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Chapter 35: Vivienne Loses
publish date:
2026-04-05 18:44:17
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EYES OPEN Chapter 43: Derek Makes His Move
He is waiting outside my office building on a Tuesday.Not Stanley. Not a lawyer. Not a phone call or a message or a carefully managed interaction with distance and legal language between us.Derek. In person.With the particular expression of a man who has rehearsed something and is not entirely confident it survived contact with reality.I stop walking."No flowers this time," I say."You put the last ones in the conference room," he says. "I heard.""They were nice flowers," I say. "The conference room deserved them."He almost smiles. Almost. "Can we walk?" he says. "Just walk. Ten minutes."I look at him.He looks back.There is something different about him today. Not the hospital rawness and not the performance either. Something in between that feels more like the actual man underneath both of those versions, quieter, more certain of very little, which paradoxically makes him seem more trustworthy than he ever did when he was certain of everything."Ten minutes," I say.We walk
EYES OPEN Chapter 42: Sunday
Sundays used to feel like waiting.Waiting for Monday, waiting for Derek to get off his phone, waiting for the week to start so the hollow performance of the weekend could stop. I did not even realize I was waiting until I stopped.Now Sundays feel like this.Rhys's leg over mine under the duvet. Coffee going cold on the nightstand because neither of us moved fast enough. His hand drawing absent patterns on my back while he reads something on his phone and I stare at the ceiling doing absolutely nothing, which turns out to be one of the most underrated activities available to a human being."Stop thinking," he says without looking up."I am not thinking," I say."Your not thinking is very loud," he says.I roll over and take his phone out of his hand and put it face down on the nightstand and he looks at me with that expression, the one that is half amusement and half something that makes my stomach do things it has no business doing at ten in the morning."Hi," I say."Hi," he says b
EYES OPEN Chapter 41: The Dinner
The restaurant is on the fourteenth floor of a building that Rhys helped restore six years ago, which he mentions with the quiet particular pride of someone pointing out a thing they made better, and I file it alongside everything else I am collecting about him, the novel at twenty three, the early arrivals, the way he reads buildings like people.We are shown to a table by the window.The city is spread below us like something deliberate, all light and movement, and I sit across from him in the green dress and he is wearing the grey shirt and we look at each other across a table that has candles and good stemware and absolutely no agenda beyond this."Martin Raymond asked me not to make Vivienne the public villain," I say. "I told him I had already made that choice."Rhys looks at me across the candles. "You protected her.""I protected her child," I say. "Different motivation."He is quiet for a moment. "She sent me a message today," he says. "First time she has contacted me directl
EYES OPEN Chapter 40: Martin Raymond
He is smaller than I imagined.Not physically... he is a substantial man, broad shouldered, silver haired, the kind of presence that fills a room through habit rather than effort. But something about seeing him in person, standing in my office doorway in a coat that announces money without trying, makes him smaller than the version I constructed across months of documents and wire transfers and coordinated campaigns.He looks like a man who has spent his whole life being the most powerful person available and has recently discovered that the category was smaller than he thought.I gesture to the chair across from my desk.He sits.We look at each other."You are not surprised to see me," he says."I am not surprised by much anymore," I say. "What do you want Mr. Raymond?"He studies me the way powerful men study people they underestimated, with the specific focus of someone recalibrating. "I want to understand what you intend to do," he says. "With what you have.""Graham filed everyt
EYES OPEN Chapter 39: Sophie
She is younger than I expected.Mid twenties, slight, with the careful composed energy of someone who has spent several years managing something alone and has learned to carry it without showing the weight. She is pretty in an understated way, dark circles under her eyes that concealer has not fully addressed, wearing a jacket that is good quality but older.She sits across from my desk and looks at me with the direct gaze of someone who practiced this on the drive over."I know this is unexpected," she says."It is," I agree. "But you are here so tell me why."She exhales. "Derek called me last week. About formalizing things legally. He was... different... from the last time we spoke. More present. Like something had shifted in him." She pauses. "He mentioned you. Not in detail but enough. He said you were the one who told him about Evan needing a father who shows up."I say nothing."I wanted to meet you," she says simply. "I know that probably sounds strange. You are his ex wife an
EYES OPEN Chapter 38: Verified
Derek calls on a Wednesday morning with the kind of voice that means something has shifted."The pregnancy is real," he says.I am standing at my office window with my coffee and I stay very still for a moment."Verified how?" I ask."I hired a private medical consultant," he says. "Independent, nothing to do with Vivienne's doctor. She agreed to the verification, which surprised me. Eight weeks."Eight weeks.I do the math without wanting to. Eight weeks takes it back to approximately the hotel trip. The one he told me was a work commitment. The one where he came home with peonies and guilt and I smiled at him across the dinner table knowing everything."Okay," I say."Camille, I need to tell you something and I need you to hear it properly," he says. "I am not going back to her. I want that completely clear. Whatever this baby means for logistics and legal arrangements, it does not change anything about where I am standing.""Does she know that?""I told her yesterday," he says. "In
EYES OPEN Chapter 31: What Vivienne Knows
I read the message four times.Each time it says the same thing.There is something you need to know about Derek that nobody has told you yet and it changes everything.I sit up in the dark with the phone in my hands and I think about Vivienne, calculating precise Vivienne who has not made a single
EYES OPEN Chapter 30: Offense
We spend the rest of the afternoon building the case.Rhys's lawyer arrives at four, a compact precise man named Graham who has the energy of someone who has seen everything and is only mildly surprised by any of it. He sits at the kitchen table with Claire's folder and his own laptop and works thr
EYES OPEN Chapter 29: Claire
Nobody moves for a full five seconds.Claire Ashworth stands in the doorway of Rhys's apartment like she was invited, one hand still on the door frame, the other holding a bag that probably costs more than my car, and she looks around the room with the patient amusement of a woman who has never once
EYES OPEN Chapter 28: Funded
Nora comes over at noon with her laptop and an energy that means she has not slept and does not care.She spreads printed documents across Rhys's coffee table like a woman setting up a war room, which is essentially what this is, and Joel arrives twenty minutes later with food nobody asked for and
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