PART 7:

We need to talk through it together. I’ll be there at 8:00. He was there at 7:50. She had papers spread across the kitchen counter company bylaws board documents. Something that looked like a legal brief. She looked up when he came in and for just a moment before the CEO face reassembled, he saw how tired she actually was. the particular exhaustion of someone fighting on every front simultaneously.

“Sit down,” she said. “I want to walk you through what she can and can’t do.” “Victoria,” he didn’t sit. He crossed the kitchen, gently moved two stacks of paper aside, and took both her hands in his. She looked at him sharply, surprised by the interruption, maybe by the gesture. “The papers can wait 60 seconds.

” She stared at him. How are you? He asked. Not performatively, genuinely, she blinked. The question seemed to catch her entirely offguard, like it was not a question she’d been asked that day or that week or possibly in longer than she could immediately remember. Her hands tightened around his just slightly. I’m scared, she said simply.

No armor at all. I know. He held her hands a moment longer. “Then now show me the papers.” She almost smiled. “You’re impossible.” “Yeah, show me the papers.” They worked at her kitchen counter until nearly midnight. Ethan asking questions, Victoria explaining board structure and legal exposure and the very specific, very calculated ways her mother could apply pressure without leaving fingerprints.

He wasn’t a lawyer and he didn’t pretend to be, but he asked the right questions. And more than that, he was there, present, solid, focused, and she needed that more than any legal analysis he could have offered. At 11:40, she sat down her pen and looked at him. She’s going to offer you money, Victoria said. He looked up. What? My mother.

When she confirms who you are and what this is, she will find you privately and she will offer you money to walk away. She held his gaze. It won’t be a small amount. He held her gaze back. And you’re telling me this because because I want you to know before it happens, not after. She lifted her chin slightly. And because I want you to know that I know it will happen and I’m asking you.

She stopped, looked down at the papers back at him. I’m asking you anyway. He understood what she was asking. Not just to stay to choose knowing the cost before the cost arrived. Victoria, he said, you don’t have to be Victoria. He waited until she was looking at him. There’s no amount. She stared at him. Her throat moved.

He went back to the papers and she sat beside him and they worked through the rest of it together. And outside the city went dark and quiet, and the war that was coming for them was getting closer by the hour. They both knew it. Neither of them said it again. There was nothing left to say. There was only what they were going to do, and they were going to do it together.

That much at least had been decided. The leak happened on a Thursday. Ethan found out the way everyone else did his phone. A news alert at 6:22 in the morning while he was still in the kitchen making Ava’s lunch. The screen lit up on the counter and he glanced at it without thinking and then stood completely still with a half-made sandwich in his hand and read the headline three times before it became real.

Sterling CEO’s secret affair exposed billionaire pregnant by unknown man. Sources say he put down the knife, picked up the phone, opened the article. There was a photograph grainy taken from a distance clearly a long lens. the two of them outside his building 3 weeks ago, a Sunday evening. Victoria’s hand was on his arm.

They were looking at each other. In the context of the article, the image said everything the headline needed it to say. He called her before he finished reading. She picked up on the first ring. I know. Her voice was the iron voice, the CEO voice, but underneath it something was pulled very tight. How bad? he asked.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. A pause. My PR team is already working on containment. It won’t contain. How did they get the photo? I don’t know yet. Another pause shorter. Ethan, they’re going to find your address. If they haven’t already, they will by this afternoon. You need to think about Ava. His stomach dropped. Ava, I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry. I know this is Don’t. He was already moving through the apartment thinking. Don’t apologize right now. Just tell me what I need to do. Call your sister or Denise. Get Ava out of the apartment before school. Don’t use the front entrance. A beat. And Ethan. Don’t talk to anyone. Not a single word. Whatever they ask, whatever they say about you, nothing. Not yet.

Okay, I mean it. They will twist anything you say. They are very good at this, Victoria. He stopped moving. I know. I’m okay. Are you okay? The briefest pause long enough to tell him the answer was no. I will be, she said. Go take care of Ava. He was out the door in 11 minutes. He called Denise from the cab, kept his voice low and even, while Ava sat beside him, asking questions with her eyes that he wasn’t ready to answer.

Denise, bless her, asked nothing except what time, and I’ll have the coffee on. He dropped Ava off, kissed her forehead, told her he’d explain everything tonight, and watched the doubt move across her face, the 9-year-old version of, “I know something is wrong, and I’m deciding whether to push on it.” She didn’t push.

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