She’d spent her career tearing them down.
It seemed only fair that she’d eventually get to mine.
Chapter Eighteen
Emilia “Em” Rivera
The helicopter banked over Lake Michigan, and I pressed my forehead against the cold glass like a kid on her first flight.
Below us, Chicago’s skyline shrank into a collection of glittering toys, the lake stretching out in endless gray-blue until it swallowed the horizon. The rotor’s thrum filled the cabin, and I felt the vibration through the glass against my forehead and thought about how completely absurd my life had become in the past several weeks.
“You’re smiling.”
Sebastian’s voice cut through the noise, and I turned to find him watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Something soft underneath the usual intensity. Something that looked almost like relief — like he’d been waiting to see me smile and hadn’t been sure he’d get to.
“I’ve never been in a helicopter before.” The admission felt small given everything we’d been through — corruption scandals, death threats, the specific catastrophe of falling forsomeone I’d been hired to expose. But somehow this moment, suspended between earth and sky with nothing but money and physics keeping us aloft, felt like the most surreal of all of it.
“I know.” Of course he did. Sebastian Laurent probably had a file documenting every mode of transportation I’d ever taken. The thought should have irritated me.
Instead I found myself fighting a grin.
“Creepy,” I said.
“Thorough.” His knee brushed mine, even through the fabric of my jeans, and I felt the contact like a current. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there, though?”
His mouth curved. “You’re the investigative journalist. You tell me.”
I turned back to the window as we cleared the city limits, watching suburban sprawl give way to farmland and then forest. The world below simplified into patches of green and brown, dotted with the occasional glint of water. Sebastian had told me to pack nothing — that everything would be handled. I’d pushed back on principle and then, because I’d been running on three hours of sleep and the particular exhaustion of a week that had felt like several lifetimes, I’d let him handle it.
That was new. I was still getting used to it.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere quiet.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
Two weeks ago I would have pushed harder. Would have needed the information as a matter of principle, a small tactical victory in the endless negotiation of our dynamic. But two weeks ago I hadn’t watched Sebastian Laurent stand in front of a press conference and announce that he might resign from his own company rather than compromise his integrity. Hadn’t heardhim admit that he’d spent twenty years building walls and didn’t know who he was without them.
So I let it go. For now.
The helicopter began its descent over a property that made his Chicago penthouse look restrained. Dense forest surrounded a sprawling estate — clean architectural lines, floor-to-ceiling windows that caught the afternoon light like mirrors. A lake glittered at the edge of the property. A private dock. Gardens that had clearly been tended for decades.
“This is yours?”
“Family property.” His voice had gone flat in the way it always did when his past crept too close to the surface. “My mother used to bring me here before…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.
I reached over and took his hand. His fingers laced through mine immediately, and I felt some of the tension drain from his shoulders — the specific release of someone who’d been braced for a reaction and hadn’t gotten the one they feared.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. And meant it.
The helicopter touched down on a manicured lawn, and Sebastian helped me out with a hand at my elbow. A security team materialized from the tree line — discreet, professional, numerous enough to remind me that the threats against us were still real even here, even in this place that existed on no official record.
