Trapped In The Billionaire’s Name

CHAPTER 36

Reina's POV

The journalist piece ran Friday morning.

I read it at six AM before my shift with my coffee going cold beside me. It was accurate, every word, every detail, the timeline of my involvement in the unit, my clinical rationale, the staffing model, the design elements. The journalist had been careful with the facts and generous with the context and had written about the pediatric funding crisis with the same specificity she brought to everything else.

The last paragraph was mine almost verbatim. What I'd said when she asked why I'd agreed to be involved despite everything that had happened.

*Because the children who need this unit don't know anything about forged documents or legal proceedings. They just need somewhere to be cared for properly. That hasn't changed. That was never going to change.*

I put my phone down. Picked up my coffee. Sat with it for a moment.

My phone started moving within the hour. Messages from colleagues at the hospital. From Dr. Ashby, who sent three words, “Well said, Reina.” From Nadia, who sent seventeen messages in a row that I read during handover and summarized to her later as 'received.'

From Marco: “Mom would be proud. Also you could have warned me.”

From Damian: *The last paragraph. That's you entirely.*

I stood in the corridor outside the ward and read that last one twice. Then I put my phone in my pocket and went to work because that was the job and the job didn't wait for feelings to finish.

He was outside at the end of my shift.

Same pavement, same stillness. He'd been doing this since the beginning, appearing in places he didn't have to be because he'd decided showing up mattered. I'd stopped being surprised by it. What I hadn't stopped was the specific warmth it produced every time.

"The piece is good," he said when I reached him.

"I know."

"Celeste's lawyers have gone completely silent since it published." He fell into step beside me. "Lena's theory is that it made the conflict of interest framing publicly untenable. You established your credentials so clearly that anyone attempting to question your involvement now looks uninformed at best."

"I just told the truth," I said.

"I know." He looked at me sideways. "That's what made it effective."

We walked. The November cold was doing what it did in the last weeks of the month — threatening something worse, the air carrying the particular weight of a city preparing for winter.

"Four days," I said.

"Four days."

"Are you ready."

"Yes," he said. No qualification. "Are you?"

I thought about it honestly. "I've been ready for eighteen months," I said. "I've just been waiting for the room to be available."

He almost smiled. "Four more days."

"Four more days," I agreed.

Saturday Marco insisted on lunch.

His apartment, just the three of us, which told me he had something to say that required a controlled environment and no audience. I told Damian on the way over and he said "I know" which meant Marco had already communicated the agenda to him directly, which was becoming a pattern I'd stopped being surprised by.

Marco made sandwiches. Substantial ones — the kind that required both hands and suggested a long afternoon. He set them on the table, sat down, and looked at us both.

"The hearing is Tuesday," he said.

"We know, Marco," I said.

"I'm coming."

"We know that too."

"And after," he said. He looked at Damian. "You mentioned something. A few weeks ago. About the distance situation."

I looked at Damian. Damian looked at his sandwich with the composure of a man who had walked into this deliberately.

"You told him," I said.

"I mentioned I was thinking about it," Damian said. "Not specifics."

"I brought it up," Marco said. "He didn't volunteer. I asked him directly what his intentions were and he told me he was thinking practically about what made sense for two people who were seriously in each other's lives." He looked at me. "Which is what I asked."

"Of course you did."

"Reina." Marco put his sandwich down. "I'm not trying to push anything. I just want to know that someone has thought about it."

"Someone has," Damian said. "We've discussed it briefly. The conversation is for after Tuesday."

Marco nodded. Picked his sandwich back up. "Okay."

"That's it?" I said.

"What else do you want from me? I asked, I got an answer, it was a reasonable answer." He shrugged. "I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm not glad someone is thinking about the practical stuff. You never do. You just let things stay inconvenient forever and call it independence."

I opened my mouth.

"You know I'm right," he said.

I closed my mouth. Because he was right and arguing required a foundation of inaccuracy I didn't have.

Damian said nothing. But I felt him carefully not smiling beside me and I filed that away for later.

We ate. Marco talked about the garage, about a transmission job that had gone three days over estimate, about a movie he'd watched that he couldn't explain but wanted us to know about. Damian listened and asked questions that made Marco extend the story twice. I sat between them and ate my sandwich and felt the specific quality of a life that had been narrow for a long time quietly expanding.

Walking back afterward Damian took my hand without preamble. Just reached over and took it while we were in the middle of a sentence about something Marco had said, like it was a thing he did and had always done.

"He's going to keep calling you," I said.

"I know."

"Even after Tuesday. It won't stop."

"I'm not asking for it to," he said.

I looked at him. "You actually like him."

"He's direct and funny and loves you unconditionally," he said. "What's not to like?"

I looked ahead. The street was cold and his hand was warm and four days felt both very close and exactly right.

"After Tuesday," I said.

"After Tuesday," he confirmed.

"We talk about practical things."

"All of them," he said.

I tightened my hand slightly. He tightened back.

That was enough for now.