Too Late Mr.SINCLAIR

CHAPTER 14- OUTSIDE THE DOOR

I wasn’t eavesdropping. That’s what I told myself, standing barefoot in the dark hallway.

I checked my phone when I got back to bed, eleven forty-three at night. I’d only gotten up because sleep wouldn’t come. The apartment felt too quiet, my thoughts too loud, and I needed water, something to do with my hands, anything to quiet the restless ache in my chest.

That was all, but then I heard his laugh.

Warm, loose, completely unguarded, drifting from the study like a ghost from another life. I froze in the hallway, the sound wrapping around me with the sharp sting of something that used to be mine.

That laugh had once filled Saturday mornings, late nights tangled on the sofa, ridiculous road trips where we butchered lyrics to songs we barely knew. I hadn’t heard it like that in months—not aimed at me, not real.

My feet stopped moving before my brain gave the order.

The study door stood open just a c***k. A thin blade of light sliced across the hallway floor. I pressed my back to the wall, telling myself I’d only stay a moment. Just long enough to prove I was being ridiculous.

Inside, Celeste was recounting an investor presentation gone sideways. Something about panic, a forgotten slide. She laughed as she told it—that bright, effortless sound, and Dominic laughed with her, fully, the way he used to laugh with me when something actually struck us both as funny and neither of us was performing.

“You should have seen his face,” Celeste said, amusement threading through her voice. “The investor asked one question and he completely forgot the presentation.”

“I warned him that would happen,” Dominic replied, easy and warm.

“No, you didn’t.”

“I absolutely did.”

“You said he’d panic during negotiations.”

“Same difference.”

“It really isn’t.”

He laughed again, soft and conceding. “Fine. I’ll give you that one.”

I pressed my back harder against the wall, the cool surface grounding me as my stomach twisted. His voice sounded lighter than it had in weeks, relaxed in a way it never was at our dinner table anymore.

They moved through the details of the meeting, the merger, and some investor’s reaction. Ordinary. Professional. Reasonable.

That made it worse.

It wasn’t one dramatic betrayal I could point to. It was the effortless rhythm between them, the quiet comfort of two people who had built something private without fanfare. You couldn’t name it. You couldn’t dismiss it, and that gray space in between carved its own quiet damage.

“We made a good team,” Dominic said.

The words landed heavy in my gut.

“We.” Not the company. “We.”

I closed my eyes, the ache sharpening. Hours earlier, Luca had rolled over and offered me three sleepy words. And here was Dominic at nearly midnight, fully present, engaged, not tired at all.

A floorboard creaked under my foot. The conversation cut off mid-sentence.

Silence.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

“Did you hear something?” Dominic asked, voice sharpening.

A beat. Then Celeste, calm as still water: “Probably one of the staff.”

Staff.

Not his wife. Not the mother of his child. Just… staff. Background furniture that occasionally shifted.

I held perfectly still, willing my heartbeat to quiet, throat tight with the humiliating burn of being reduced to that single word.

The conversation picked up again after a few seconds, seamless, as if I had never existed.

I should have left. Every sane part of me screamed to go. But I’d spent weeks being told I was imagining things, being labeled insecure, managed, smoothed over.

Nina’s question still sat like a stone in my chest, “do you actually feel comfortable around her?”, and the answer had always been no. I needed to know if that no meant something real, or if I was simply unraveling in my own home for nothing.

So I stayed.

The talk drifted back to work. Papers rustled, a chair shifted. Then Celeste’s phone vibrated.

“Sorry—give me one second.”

Her footsteps moved toward the far side of the room, away from him. Her voice transformed— the warmth evaporating, replaced by something clipped and professional.

“Hello.”

A pause.

“No. I’m still here.”

Another pause.

“I told you—everything is under control.”

I frowned, straining. The way she said “everything” felt like a report delivered to someone expecting results.

She moved farther away. Her voice dropped so low I had to hold my breath to catch the words.

“I’ll update you tomorrow.”

Silence while the other person spoke. I caught the faint sound of her turning, checking on Dominic. Then her voice sank even lower.

“I know.”

One more pause.

Then, quiet and certain, like a question whose answer she already owned.

“She still has no idea, does she?” she said.

The hallway seemed to tilt beneath me. Every muscle locked tight. A cold rushed over my skin.

“She.” One syllable. And I knew with the same icy certainty I’d felt in the laundry room over that shirt, in the dark glow of his phone screen, in every moment I’d tried to talk myself out of this—that the “she” was me.

The call ended. I heard her straighten, footsteps crossing back toward the desk.

For one wild second I almost stepped inside. Almost demanded answers. But I had one overheard sentence. One. And I already knew exactly how Dominic would respond. You’re imagining it. You’re being insecure. You’re overthinking.

So I melted deeper into the shadow, back flat against the wall, pulse hammering in my ears.

The study door opened.

Dominic came out first, phone already pressed to his ear, already halfway into another conversation, already gone. He walked right past me, so close I could have brushed his sleeve.

He didn’t see me, he didn’t look. He didn’t know I was there at all.

He vanished around the corner, his voice fading, and I stood frozen, staring at the empty space he left behind. The loneliness hit like a fresh bruise, the particular pain of being invisible to the person who was supposed to know you best.

A moment later, Celeste stepped out.

She smoothed the front of her blouse with practiced calm, folder tucked under one arm. She turned toward the guest wing.

Then she stopped. Her eyes found me in the dark. Neither of us moved.

No surprise crossed her face. No flicker of guilt or embarrassment. Just that same cool, composed expression, like she had always known this moment might come and had already decided how she would handle it.

She smiled. “ Amara. You startled me.”

“I could say the same.”

A faint flicker behind her eyes, and gone before I could name it.

“It’s late,” I said, voice steadier than I felt.

“It is.”

“You and Dominic were working a long time.”

“We lost track of time.” She delivered the line with the smooth confidence of someone who had already chosen her version of events. “You should get some rest, Amara.”

Not concern or warmth. A dismissal—soft enough to deny, sharp enough to cut.

She walked past me toward the guest wing, unhurried, completely at ease in my home. I remained where I was.

The hallway pressed in, quiet and watchful. And that single sentence, “she still has no idea, does she”—kept turning in my mind, slow and heavy, the way you turn over something sharp when you already understand exactly how deeply it can cut.

Whoever had been on that call knew my name before I knew theirs. And whatever they were waiting for me to figure out… I was already figuring it out.