CHAPTER SIX
1013 Words
Nora's POV
I didn't sleep.
By the time Ethan's key turned in the front door at half past eleven, I had read that sub-clause fourteen times and made myself a cup of tea I never drank. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open and the unknown message still on my phone screen when he walked in.
He stopped when he saw me.
Something shifted in his face, not exactly. More like recalibration. Like he had prepared himself for an empty apartment and my presence required him to adjust the whole equation.
"You're still up," he said.
"Apparently."
He set his jacket on the hook and loosened his tie without looking away from me. That was new. Usually I was background furniture he navigated around. Tonight his eyes stayed on my face like he was trying to read something written there in small print.
"Did something happen?" he asked.
"I was going to ask you the same thing."
He came to the kitchen, opened the cabinet, and took down a glass. He poured water, not whiskey, which surprised me. He leaned against the counter and looked at me across the space between us and said, "Ask."
"How did the meeting go?"
He was quiet for a beat too long. "Which meeting?"
"The one you dressed for at seven in the evening and came back from at eleven thirty."
The corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile — something adjacent to it. Like my directness had caught him off guard in a way he found unexpectedly interesting.
"You noticed what time I left," he said.
"I notice most things. I just don't usually say them."
That landed somewhere. I could see it. He turned his glass slowly in his hand and looked at me with something new in his expression — not warmth exactly, but attention. The concentrated kind. The kind he gave board reports and acquisition strategies. He was actually looking at me.
"It was dinner," he said finally. "With Camille."
"I know."
"Then why ask?"
"Because she sent you that message this morning in front of me and you shut down and went silent and then you spent four hours with her tonight." I kept my voice even. "I'm not asking out of jealousy. I'm asking because she told you she knows something about me and I need to understand what that is."
Ethan set the glass down. He crossed his arms and the full weight of his attention came forward in a way that made the room feel smaller. He was tall in a way that wasn't aggressive but was absolutely present. Whenever the distance between us closed even slightly I became aware of him in a way I preferred not to examine.
"She claims your aunt approached her father six weeks before the contract signing," he said. "She says Helena offered to smooth the marriage arrangement in exchange for a private financial agreement with the Voss family."
My stomach dropped but I kept my face still. "And you believe her?"
"I don't know what I believe." He studied me. "Do you?"
"I believe Helena co-signed the debt that put me in this marriage. I believe she structured the guarantor clause so that if the marriage dissolves in the first year she inherits a portion of my family's remaining assets." I turned my laptop to face him. "I found it tonight."
He came around the table. Not quickly — but directly. He stood close enough that I could feel the warmth from him and smell whatever it was he wore, something clean and expensive and frustratingly good. He leaned in to read the screen.
The silence stretched.
"You found this tonight," he said.
"Two hours ago."
"And you waited up to show me."
"You're the other party in the contract. You needed to know."
He straightened and looked down at me and for a moment something crossed his face that I couldn't name. Not gratitude. Deeper than that. Like he had expected one thing from me for so long that a different reality was taking time to load.
"You could have used this," he said. "Privately. Against your aunt."
"That thought didn't occur to me."
"Nora." His voice came out quieter than usual. My name sounded different in his mouth when he wasn't being careful about it. "Why not?"
I looked up at him. He was close and the kitchen light was low and this was the first time we had stood this near to each other without the weight of formality between us. I was aware of his hands braced against the table edge beside me. I was aware of the way he was waiting for my answer like it mattered to him.
"Because this involves your company too," I said. "And whatever else this is, we're in it together. I'm not going to hold information back to protect myself if it damages you."
He was quiet for a long moment. Something in his jaw tightened.
"You keep doing that," he said.
"Doing what?"
"Being honest when you have every reason not to be."
"I don't know another way to be."
He looked at me and the air between us did something it had never done before. I felt it and I suspected he did too because he stepped back, just slightly, like distance was a decision he had to make on purpose.
"I'll contact my legal team tomorrow," he said. "We need the original debt documentation pulled and the guarantor clause reviewed by someone who didn't draft it."
"Okay."
He picked up his glass and then paused. Turned back. "The Camille piece — I need you to know I didn't go tonight because I wanted to."
"You don't have to explain yourself to me."
"I know." His eyes held mine. "That's why I'm doing it."
He walked to his room and I sat in the kitchen in the quiet and pressed my palms flat on the table and told myself to breathe.
This was not supposed to be complicated.
I had signed up for Invisible.
- Writer
