LOGINShe was inside. Neither of us moved. The air in the room felt thick and waiting. I was still staring at her. Exhaustion clung to her, pressing into the lines around her eyes, the tension in her shoulders, the way her jaw tightened slightly. She glanced at the monitor, then at the IV in my left a
Edward's POV The panelling on the far wall ran in clean vertical lines from floor to ceiling. I had counted them twice already. The monitor registered everything in intervals. My shoulder was immobilized. My ribs announced themselves every time I breathed too deeply, which I had stopped doing some
"I'll do it," I said. "Because Edward saved my life. Nothing else." Vivienne's expression settled. "That is the most sensible decision you've made since I have known you." I clutched my phone under the table and said nothing. Lucy came back in and took her seat. Edmund's phone rang. He looked a
Edmund's pen had stopped moving. Catherine Monroe had taken her reading glasses off. Around the table, the quality of the silence had changed. No longer the silence of people waiting for a meeting to proceed. The silence of people trying to decide what they were sitting in the middle of. "That is a
The building knew. I felt it the moment I came through the entrance. Security waved me through as they always did, but held eye contact a beat longer than usual. Two men from finance stepped out as I stepped in. They went quiet mid-sentence and nodded at me with the gravity of people who have heard
His lips moved. "...How long?" Low. Strained. Like the words cost more than they should have. "Since yesterday." He watched me. A beat longer than necessary. "You didn't go home." Not a question. Just a fact he had already arrived at before saying it aloud. "I stepped out a few times." I kept







