“Thank you for this,” Gianna said, pulling her jacket tighter against the wind. “For dinner, for listening, for being someone I can talk to about work without feeling judged.”
“You never have to thank me for that.” The words came out rougher than I intended. “I like listening to you talk. About work, about anything.”
She looked up at me. Our gazes locked. My breath caught, and I was distinctly aware of my heart beating too fast.
Then she stepped closer and hugged me briefly. Just a moment of warmth and contact that ended before I could properly process it.
“Goodnight, Archie.”
“Goodnight, Gianna.”
I watched her walk away until she disappeared around the corner, then I started walking in the opposite direction without any clear destination in mind.
The city moved around me with its usual indifference. People heading home from work, couples walking hand in hand, someone shouting at a taxi that had almost hit them. Normal life continuing while mine fell apart in slow motion.
I thought about what would happen when Gianna won her case. When she realized that Devlin Holdings had somehow sabotaged themselves. When she eventually learned that the CEO of the company she was fighting had been helping her win.
When she learned that CEO was me.
Would she see it as redemption or manipulation? As trying to fix things or just trying to ease my own guilt?
I didn’t know. And that uncertainty was killing me.
But I knew with absolute certainty that I was in love with her. With her determination, her intelligence, her capacity to turn pain into purpose. With the way she looked at me like I might be good when I knew I wasn’t.
With everything she was and everything she’d fought to become.
And I still didn’t know how to deserve her.
She was the only person who’d ever made me want to be better than I actually was.
CHAPTER 12
Gianna
The documents shouldn’t have existedat all.
I sat in the legal aid clinic library at eight p.m. on a Thursday, staring at discovery materials that had appeared in our case file as if by magic. Internal Devlin Holdings communications, procedural timelines with unexplained gaps, compliance reviews that somehow delayed their own strategy.
Everything we needed, handed to us on a silver platter.
Professor Diane had called it luck when I showed her earlier. Sam called it suspicious over dinner. I didn’t know what to call it except deeply weird.
My phone buzzed with a text from Sam.
Sam
Still at the library? You’re going to turn into a book.
Gianna
Books are more reliable than people.
Sam
Harsh. Also true. Go home before you forget what your apartment looks like.
I gathered my materials and stepped out into cool air that bit through my jacket. The subway ride home gave me time—about the case, the strange pattern of favorable developments, Sam’s joke that maybe we had a mole inside Devlin Holdings.
