Trapped In The Billionaire’s Name

CHAPTER 12

Reina's POV

Dinner ended at nine. Julian walked out with us, which I understood was deliberate. He positioned himself between Celeste and the exit with the cheerful obliviousness of someone who was not oblivious at all, talking about nothing in particular until Celeste had no graceful option except to say her goodbyes and leave first.

When the elevator closed behind her Julian dropped the performance entirely.

"She asked about your hospital," he said to me. "Twice. By name."

"I noticed," I said.

"She never asks about things she doesn't already know." He looked at Damian. "She's been doing homework."

Damian's jaw was tight. "I know."

"She's also been talking to Vivienne." Julian said it carefully, the way you put something sharp down on a table. "They had lunch Thursday. I heard from Helena."

Damian was quiet for a moment. "Helena's watching her?"

"Helena's been watching her for two years. She just didn't have a reason to bring it to you until now." Julian looked between us. "She wants to meet Reina."

I kept my face neutral. "Your aunt."

"She's sharp and she's on your side," Julian said to me directly. "She decided that approximately four minutes after Celeste smiled at you tonight. Helena reads people the way you apparently read situations." He paused. "She said you didn't give Celeste a single opening. She wanted me to tell you that specifically."

I appreciated that more than I showed. Validation from an unknown corner had weight precisely because it wasn't asked for.

Damian was looking at me. I could feel it even when I wasn't looking back.

We said goodnight to Julian in the lobby. When the door closed it was just the two of us on the pavement and the city doing its usual indifferent noise around us.

"She's going after the hospital," I said.

"Yes."

"The funding review that's already in progress — she can access it through the foundation subsidiary board. If she applies pressure in the right place she can delay it indefinitely."

"I know." His voice was controlled but barely. "I'm going to pull her off that board."

"Not yet." I turned to face him. "If you move on her now she knows you're looking. You pull that board seat and she covers everything within forty-eight hours and you lose whatever evidence you haven't found yet."

He looked at me for a long moment. The streetlight was doing something to his face — all clean lines and tension and that focused attention he gave me that I was running out of ways to be unaffected by.

"You're telling me to let her threaten your ward," he said.

"I'm telling you to be smart."

"Reina—"

"I've kept that ward running on a budget that would make your quarterly lunch spending look extravagant," I said. "I can hold it together a little longer. What I can't do is help you if you blow this because you were angry on my behalf."

Something shifted in his expression. It moved through the controlled exterior and settled into something underneath that was rawer and more unguarded than anything I'd seen from him yet.

"I don't want you absorbing damage because of something that was done to you," he said. "That's not something I'm capable of being logical about."

My chest was loud.

I held his gaze and said the thing I'd been thinking about since dinner. "She expected me to be frightened tonight. That was the point of the questions — to remind me what she knows about me and what she can reach." I paused. "It didn't work. But it wasn't nothing either."

"What do you need?" he asked.

Direct question. No preamble. Just — what do you need? Asked by a man who had the resources to do something about the answer, which was new territory for me. People in my life loved me adequately. Nobody had ever been positioned to actually fix things and bothered to ask first.

"Time," I said. "And information before she moves."

"I'm working on the information." He paused. "Helena has documents. Physical copies of things Celeste moved through my father's estate. Helena kept everything."

"How soon can you get them?"

"She's coming to the city on Wednesday."

"Good." I pulled my coat tighter. The night had gotten cold. "Damian. How are you actually doing with all of this?"

He looked at me like the question surprised him. Which told me everything about how often anyone asked it.

"I'm angry," he said. "Cleanly and completely angry. And underneath that—" He stopped. "I've been running a company my father built and deferring to a woman I thought understood it because I thought that's what loyalty looked like." A pause. "It's a particular kind of stupid that's hard to sit with."

"It's not stupid," I said. "It's what people do when they trust someone with proximity to their grief."

He was very still.

"Your father died," I said. "She was there. Of course you trusted her more after that. That's not a character flaw. That's just human."

He looked at me for a long time without speaking. The way he did when something had landed somewhere deep and he was deciding whether to show it.

"You do that," he said finally.

"Do what?"

"Take the thing a person is using against themselves and just — remove it. Without making a performance of it."

"It's accurate," I said. "That's all."

"No," he said quietly. "It's more than that."

We were standing close. The kind of close that happens gradually without either person formally deciding. I was aware of every inch between us — aware in the specific way of wanting that distance to be less and holding that want at arm's length because I wasn't ready to stop holding it yet.

"Go home, Damian," I said softly.

"I know." He didn't move immediately. "Same time Thursday?"

"Yes."

He looked at me one more moment. Then he stepped back, just slightly, and the cold air moved into the space between us.

"Reina." His voice was quiet. "Thank you. For tonight."

"I didn't do anything."

"You stayed," he said. "That was everything.”