The words landed like a physical blow — not because they were cruel, but because they were accurate. I had been planning exactly that. Running strategies in my head, calculating whichrevelations could be softened, which details could be managed before publication.
She’d seen right through me. Again.
“You’re right,” I said. The words tasted foreign, and I let them. “I would have tried to manage it.”
Something shifted in her expression. Surprise, maybe. Or the specific relief of someone who’d braced for a fight and found understanding instead.
“But you didn’t destroy me,” I continued. “You had everything you needed to burn Laurent Enterprises to the ground, and you didn’t.”
“That wasn’t the story.”
“Wasn’t it?” I moved around the desk, closing the distance between us. “A corrupt billionaire using his power to cover up negligence. Headlines write themselves.”
“The corrupt billionaire was Richard Hartley. And Victor Corsetti.” She held her ground as I approached. “You were the one trying to stop them. Quietly. Inefficiently. But trying.”
“How do you know I wasn’t just protecting my own interests?”
“Because I’ve been inside your head for weeks now. I’ve seen your files. I’ve watched you obsess over finding the truth.” Her voice softened. “I’ve seen the man behind the reputation, Sebastian. The one who keeps voicemails from his mother. Who does things he’d never admit to and thinks no one notices.”
“You’ve been thorough.”
“I’m an investigative journalist. Thorough is my job.”
“And what did your investigation conclude?”
She was quiet for a moment — the specific quiet of someone choosing words carefully because the words matter. “That you’re a complicated man who made difficult choices. That you’ve done things you’re not proud of to build something you believed in.That underneath all that control is someone terrified of being powerless again.”
I couldn’t breathe.
No one had ever seen me so clearly. No one had ever bothered to look past the suits and the wealth and the carefully constructed persona to find out whether there was anything underneath worth seeing.
“The article will cost me millions,” I said, because I didn’t know how to respond to the rest without it costing me something I wasn’t sure I could afford to lose. “Stock prices are already dropping. Investors are panicking.”
“Does that matter?”
“It should.”
“But does it?”
I reached out and tucked a strand of still-damp hair behind her ear. Her breath caught at the contact — the same small catch I’d memorized on a balcony in November, in a car on Lake Shore Drive, in a kitchen in the gray morning light. “You know what matters to me.”
“Sebastian—”
“You did it.” My voice came out rougher than intended. “You took down the people trying to destroy us both. On your terms, with your integrity intact. And I’m not angry.”
“You should be. I went behind your back.”
“You protected your work. You couldn’t publish a story about corruption while letting the subject of that story shape the narrative. I understand that.” I held her gaze. “I’m trying to.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Do you? Really?”
“More than I expected to.” I let my hand fall to her shoulder, feeling the tension still coiled in her muscles. “This is new for me, Emilia. Trusting someone else’s judgment. Letting go of control.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to be good at it.”
“I know that too.”
