Chapter 23

IRIS POV:

I didn't sleep that night. I lay on my back staring at the ceiling, with the folder sitting on my bedside table where I had made the mistake of bringing it home. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his name in clean black print, and my heart did the same thing it had been doing since Vera set it on my desk.

At some point past two in the morning, I sat up, picked up the folder, and put it in my bag instead. Out of sight. It didn't help.

My wolf was quiet in a way that made me more nervous than if she had been loud.

"Say something," I told her.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked.

"Anything."

"He's coming tomorrow, and you already know you can't avoid him," she said. "So stop pretending the folder is the problem."

I lay back down and didn't argue because she was right.

I got up at five thirty, showered, and stood in front of my wardrobe for longer than I needed to. I chose a black fitted blazer over a white blouse and tailored trousers. I did my hair properly for the first time since everything fell apart. I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself until I recognized the person looking back.

My mother was in the kitchen when I came down. She looked up, and something moved through her face when she saw how I was dressed.

"You look like yourself today," she said softly.

I poured my tea and sat across from her. We didn't talk much. We didn't need to. She reached over once and put her hand over mine, and that was enough.

I left at eight.

Sarah was already in the car waiting. She took one look at me and started driving without saying anything. When we were two streets from the office, she finally spoke.

"How are you actually feeling?"

"Like I want it to already be over," I said.

"That's fair," she said.

She parked, and we walked in together, and that was that.

The morning moved slowly, the way time moves when you are watching the clock. I answered emails. I updated client profiles. I refilled my water twice without drinking it.

Pemi arrived and gave me one look, then went straight to her screen. She had not mentioned the folder again, but she remembered it. I could tell by the way she kept her eyes just slightly too focused on her own work.

At ten forty-five, Sarah appeared at my desk.

"They're here," she said quietly.

I looked up. "They?"

She held my gaze for a second. "He brought someone, a lady."

I set my pen down slowly.

Of course he did.

I picked up my notepad and walked to meeting room two.

I got there before them and sat down, placed my notepad on the table, folded my hands on top of it, and waited. Through the glass wall, I could see them coming down the corridor. Nicholas in a dark suit, Diane beside him in a red dress that had absolutely no business being in a professional office at eleven in the morning. Her hand was through his arm. She was laughing at something he had said, her head tilting toward his shoulder, and he was smiling down at her.

They were not even trying to be subtle.

The door opened, and they came in together.

Nicholas looked at me like I was something he had been looking forward to. Diane looked at me like I was something she had just noticed on the bottom of her shoe.

"Iris," Nicholas said, pulling out a chair for Diane first before sitting himself. "You look well."

"Mr. Crest," I said. "Miss Adler. Shall we begin?"

Diane leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, and looked around the room like she was mildly bored by all of it. Nicholas rested his arm along the back of her chair comfortably.

"Of course," he said.

I went through the standard intake questions: scheduling preferences, communication method, calendar access requirements. I kept my voice even and my eyes on my notepad, and I did not give either of them the satisfaction of watching my face.

Diane yawned quietly.

Nicholas glanced at her with a small smile and leaned over and said something low in her ear. She laughed, pressing her face briefly against his jaw.

I wrote something on my notepad that meant nothing.

"If I could direct your attention to the service agreement on page…" I started.

"I heard you had quite the breakdown at your ceremony," Diane said.

I looked up.

She was inspecting her nails, utterly unbothered, like she had just commented on the weather.

"Diane," Nicholas said, with the tone of a man who was not actually telling her to stop.

"I'm just saying." She looked at me. "It must have been embarrassing. All those people watching. All those cameras." She tilted her head. "Though I suppose running was the smarter choice in the end. Better than finding out later, right?"

The room was quiet.

I looked at her for a moment. Then I looked at Nicholas.

"Did my father tell you?" I asked.

Nicholas blinked. Just slightly. "What?"

"The video," I said. "The one sent to me the night of the ceremony. Did my father tell you about it, or did you already know it had been sent?"

Something shifted in his face. Too fast for him to stop it.

There it was.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"You do," I said. "And so does she."

Diane's expression didn't change, but she uncrossed and recrossed her legs and looked away from me for the first time since she sat down.

"Iris…" Nicholas started.

"Who sent it?" I asked. "Was it one of you? Or did someone else do it for you, and you found out after?"

"This is not what we're here to discuss," he said.

"You came to my place of work," I said. "You sat in that chair and brought her here and spent the last ten minutes trying to make me feel small in a room with glass walls, where every single one of my colleagues can see you. So don't tell me what we are and aren't here to discuss."

The room went very quiet.

Diane was looking at me now with an expression that had lost the boredom entirely.

Nicholas leaned forward slowly. "You want to know who sent the video?" he said quietly. "It doesn't matter. What matters is that you ran and you made a decision, and now your family is paying for it."

"Because you made sure they would," I said.

He didn't deny it.

He just looked at me across the table and said, "Come back, Iris. Stop all of this. Your father comes home, your mother goes back to work, this whole thing ends, and we move forward. That's the only conversation worth having today."

"And her?" I said, looking at Diane.

Diane raised an eyebrow.

Nicholas held my gaze. "That's not your concern."

I looked at him for a long moment before picking up my notepad, and I stood.

"I'll have your account transferred to another assistant," I said. "You'll receive a confirmation by the end of day."

"Iris." His voice sharpened. "Sit down."

"This meeting is over."

"I said sit down."

I walked to the door.

His chair scraped back, and his hand closed around my wrist before I reached the handle, and he turned me around firmly, not gently.

"You seem to keep forgetting," he said quietly, his face close to mine now, "that you don't get to walk away from me. Not here. Not anywhere."

The door opened.

Both of us looked.

Vera was standing in the doorway. Behind her, visible through the glass wall and spilling out into the main office floor, was something I had not expected to see.

People. Not colleagues. Not clients. Press. Over fifty of them at least, cameras out, talking rapidly to each other, their attention fixed not on our meeting room but on the building entrance behind them, where something outside was pulling every eye in the office toward the glass front.

Nicholas loosened his grip on my wrist without letting go entirely, his attention pulled despite himself.

"What is going on?" he said.

Vera looked at him. "Mr. Crest," she said. "I'm going to need you and your guest to gather your things."

"Excuse me?" Nicholas said.

"There is someone outside requesting Miss Calloway," Vera said. She looked at me then, and for the first time since I had met her, something in her carefully composed face looked genuinely surprised. "Personally."

Nicholas's grip on my wrist finally dropped.

I looked past Vera through the glass wall at the office floor and then through the building's glass front to the street outside.

And my breath stopped completely.