married to my killer

chapter 11

Chapter 11

NAOMI POV

I made it to the office with four minutes to spare, my heart still running faster than the walk from the car should have caused, Harmon's folded page tucked deep in my bag where nobody would think to look for it.

Julian was waiting near the elevators, tie straightened, looking like a man bracing for something he hadn't fully explained to me yet.

"You cut it close," he said, taking my hand as we walked in together.

"I lost track of time. Why the sudden lunch?"

"I don't know. He called it himself, an hour ago. Just the three of us." His jaw was tight in a way I recognized now, the same tightness from the kitchen two nights before. "He hasn't done anything like that since before the wedding."

The private dining room on the top floor was set for three, which told me this wasn't going to be a conversation about the weather. Edmund was already seated, unhurried, a glass of water in front of him instead of wine, which was somehow worse than if he'd been drinking.

"Naomi." He stood halfway to greet me, the old warmth still fully in place. "You look well. Married life agrees with you."

"Thank you for having me."

"Sit, sit." He waited until we were both settled before he folded his hands on the table, and something in the gesture made the whole room feel smaller than it was. "I wanted the three of us together because I think there's been some confusion this week that I'd rather clear up directly than let it fester."

Julian went very still beside me.

"About Carla," Edmund said.

"You don't owe either of us an explanation," Julian said, too fast, too careful.

"I think I do, actually. You asked me a question in my office yesterday, in front of my assistant, which you have never once done in your life. I'd rather not have you walking around assuming the worst about me over a housekeeping decision." He turned to me directly, and I felt the full weight of his attention land, warm and precise. "Carla has been unwell for some time. I'd been covering for her, quietly, longer than I should have. It reached a point where it wasn't safe for her to keep working. I let her go with a full severance and a recommendation. I didn't explain it to either of you because it wasn't my story to tell. It was hers."

It was smooth. It was plausible. It was delivered with exactly the right amount of reluctant honesty, the kind that makes a lie sound like discretion.

And it was almost certainly not true.

I thought about her message. I think you know why. Not the words of a woman being quietly protected out of a job she could no longer safely do. The words of a woman who knew precisely what she'd been fired for, and who'd made sure I heard about it before she disappeared from the story entirely.

"That's not what she told me," I said.

The table went quiet in a way that had a texture to it, the kind of silence that exists right before something breaks.

Julian turned to look at me. Edmund didn't move at all.

"She didn't tell you anything," Edmund said, his voice still even, still warm, but with something underneath it now that hadn't been there thirty seconds ago. "Carla wouldn't discuss her health with a guest in this house."

"She's not unwell. She told me she was let go for warning me you'd been asking where I go."

I hadn't planned to say it. It came out of me the way things come out when you've spent days holding them too tightly and something finally slips. Julian's hand found mine under the table, fast, steady, but I felt him go tense all the way through his arm.

Edmund set his water glass down without a sound, which was somehow louder than if he'd slammed it.

"That's an interesting version of events," he said.

"It's the version I received in her own words."

"Then she lied to you." He said it flatly now, all the warmth gone out of it at once, like a light switching off. "I don't know why. Perhaps she was embarrassed. Perhaps she wanted you to think better of her than the truth allowed. Either way, I'd be careful, Naomi, about which version of a story you decide to repeat at my table."

"Is that a threat?"

The word was out before I could stop it, sharp in a room built for people who never said things that plainly.

"No," Edmund said. "It's advice. From someone who'd like this family to stay whole."

Julian's chair scraped back before I fully registered he'd moved.

"Stop." He said it quietly, but it cut through the room harder than anything raised would have. "Both of you. I asked you a direct question yesterday, Dad, and you gave me an answer that doesn't match what my wife is telling me right now. I don't know which one of you is lying. But I know I'm done sitting in the middle of it pretending I can't tell the difference."

Edmund looked at his son for a long moment, something moving behind his eyes that I couldn't read, not anger exactly, something colder and more careful than that.

"Sit down, Julian."

"No."

The word landed in that room like something none of us had ever heard him say before, not to his father, not to anyone. I watched Edmund absorb it, watched something in his face recalibrate in real time, the way a man recalculates when a piece on the board moves somewhere it was never supposed to move.

"I see," Edmund said quietly. "This is new."

"It should have happened a long time ago." Julian's voice was steady, but his hand around mine wasn't. "I want the truth. About Carla. About the files you've had Naomi reviewing. About whatever this actually is, because I don't believe for one second it's about a merger anymore."

For a moment nobody said anything. Somewhere behind us, a server hovered near the door, clearly having chosen the worst possible time to check if we needed anything, and clearly deciding, wisely, not to come any closer.

Edmund's expression settled, finally, into something almost like respect, the kind a man gives an opponent who's surprised him.

"You want the truth," he said slowly.

"Yes."

"All right." He reached into his jacket, unhurried, and set something on the table between us. A single folded page, the paper slightly worn at the edges, like it had been carried and refolded many times.

He slid it toward Julian, not toward me.

"Read that," Edmund said. "And then you can decide whose version of this you actually want to believe."

Julian's hand was steady as he reached for it. Mine wasn't. I watched him unfold it, watched his eyes move down the page, watched his face change from careful anger into something I couldn't read at all confusion, then something sharper, something that looked almost like fear.

He looked up. Not his father.

At me.

"Naomi," he said, very quietly, in a voice I'd never heard him use before. "What is this?"

He turned the page around so I could see it.

And there, at the top, in handwriting I recognized instantly because I'd stared at it for hours in a storage unit two weeks ago, was my father's signature.

Beside it, a second name.

Not Edmund's.

Mine.