He stepped back, scanning the screen, already reshaping the counteroffer in his head. The numbers weren’t the challenge. The challenge was narrative. Vision. The thing he’d already sold once. The thing Montenegro was destabilizing, again, with shortsighted chaos.
His phone buzzed.
BEA: Just checking if you’re okay?
He checked the time. 6:17 p.m.
GAGE: Sorry sweetheart. Something urgent came up.
GAGE: Eat first. I’ll be at least a couple of hours.
BEA: Okay.
Then he put the phone face down.
Back to the room. Back to the deal.
He and Nate had been nursing this deal since the previous year. Eight months of calls, revisions, and diplomatic threading just to get to provisional approval.
It was the reason he’d had to stay in the UR for the summer.
An opportunity this size came rarely, and pulling it off was exactly the kind of legacy-scale project that would prove to the King Global Capital board that he and Nate were ready to return to the UR and lead.
But if this deal slipped, there’d be no three-year path home. It might be five. Or ten.
And if the years slipped out of reach, so might she.
Bea checked the clock again. 9:32 p.m.
She was sitting in their suite in The Connaught. Room service had already collected her dinner, which she’d eaten while watching a couple of episodes of her latest Korean drama. She hadn’t ordered for Gage.
Mayfair moved below. Inside, the quiet pressed against her ribs.
There might be a lot of nights like this. Waiting.
Not because he asked her to. Because she would.
It’s not like work had never held him back in the UR. It had. Plenty of times. But it felt different. She had a world there: Georgina forever blitzing smoothies and rehearsing lines; Lillianreading beside her; Isabel’s sarcastic voice notes; Naomi’s last-minute invitations to go dancing. Even Nico’s random memes.
Here, there were no footsteps in the hallway. No one to drop by unexpectedly.
Not at the start, anyway. She’d have to build that up from scratch.
Again.
Gage would try to be there. He wasn’t careless. Or thoughtless. He was justbusy. Trapped in an ambition that built dynasties and devoured hours. He would never forget her.
But the rest of the world might forgethim, if he didn’t keep building fast enough.
A beep broke the quiet. Then a soft click. The door unlocked.
Gage stepped inside, jacket folded over one arm. His presence filled the room instantly—cool, composed, and late.
His eyes found hers across the suite. “Sorry,” he said quietly.
Bea didn’t ask what kept him. She could already see it: the meeting hadn’t ended so much as been paused. “It’s okay.”
He crossed to her, leaned down to press a kiss to her lips.
