception, sustained over years, involving the emotional manipulation of a woman who had already been destroyed once by someone sitting at this very table.

The honest answer was no.

I thought about the letter sitting in the top drawer of my desk at home. The one from the bank, formal and final in its language, outlining exactly how many months remained before my father's company would be formally declared insolvent. I thought about my father, who had built that company over thirty years and who did not yet know how close to the edge it was sitting, because I had been managing the information carefully to protect him while I looked for a way out.

I thought about what Robert was offering.

"Fine," I said.

Robert smiled slowly.

"But I run my side of this my way," I added. "You don't direct me, you don't time me, and you don't interfere. If I'm doing this, I'm doing it on my own terms."

Robert spread his hands open on the table in a gesture of easy agreement that I didn't trust for a second.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," he said.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Paul was in the kitchen when I got home, eating reheated food from a container and reading something on his phone. He looked up when I walked in and read my face with the efficiency of someone who had been interpreting my expressions since childhood.

He put his phone down.

I pulled out the chair across from him, sat down, and told him everything.

He listened without interrupting, which was unusual for Paul, and when I finished he was quiet for a long moment.

"How far are you willing to go with this?" he asked finally.

"As far as it takes," I said. "The company goes under in four months if nothing changes. Dad loses everything he built. Everything, Paul. I'm not letting that happen."

"And Natalia?" he asked. "She's a real person, Wesley. She's not a piece on a board."

I said nothing.

"Robert already broke that woman once," Paul continued, his voice dropping slightly. "You saw her at Diamond. You saw what she's carrying. And now you're agreeing to walk into her life and do it again, except this time with better manners and a business proposal."

"I know who Robert is," I said quietly. "I know exactly who he is and what he's capable of, which is precisely why I am not going to hand him the keys to a plan this size and trust him to execute it cleanly."

Paul frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It means I have my own plan," I said. "Robert thinks I'm his instrument. He thinks I'm going to do exactly what he's outlined and deliver results on his timeline." I looked at my brother steadily. "He's wrong."

Paul studied me for a moment. "You're going to play both sides."

"I'm going to protect what needs protecting," I said. "On every front."

Paul was quiet again, longer this time.

"Robert is dangerous when he feels betrayed," he said finally. "You know that."

"I know," I said.

"Then you'd better make sure your plan is bulletproof," Paul said, picking his phone back up. "Because if it isn't, he won't just come after the company. He'll come after everything."

I stood up from the table and straightened my jacket.

"Trust me," I said with a wry smile.