“Don’t stop,” I gasped. “Whatever you do?—”
“Never.” The word came out rough and absolute. A promise that had nothing to do with this moment and everything to do with it at the same time.
I came with my face buried in his neck and his name on my lips, and he followed with his hands gripping my hips and my name on his — said the way he always said it now, like something he’d earned the right to.
We stayed tangled together on the kitchen island while the city came fully awake outside the glass, our breathing gradually finding its way back to something normal. His hand moved slowly up and down my spine. I let my forehead rest against his shoulder.
“The article publishes in seven hours,” I said finally.
“I know.”
“You’re not going to suppress it.”
A pause. Then: “No.”
“Good.” I pulled back enough to look at him. “But I want to be the one who responds to it. My byline, my statement, my terms.”
Something moved across his face — the specific expression of a man overriding his instincts in real time. “All right.”
“All right?”
“You asked me to trust you.” His thumb traced my jaw. “I’m trusting you.”
The simplicity of it — no conditions, no qualifications, no strategic calculation attached — hit me harder than any of the elaborate gestures had. I looked at him in the morning light, this man who had spent twenty years building walls and was standing here offering me the door.
“The Obsidian tonight,” he said. “My private club. There are people you need to meet, documents you need to see. Everything I have — no more walls.”
“No more walls,” I agreed.
He helped me down from the island, his hands gentle in the aftermath of everything they’d just been. I found my clothes, and he found his, and we moved around each other in the kitchen with the particular ease of people who had figured out each other’s rhythms without meaning to.
At some point he made coffee — dark and strong, two cups, no discussion needed about how I took it — and I stood at his window with the mug warm in my hands and looked out at the city that was trying to destroy both of us.
Seven hours until the article.
One night until the Obsidian and whatever truth waited there.
Whatever came next, we’d face it from the same side.
And somehow, that terrified me more than any photograph under my door ever had.
Chapter Thirteen
Sebastian “Bash” Laurent
The Obsidian had never felt this quiet.
I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of the private lounge, watching Chicago sprawl beneath me in a grid of amber lights and distant sirens. Behind me, the room’s gold accents caught the low lamplight, reflecting off mahogany panels that had witnessed deals worth billions. Tonight, they’d witness something far more costly.
My confession.
I rolled the signet ring on my finger — a Laurent heirloom my grandfather had worn back when the family name meant nothing more than a struggling contractor’s license and a promise to build something better. It was the only piece of the old world I’d kept when the empire finally came together. A reminder of where power started for us, and how easily it could disappear. The habit had followed me into every boardroom since, the weight of it grounding me when everything else threatened to spin out of control.
Right now, with Emilia on her way up, control felt like something I’d never quite had the grip on I’d believed.
Daniel’s text from earlier burned in my memory:She’s confirmed. Twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes had passed seventeen minutes ago.
