My teeth clench. In my mind, I see April’s face when Karen told her about the engagement: shock, hurt, betrayal. I see April’s message asking for space. I see her trying not to fall apart on my sofa, trying to be brave while the world conspires against her.
Karen thinks that’s weakness. Karen thinks that’s something to exploit. I lean forward slightly, voice turning lethal. “April is already pregnant.” Karen’s expression tightens. “And,” I continue, the words coming with grim certainty, “I’m not choosing you.”
“Anthony—”
“No,” I cut in, and the disgust I’ve been restraining finally shows. “You don’t get to threaten a woman carrying my child and call it love. You don’t get to stalk my private life and pretend it’s devotion. It’s obsession. It’s entitlement.”
Her eyes flash with anger. “You’re blinded.”
“I’m not,” I say.
Karen’s voice sharpens. “You’re going to lose everything.”
I stand. “I’m not losing,” I say quietly.
Karen’s nostrils flare. “So that’s it,” she says, voice shaking with fury and something uglier underneath. “You’re in love with her?”
The truth hits me before I can armor it. “I think I am,” I say.
Karen’s face twists, not with heartbreak, but with rage at being denied. “You’re disgusting,” she spits.
I smile, cold. “Get the fuck out of my office.”
She doesn’t move, breathing hard, eyes bright with threat. I step closer to the desk and tap the folder with one finger, deliberately. “If you release anything,” I tell her, “I will destroy you. Publicly. Privately. Legally. Financially. Every way you can be destroyed.”
Karen’s smile returns, brittle now. “You think you can scare me?”
“I think you should be scared,” I say.
For a moment, we stare at each other across the desk—two people who understand power in the same language, who’ve simply chosen different gods to worship.
Then Karen lifts her chin. “You have five days,” she says. “Five days to make the right choice.”
And with that, she turns and walks out of my office like she’s leaving a courtroom after sentencing. The door clicks shut. I stand motionless, staring at it, the silence roaring in my ears.
Then I pick up my phone and open April’s thread again. My thumb hovers over the screen.
This time, I don’t type.Five days.The gala. If Karen is holding documents that can be twisted into coercion, if Aidan Snow is circling like a shark, if the board is hungry and the press is already salivating, then the gala isn’t a grand gesture anymore. It’s a battlefield.
Chapter 27
April
The café Aidan Snow chooses is the kind of place that pretends it isn’t expensive. Muted jazz. White cups with a subtle logo. Baristas who look like they have trust funds and weird feelings about oat milk. A wall of books no one has ever opened. It’s all warmth and polish, designed to make you lower your guard because nothing sharp could possibly happen in a room this tasteful.
I spot him immediately anyway.
He’s exactly what I remember from the screen. Clean-cut, handsome in a way that feels engineered, the sort of man who could smile while signing your name on a document that ruins you. He’s seated at a small table by the window, coat draped with casual precision, phone face down, hands folded like he’s waiting for an interview to begin.
When he sees me, he stands. Not rushed. Not eager. A controlled courtesy.
“April Swan,” he says, like my name tastes interesting. “Thank you for coming.”
I don’t shake his hand. I slide into the chair opposite him and keep my bag on my lap like a shield. “Let’s talk,” I say, voice clipped.
His mouth tilts, amused. “Straight to business. I respect that.”
Aidan signals for a server before I can refuse and orders as if he already knows what I drink. I correct him, and his eyes flicker with something like appreciation, like he enjoys pushback the way other men enjoy flattery. It’s too familiar.
