CHAPTER 22: THE DROP

CHAPTER 22:

The numbers came in at market open.

I was in James's study when Arthur turned the monitor toward us. A red line ran down the screen like a cut. Vance Enterprises had lost twenty percent in the first hour.

"It's the story," Arthur said. "Analysts are calling it a governance risk. They think the CEO was deceived by his own husband."

"Deceived," James repeated flatly.

"That's the word on three financial channels."

James didn't look at the screen again. He looked at me. "It will recover."

"Will it?" I asked.

"Markets forget." He said it with great calm but his fingers pressed white against the edge of the desk.

By noon the loss had grown to twenty-six percent. The board called an emergency meeting and James left for it with his jaw set. He kissed my forehead at the door. I stood in the quiet study afterward and listened to the car pull away.

I turned on the television in the sitting room and muted it but the ticker kept crawling beneath the anchors. VANCE SHARES SLIDE. INVESTORS QUESTION LEADERSHIP. A reporter stood outside the estate gates with her hair whipping in the wind and I watched her mouth shape the words gold digger without any sound.

I opened my phone even though I knew I shouldn't. Someone had posted a photo of me outside the bakery the day before with my hood up and my hand on my stomach. The caption said Look how guilty he looks.

The comments had grown worse overnight. Some said I should be investigated. Some said the baby wasn't real. Then I saw the one that stopped my breath.

He is nothing but a cheap hookup who got lucky. Who even knows whose baby it is. Probably some stranger from a club and he picked the richest name to pin it on.

Hundreds of people had replied to it and most of them agreed. One called me a prostitute in a nice coat. One said the billionaire should demand a test and throw me out before the shares fell any further.

My hands went cold. I had braced for gold digger and schemer. I had not braced for this. They had taken the most private thing in my life and turned it into something filthy and they had done it to the child too.

I put my hand over my stomach. "You're his," I whispered. "You're his and nobody gets to say otherwise."

Then I closed the phone and sat very still until my breathing slowed.

At six o'clock James stepped out onto the steps of Vance headquarters. I watched from the sofa with my knees pulled up. Dozens of cameras flashed at once and a dozen voices shouted his name.

"Mr Vance, is the contract real?

"It is." His voice was low and even and it carried across the plaza. "My husband and I signed an agreement at the start. It is also the least important thing about us."

"Is it true the child isn't yours?"

The plaza went quiet. James turned his head slowly toward the voice and I saw something in his face that I had only seen once before in the library.

"He is mine," he said. "And anyone who says otherwise can say it to me directly."

Someone shouted that the shares had closed down twenty-nine percent. James did not answer that one. He turned and walked back inside as the flashes went on and on.

I pressed my fingers to my mouth. It was the bravest thing I had ever seen anyone do and it was costing him everything.

He came home after midnight. I was awake in the dark of our room and I heard him stop outside the door for a long moment before he came in. He lay down beside me without speaking. I could feel how tired he was.

"How bad?" I asked.

"The board wants answers. I gave them." He rubbed his eyes. "It's nothing I can't manage."

I knew him well enough by then to hear what he was not saying. The board hadn't wanted answers. They had wanted him to choose.

"Did they ask you to leave me?" I asked.

"No." He turned and looked at me fully. "They asked me to explain. I explained. That's all."

He took my hand and pressed it against his chest. His heart was steady but I did not believe he was calm.

I lay awake long after his breathing deepened. The room was dark except for a thin line of light under the door and I stared at it and thought about Mercer Holdings.

My father had built it from one small office. I had fought for months to save it and I had signed a contract to keep it alive. But lying there I understood something I had been too afraid to say aloud. I didn't want it anymore. It reminded me of Matthew and of Tyla and of every cold night in that house. It had only ever been something to save. Now it was the reason strangers on the street thought I was a thief.

The will had already given me the right to it the moment the board voted. I didn't need the company and I no longer wanted it. James had needed a calmer story and I could give him one.

The next afternoon I went to see the lawyers.

Their office was on the fortieth floor and the city looked small from up there. A woman in a grey suit slid a folder across the table.

"Mr Mercer, the board's vote removed Matthew Vance as CEO and dissolved the trust that gave him control. Under your father's will full ownership of Mercer Holdings passes to you."

I stared at the page. My own name was typed under the company's. After months of fighting for this I felt almost nothing.

"It's yours to run or to sell," she said. "Whichever you choose."

"Then I want to sell," I said.

She looked up. "Already?"

"Yes. Quietly. To Vance Enterprises." I kept my hand flat over my stomach. "Draw up the papers but do not tell James why. Not yet."

"As you wish." She closed the folder gently. "But I should warn you that people will say you profited from the scandal."

"They are already saying worse."

I walked out into the cold light with the folder pressed to my chest and for the first time I understood that there might be a way to end this. It frightened me how quickly I wanted it.

What I changed.