Trapped In The Billionaire’s Name

CHAPTER 31

Damian's POV

Celeste's lawyers called Monday morning. Not mine, me, directly, on my personal cell. A number I hadn't given them. Which told me she still had access to something inside my circle she shouldn't have, and that she wanted me to know it.

I let it go to voicemail. Then I forwarded it to my legal team and called a meeting.

Lena was in my office by eight thirty. "She's requesting a private mediation. No courts, no public record. Her lawyers are framing it as a goodwill gesture."

"It's not goodwill," I said.

"Obviously." She sat down. "She wants to control the resolution terms before a judge does it for her. Private mediation means she gets to negotiate what goes on record and what doesn't."

"What doesn't go on record is the part she cares about," I said. "Hume's documentation, the targeting of Reina, the specific methodology of the marriage document." I looked at the table. "She wants the fraud findings buried in a settlement agreement with a non-disclosure clause."

"That's my read," Lena said.

"No," I said. "We don't mediate. We let it go to the judge."

Lena nodded once. "I'll communicate that today." She paused. "She called Helena yesterday."

I looked up.

"Helena didn't answer. But the attempt is notable." Lena set her tablet down. "She's doing a final circuit. Testing every connection to see if anything's moved."

"Nothing has moved."

"I know. I'm telling you so you're not surprised if she escalates beyond calls." She held my gaze. "Reina's building."

"Theo has it covered."

"I mean something different." She paused. "If Celeste can't control the legal outcome she may try to affect the public one. A story about the unit — about the relationship between the project and Reina's personal involvement. Conflict of interest framing."

I felt something tighten in my jaw. "Reina's involvement is professional and documented. The consultation agreement Lena drafted last week—"

"I know," she said. "I drafted it. It's clean. I'm telling you the framing doesn't need to be accurate to be damaging." She looked at me steadily. "Prepare her."

I called Reina at noon.

She picked up immediately, which meant she was on her break. "What happened?"

"Nothing critical. Celeste requested private mediation. I declined." I paused. "Lena flagged a potential next move. The unit. Your involvement in it."

Silence. Processing.

"Conflict of interest," she said.

"Yes. The consultation agreement covers it legally but—"

"But the framing doesn't need to be accurate," she said. Exactly what Lena had said. Independently and immediately.

"Yes."

"What do you need from me?"

"Nothing defensive," I said. "I don't want you changing anything about your involvement or your visibility in the project. That's what she wants — to make you smaller." I paused. "I just wanted you to know it was coming so you weren't blindsided."

She was quiet for a moment. "She's running out of moves."

"Yes."

"Desperate people make noise," she said. "It doesn't mean they have power."

"No," I said. "It doesn't."

A pause. Softer now. "How are you doing with it. The mediation refusal."

"Clear," I said. "It felt like the only clean decision."

"It was." Her voice was steady. "She's trying to find a version of this where she gets to write the ending. You took that away."

"Yes."

"Good." A beat. "I have to go back in. Come tonight?"

"I'll bring food," I said.

"Something that isn't pasta," she said. "You've made pasta three times."

"I'm building a repertoire."

"Build faster," she said. And ended the call.

I brought Thai.

She opened the door in her scrubs — straight from a long shift, hair still up, the particular tiredness that lived behind her eyes after twelve hours of carrying other people's emergencies. She looked at the bags, then at me, and stepped aside without ceremony.

We ate at her kitchen table. The day's events sat between us in the comfortable way of things that had been shared and didn't need re-examining.

"Nadia told me something today," she said.

"About Theo."

She looked up. "How do you know?"

"He mentioned he'd nodded at her. He seemed—" I paused. "Unsettled by his own behavior."

Reina put her fork down. "Theo mentioned it to you."

"He reports notable incidents."

"A nod is a notable incident?"

"Apparently when it involves Nadia it is." I looked at her. "He described it as an involuntary greeting followed by sustained eye contact that he couldn't account for professionally."

Reina stared at me. "He said that."

"He's very precise."

She was quiet for exactly two seconds. Then she laughed — the real one, full and unguarded, the one that lived below all the composure and came out clean when something genuinely got to her. I felt it the same way I always did. Like something irreplaceable.

"Nadia is going to destroy him," she said.

"Completely," I agreed.

"He has no idea."

"None."

She shook her head, still smiling. That particular smile — open and easy and completely without performance. The one I saw most often now and still wanted to see every time.

"I love that you told me that," she said.

"I thought you'd want to know."

"I did." She looked at me across the table with the warmth she rationed carefully and gave fully when she gave it. "You think about what I'd want to know."

"Yes," I said.

She held my gaze. "That's—" She stopped.

"Everything?" I offered.

"Don't be smug about it," she said.

"I'm not smug. I'm accurate."

She pointed her fork at me. "There's a fine line."

"You've told me that before."

"It keeps being relevant."

We looked at each other across the small table and the evening settled around us with the warmth of something that had found its shape.

"The judge sets a hearing date this week," I said. "For the estate proceedings."

"How soon?"

"Two weeks. Maybe three."

She nodded. "And then it's done."

"And then it's done," I confirmed.

She was quiet for a moment. Something moving through her expression that she let me see — the accumulated weight of eighteen months, the months before that of trying to reach a legal team that never called back, the night in a hospital corridor when a woman in ivory handed her a pen.

"When it's over," she said quietly. "I want one day where we don't talk about any of it. No Celeste, no proceedings, no unit timelines." She looked at me. "Just a day."

"Tell me what that looks like," I said.

She thought about it. "Slow morning. My mother in the afternoon. Dinner somewhere that doesn't know your name." She paused. "Nothing that requires anything from either of us."

"Done," I said.

"You don't need to check your calendar?"

"No."

She looked at me steadily. "You're very certain for someone with a company to run."

"Some things don't require calendars," I said. "They just require deciding."

She was quiet. Then she reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.

"Two weeks," she said.

"Two weeks," I confirmed.

We stayed at the table long after the food was gone.