“It’s not a promise,” he said. “It’s a plan and you know how I am with those. Once I’ve made one, I follow through no matter what.”
I nodded, but I was too exhausted to keep rolling through the mental gymnastics anymore. I didn’t even know what he’d meant when he said we would betaken care of, but I trusted him. He knew everything, from my financial situation, to the family politics, to my background and how this all happened in the first place.
“What are we doing in this building, though?” I asked, glancing up when he turned to face the doors. “Is this your satellite office in Chicago or something?”
The elevator chimed again as it came to a stop, the doors sliding open smoothly and without making a sound. I stepped out when he swept his hand out, motioning for me to precede him, but I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the logo on the far wall.
Once upon a time, I’d known that logo better than I knew my own reflection, regularly seeing it everywhere I’d looked, from Zach’s insignia ring to the letters he’d received from home. It was polished and unmistakable on that wall, large enough that it was impossible to ignore.
Westwood and Sons.
My heart skipped, then slammed to a stop for a split second. Simon didn’t give me a chance to ask what I was doing here, his hand at my back, directing me down a hallway that was too clean and too quiet.
Right at the end of the hall, conference room doors opened before we’d even reached them and a full sweep of the Chicago skyline was visible through floor-to-ceilings windows at the other end of the room. Simon didn’t stop moving until we were inside. The doors shut again behind us.
My heart started hammering in my ears. I’d been prepared to meet with lawyers—new or old—but not this. Zach and Alex, who I remembered from way back in the day, sat at the table with their father and my grandfather, and my breathing immediately faltered. There were other people in the room too, but I didn’t even check to see who they were.
Those I recognized were already bad enough.
The edges of my vision blurred, icy tentacles of panic winding around my insides. Zach stood the second I walked into the room. “I have to be the one to tell her.”
His voice was sharp and clear, commanding in a way I’d never heard it before. Obviously, I’d always known that he would grow up to take his rightful place in these corridors of power one day, but there was something to his tenor here that was so very different that it even made it past the ringing in my ears.
There was a beat of muffled movement behind him. Someone saying his name and then another voice, trying to rein him in. I couldn’t process any of it, but he was already moving straight toward me.
“Zach,” Alex started, but he didn’t stop or even look back.
His hand closed around my wrist, his fingers warm and his touch still entirely too familiar. When I looked up at him, he was already turning, pulling me back toward the door like we could just leave. “Come on. Let’s go.”
I might not know what was going on here, but I did know that we wouldn’t just be allowed to walk out. I stumbled half a step, caught off guard by the contact with him, but also by the fact that he didn’t seem to care that we probably couldn’t just go.
More than that, somehow, in some way, this meeting related to my girls. To keeping them and to finally ending the divorce. All of which meant I wasn’t leaving here until Simon had at least let me in on his plan.
“Wait,” I said softly, but he didn’t slow, just gently dragging me toward the door. I planted my feet and stopped, pulling back and forcing him to pause. “Zach.”
He turned, and for just half a second as our eyes locked, he wasn’t the controlled, distant man who’d been looking through me like we were strangers ever since I’d come back. Instead, he was…him.
The guy I remembered, who’d made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe and who’d looked at me like I was his certainty in an unsteady world.
“What’s going on?” I asked carefully, my voice quiet.
Something darker settled behind his eyes then, and as much as I didn’t want to be able to identify it, I could. It was guilt. That was the only emotion that fit.
My stomach bottomed out, my pulse spiking until it was kicking against my veins. “Zach?”
He didn’t answer, but behind him, a throat cleared. Instinctively, I knew it was my grandfather. A moment later, the suspicion was confirmed when he spoke.
“Adeline,” he said gently, like there was nothing to be afraid of in this room at all. “Come sit down. We have business to discuss.”
Cold, familiar dread slid into place along my spine, winding itself around my skeleton and taking control of every bone in my body. The last time I’d heard those words, I’d been twenty-one, sitting in a room not unlike this one and being told I was about to get married to someone I didn’t love.
Hell, to someone I barely even knew.
Suddenly, I couldn’t move because I knew what this was now—and it wasn’t a meeting with the Westwood lawyers about my divorce. Simon’s plan didn’t include working with them to make sure we finally wrapped things up.
That would’ve been humiliating enough, but this was so, so much worse. My gaze flicked back to Zach, who was still standing too close to me and holding my wrist like his touch might shield me from what was coming.
The very worst, most confusing, and most unbearable part of it all, however, was that when I looked at him, I feltrelief. I even felt a flicker of something I hadn’t let myself feel in years—excitement.
