“Good. Because I’m not.” A pause. “But I probably should have warned you.”
I turned. She looked exhausted — dark circles under her eyes, hair in that messy bun she wore when she was working too hard to care about appearances. But her chin was lifted, her gaze steady.
Defiant, even now. Of course.
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“Because you would have tried to manage it. Spin the narrative. Control the fallout.” She shrugged one shoulder, but her eyes were watching me carefully. “I needed the story to land exactly as it was, without Laurent Enterprises’ fingerprints anywhere near it.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“I trusted you to be you.” She stepped closer, and I caught her fully now — the whole specific scent of her, coffee and newsprint and something floral I’d been cataloging since the first night. “You’re a fixer, Sebastian. It’s what you do. But some thingsshouldn’t be fixed. Some things need to break before they can be rebuilt properly.”
The words landed harder than she probably intended. Because she wasn’t just talking about my company.
“The board wants my head,” I admitted.
“I know. I saw the preliminary reports.” Her expression softened slightly. “What are you going to do?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
“Liar.”
A surprised laugh escaped me. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve already decided. You decided the second you saw my article go live.” She crossed her arms. “The question is whether you’re going to tell me, or if I have to figure it out myself.”
“You think you know me that well?”
“I think I know you better than you’d like anyone to.” She held my gaze, unflinching. “You’re going to burn it down yourself, aren’t you? Before they can take it from you. Because that way you stay in control of the narrative.”
My silence was answer enough.
Emilia let out a long breath. “Jesus, Sebastian.”
“It’s the smart play. If I get ahead of this — release my own internal investigation findings, acknowledge the corruption, announce restructuring — the board loses its leverage. Shareholders calm down. Victor Corsetti loses his best weapon against me.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
She stepped closer still, close enough now that I could see the individual flecks of gold in her hazel eyes. “When you burn it all down, what’s left?”
The question hit me like a physical blow, and I let it. I didn’t deflect or reframe or reach for the practiced answer I’d given in a hundred boardrooms.
For a long moment I just stood with it.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. The words felt foreign in my mouth — two syllables I hadn’t said aloud in so long I’d forgotten their shape. “For twenty years, Laurent Enterprises has been my identity. My proof. The evidence that I’d clawed my way out of that house and built something that couldn’t be touched.” I looked at her. “Without it, I genuinely don’t know who Sebastian Laurent is.”
The silence that followed was different from the others. Not charged — something more careful. Like we were both handling something fragile.
“Good,” Emilia said softly.
“Good?”
“It means you’re finally asking the right questions.” She reached out, and her fingers brushed my wrist — just a touch, barely a contact, but it grounded me more completely than anything else could have. “My mentor told me something once, when I was just starting out. He said the best stories aren’t about what people do. They’re about who they become.”
“That’s very philosophical.”
