CHAPTER 14
1079 Words
Reina's POV
Nadia found out on Wednesday, not because I told her. Because Nadia has the investigative instincts of someone who should have been a detective and the restraint of someone who absolutely should not have been, and she'd been quietly assembling a picture from the pieces I hadn't been careful enough to hide.
She cornered me in the break room between shifts, sat down across from me with two coffees and the expression she reserved for interventions, and said, "You're falling for him."
I picked up my coffee. "Good morning."
"Don't say good morning to me. You have your phone face."
"I don't have a phone face."
"You do. It's the face where you're not looking at your phone but you're thinking about what's on it." She leaned forward. "Reina. I have watched you keep every person at a precise emotional distance for four years. You once described a man who was objectively in love with you as 'a lot of effort.' And right now you are sitting here with your coffee and your phone face and something is different."
She wasn't wrong. She was rarely wrong about me and it was one of the most inconvenient things about loving her.
"It's complicated," I said.
"It's always complicated with billionaires. That's practically the genre." She wrapped both hands around her cup. "Tell me something real."
I looked at the table. Thought about Thursday evening outside the restaurant. His hand turning over in the dark under the dinner table. The way he'd said " you stayed, that was everything” with no performance attached to it whatsoever.
"He listens," I said. "Not to respond. Actually listen. And he remembers things — small things I've said once — and he comes back to them later." I paused. "He makes me feel like everything I say is worth retaining."
Nadia was quiet. For Nadia that was significant.
"And?" she said.
"And I'm not afraid of him," I said. "Which sounds like a low bar. But for me it isn't."
She looked at me for a long moment with the particular tenderness she hid under the noise. "Rei. You're allowed to want something."
"I know that."
"Do you?" She tilted her head. "Because from where I'm sitting it looks like you've spent the last two weeks finding reasons to be careful instead of just — letting it be what it is."
"What it is," I said, "is a man I was fraudulently married to who is currently untangling a conspiracy that involves his stepmother, a forged estate document, and four years of redirected foundation money. It is not a simple situation."
Nadia blinked. Set her coffee down. "I'm going to need you to back up significantly."
So I told her. The condensed version — Celeste, the documents Helena had brought, Patrick Hume, the endowment. She listened with full attention, which was how I knew she understood the weight of it.
When I finished she was quiet for a moment. Then: "She came into the hospital."
"Yes."
"She used Dr. Ashby's intake process."
I went still. "What do you know about Dr. Ashby?"
"Nothing bad. I just—" Nadia looked at me carefully. "He's been asking questions, Rei. Quietly. About that night. About the woman who came in." She paused. "I think he's been doing his own accounting."
I sat with that. Dr. Ashby had been my mentor for six years. The thought of him carrying something about that night alone, the way I had, felt like a weight I wanted to lift from him immediately.
"I need to talk to him," I said.
"I know. But not today." She checked her watch. "You have a shift in ten minutes and he's in surgery until four." She stood, picked up her cup. "Also, for the record — the man who did all of this is taking you to dinner tomorrow."
"Thursday. Yes."
"Reina." She stopped at the door. "Wear the green dress."
***********************
Thursday came and I wore the green dress.
I told myself it was practical. It was clean, it was appropriate, it required no thought. The fact that it was also the best thing I owned was not relevant.
He was waiting outside when the car stopped. Not leaning, not checking his phone. Just standing in the cold with his hands in his coat pockets, watching the street, and when he saw me something moved across his face that he didn't bother to neutralize.
"Green," he said.
"It was clean."
"Sure." He held the door. Our eyes met as I passed him and the eye contact lasted one beat longer than necessary from both sides.
The restaurant was new. Smaller than the last one. A corner table already waiting.
We ordered. He poured water without being asked. These small domestic gestures that he'd integrated so naturally I'd stopped cataloguing them and started just receiving them.
"Patrick Hume called this morning," he said.
I set my glass down. "And?"
"He'll cooperate. Full documentation in exchange for legal separation from Celeste's other dealings." His jaw was tight. "He confirmed the marriage document. He drafted it, she instructed it, he named the hospital specifically because she'd identified you as someone with no legal resources to fight it."
Hearing it confirmed in plain language was different from suspecting it. I kept my face even.
"She studied me," I said.
"For three months before the accident." He looked at me directly. "She found a woman she believed had no voice. She was wrong. But that was the calculation."
"What else did he give you?"
"Enough to remove her from every board seat and initiate an estate fraud claim." He paused. "I'm filing Monday."
"She'll come to me before Monday."
"I know." His voice was steady but his eyes weren't. "Theo starts Thursday. He'll be present without being visible."
"You're assigning me security."
"Yes."
I should have pushed back on principle. I looked at him across the table — the controlled tension, the careful anger he was holding on a leash entirely on my behalf — and I didn't push back.
"Okay," I said.
He exhaled. The relief of a man who'd been prepared to argue and hadn't needed to.
"Reina." He looked at me steadily. "After Monday — when this is done — I want to talk about what this is."
My pulse was immediate and loud.
"Ask me Monday," I said quietly.
"I will," he said. With the certainty of someone making a promise.
- Writer
