Two Rings And A Grudge

CHAPTER THREE

Oliver Vane POV

The law office was the one room in London I had always trusted to be quiet. Oak, leather, old paper, and a view sixteen floors down onto rain-slicked traffic.

Today it felt like a trap, and I had walked into it with my eyes open. I’d finished a six-hour operation on a child at my hospital a little before eight. Before that, at four in the morning, I’d read an email from my father’s lawyers about Zoe. Now a dull throb was going behind my temples, and I had three hours until my next list. I pushed my glasses up my nose and kept my eyes on the glass.

The doors swung open behind me.

Combat boots first, hard on the marble. Then the scent: rain and cloves, cutting straight through the dry air and leather of the office.

I didn't need to turn around. I knew who it was.

Celeste Lin had arrived.

That made three times this week. The hospital, in a black hoodie with the sleeves pulled down over her hands. The cemetery, soaked through, standing apart like a woman waiting to be asked to leave. And now. I had told myself I was getting used to the sight of her.

I’m a surgeon. I know a lie when I hear one, even when I’m the one telling it.

When I turned, she was in the doorway, out of breath, shaking rain off her jacket. the first thing I saw was her hair.

Six years ago it had been black. At the funeral I’d told myself the white was the light. It wasn’t. It was white- silver, pin-straight, the top twisted into a knot with short strands escaping like feathers.

I couldn’t keep myself from staring.

“You’re late,” I said, and kept my hands in my pockets so she wouldn’t see them.

She dropped her jacket over the chair next to mine. Under it she was wearing the black velvet dress from the funeral.

I noticed things. It’s what makes me good at my job and impossible at dinner. The skirt was creased in deep folds, like it had been stuffed in a bag. A line of dried mud ran along the hem. A thin chain at her collarbone held a small green stone on, and her fingers kept going to it, checking it was still there.

Two days. The same dress. Nobody had pressed it.

I filed that away. It meant nothing.

“The parking meter swallowed my last four pounds,” she said, without looking at me. “Sorry I don’t have a reserved space in the city.”

“I offered to send my driver.”

“I’d rather ride a unicycle over broken glass.”

She finally looked at me. Dark eyes, heavy-lidded, liner flicked out at the corners and smudged, as if she’d put in on in a car mirror. It was a very short look. I felt it anyway, somewhere under the ribs, and I put it where I put everything else: out of sight.

Lewis Walter cleared his throat, and straightened his glasses over two thick leather folders. “Now that you’re both here. This is the joint estate left by Mrs. Fiona Vance and Mrs. Hazel Lin.”

Celeste didn’t sit. She crossed her arms instead.

“Hold on,” her tone sharp and suspicious. “Where is everyone else? My mother? His parents? Why are we the only two people in this room?”

I narrowed my eyes at Walter.

“Fair question,” I said. “My father is executor of my grandmother’s personal accounts. Why wasn’t he called?”

Walker didn’t flinch. He smoothed his tie, calm as a man who had kept secrets for rich clients for decades.

“Their personal inheritances were settled in separate, private meetings yesterday. Miss Lin, your mother has received hers. So has Mr. Vane. This meeting concerns only for the joint trust your grandmothers set up together.”

“That’s rubbish.” Celeste said. “Gran never kept secrets from my mum. Why split it up unless there's something nobody's meant to question?.

“Miss Lin, the structure of this estate-”

“No. Answer her,” I stepped away from the window, using the low voice I keep for hospital mangers who don’t do their jobs. “My father would never allow a meeting like this without his own lawyer. What are you playing at, Lewis?”

“I am following the sealed instructions of two women who knew you would both behave like this,” He didn’t raise his voice. “Shall I continue, or shall I record that you’ve refused?”

Celeste let out a short, dry laugh and backed down, jaw tight. I held Walter’s gaze for three long seconds. Then I nodded.

Something was wrong. I could feel it at the back of my neck, like a trap closing. But I had a list in three hours and no patience left for office games.

Walter opened the first folder. “For Miss Celeste Lin: the St. Jude Brick Warehouse, a five thousand square meters in East London, suitable for a tattoo studio and gallery. And two million pounds in cash.”

Her guard dropped. Her lips parted, one of them pierced with a small silver bar and for one second she looked twenty again. “Gran left me a warehouse?”

“Correct,” he tuned a page. “For Dr. Oliver Vane: your grandmother’s fifty percent of Vane Global Enterprises, added to your own ten. That makes you the majority owner. You also receive the family’s medical research companies.”

A cold thrill went through my chest. Sixty percent. Control. With one sentence he had handed me what I needed to cut my father out of my career, and out of Zoe's life.

“And lastly,the joint gift. Twenty million pound in cash, and the Vane-Lin estate in Kensington, fifty acre, valued at over two hundred million pounds.”

Celeste gasped. “Two hundred million?”

“Now the condition.” Walter leaned over his folders. “Everything is locked for two years. The warehouse, the shares, the cash and the estate. Neither of you will receive one pound unless Dr.Vane and Miss Lin marry within thirty days and live together for two full years. The Kensignton estate will open for residence on the day the marriage is registered.”

The room went poisonous.

Celeste slammed both hands on the table so hard the silver water jug jumped.

“Is this a joke?” Her voice rang off the high ceiling. “I can’t touch my own grandmother’s warehouse unless I marry him?”

“Miss Lin, the legal framework-”

“I don’t care about the framework.” She spun to face me. Her face was flushed, and the pale vitiligo patch at her temple stood out against it, with another patch across her cheek down to the corner of her mouth. “Look at him. He hasn’t even blinked. I’d burn that warehouse down before I’d tie myself to a cold, self- righteous man who thinks he’s God’s gift to medicine.”

A vein throbbed in my temple. I pushed my chair back and crossed the space between us, close enough that my shadow fell across her.

“Mind your mouth, Celeste. You think I want two years with a woman who treats every disagreement like a declaration of war?”

“Then say no!” She rose onto her toes, chin titled, and now I could see everything. The two studs above her eyebrow. The one in her nose and the row of silver cuffs along both ears. The hard swallow in her throat, visible beneath the peony tattoo that covered her neck with thin vines running up towards her jaw. Her breath hit my collar, warm and unsteady, smelling of mint. “Walk out! Tell Mr. Walter where he can put his two hundred million.”

My gaze fell on her lips. It was tempting. I took one step back, and it cost more than it should have.

“I don’t make decisions to feed my ego!” I said, colder than I felt. “Unlike you, I think before I open my mouth.”

Her eyes were bright with fury and, for one second, wet at the edges. She blinked it away before I could be sure.

“Fine!” She snatched her damp jacket off the chair, and her knuckles skimmed my wrist.

It lasted less than a second. It went through my arm like a live wire. I moved my hand away as if I had been burned and told myself it was the cold. She didn’t look at me. She also, I noticed, didn’t breathe for a moment.

“Keep the money,” she said, a little too quickly. “Keep the locked house. I’m done.”

“Agreed.” I took my coat off the rack, because my hands needed a job.

Neither of us signed a single page. Her boots rang down the marble corridor and I followed, leaving the contracts untouched on the table.

I was at the door when Walter spoke, in the same dry voice he’d used to read out two hundred million pounds.

“The thirty days start today, Dr. Vane.”

I didn’t answer. I thought of the shares. I thought of my father’s email. I thought of Zoe, asleep in the back of the car, with no one in the world but me.

And for no reason I could defend, I thought of the cold green stone at Celeste’s throat, and how she had touched it every time she lied.