Her eyes gleam with satisfaction. “Oh, you really don’t know.” She gives a small, delighted laugh, like a child unwrapping a forbidden gift. “Nathaniel, you can’t blame me for checking in on the woman who’s captured your heart. I care about you deeply—you know that. So, when I heard you were planning to propose to astranger, I had my people look into her.”
She tilts her head, studying my face for cracks. “And what did we find? A girl from nowhere, really. Modest background, ordinary family. Sweet, I’m sure, but hardly equipped for our world. You might not like hearing it, but Alexander would have seen through her.” A pause, then softer, conspiratorially, “You, on the other hand… Your heart’s just too tender. You need someone to protect you from women like that. Luckily, you have me.”
“Anne.” A warning.
She smiles wider, sensing she has me hooked. “While my team was vetting her, something interesting came up. Apparently, your Olivia has been offered a position in London. Castor & Wyatt. Ring a bell?”
London?
I stare at her. “She’s accepted a role at Baxter. Here. In New York.”
After everything we’ve been through, she wouldn’t keep this from me. Unless…she was actually considering it?
“Is that so?” Anne barks out a laugh. “Then you’ll forgive me for noticing she hasn’t declined the other offer yet. Strange, isn’t it? If she’s so sure of you.”
Her words shouldn’t matter, but they slide too neatly into the spaces Olivia has left blank.
Anne adjusts her folder, satisfaction curling the corners of her lips. “I can see you’re upset. I would be too, if someone played me like that.” She lowers her voice, letting it drop into suggestion. “You know where to find me, if you ever need to blow off some steam. We were always sogoodtogether.” Her gaze drags deliberately down my body. “No one fucks me quite like you do.”
She leaves before I can respond. Her words hang in the air like smoke, impossible to clear.
Strange isn’t it? If she’s so sure of you.
I try to reassert logic like pressing a wound close. Olivia loves me. She chose me. She promised that she wouldn’t run from me anymore…yet she’s already mapped an exit? The incongruity gnaws at me, impossible to ignore.
My old instincts stir: tracing lines, finding patterns, filling in gaps until the picture forms.
Then, realization dawns with brutal clarity.
Thisis why she’s been deflecting—she never wanted me to know.
I conjure up the memory of last night—the way she spoke about a possible future together—replay until it distorts, the edges warping. It all begins to look like performance and ithurts.
Then, a stillness takes hold—cool, methodical. Anger would be wasteful. Reason steadies the pulse where emotion once lived. I’m reminded that what’s precious endures only with vigilance. I’ve already let too much slip. I won’t make that mistake again.
The door behind me opens. “Nathaniel?”
I turn to see my mother. She stands framed in the doorway, brows drawn in concern.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” I reply. “Could you give me a moment? There’s something I need to take care of.”
Her eyes search my face. “Is everything all right?”
“It will be,” I say. The smile comes easily. “Please, wait for me inside.”
She gives me a meaningful look before she nods and retreats.
When the door clicks shut, I pull my phone from my pocket and step into the shadowed alcove by the staircase.
When the line connects, I feel a sense of calm washing over me. The sort of calm I imagine a surgeon must feel before his blade makes the first incision, the mind stripping itself of mercy so the hand can move without tremor.
“Jonathan,” I say, my voice stripped of all inflection. “I need a candidate discreetly withdrawn from consideration—Olivia Bennett. Castor & Wyatt, London.” I weigh it for a beat, then add, “And cross-check Baxter, New York. Same instruction.”
A pause. Then his even reply: “Understood. No trace. Internal error if anyone asks.”
“Good.”
I end the call and turn toward my mother’s office. I think of everything I’ve built around Olivia and know, with terriblecertainty, that I can’t let it fracture now. I’ve come too far, crossed too many lines, to lose her to a possibility.
