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CHAPTER TWELVE: Three
publish date:
2026-06-05 22:52:14
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I Left Broken and Fat, I Came Back His Boss CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Some Months Old
Emma's POVThe twins are running.I say twins because that is what it feels like when Ace and Grey move at full speed through an apartment simultaneously, two small people with absolutely no concept of obstacles or consequences, and Willa walks behind them at a measured pace with her rabbit under her arm and the expression of someone who has decided that dignity is worth the sacrifice of speed.They are fourteen months old and my apartment has ceased to be a living space and has become a terrain.Everything below knee height is either bolted to the wall, removed entirely, or has already been destroyed by Ace and is currently being examined by Grey and will subsequently be reorganized by Willa into a system only she understands.I move the coffee table on a Wednesday after Ace uses it to launch himself at the sofa for the third time in a day and I stand in the living room and look at the space where it was and think about the apartment in LA with its perfectly curated surfaces and its
I Left Broken and Fat, I Came Back His Boss CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Declined
Liam's POVThe first decline comes on a Tuesday.It is polite, professionally worded and signed by someone named Bertrand Lacroix, who is apparently the board chair of Bellamy Inc and who writes with the careful courtesy of a man delivering a rejection on behalf of someone who does not wish to be identified as the person doing the rejecting."Thank you for your interest in a strategic partnership with Bellamy Inc. At this time, the company is not seeking external acquisitions or partnership arrangements. We wish Carson Holdings continued success." I read it twice, set it down, and pick it up again.I have been declined before, this is not a new experience. I run a company that makes approaches and receives them regularly and the word no is not one that destabilizes me professionally. I have been told no by government bodies and sovereign wealth funds and men twice my age who thought my ambition was charming and my timeline was optimistic and who are now, without exception, doing busi
I Left Broken and Fat, I Came Back His Boss CHAPTER THIRTEEN: What Running Feels Like
Emma's POVSix weeks after the triplets are born, my mother goes back to San Diego, and I stand in the doorway of my new apartment and watch her taxi pull away and then I close the door and stand in the hallway of my life and think, right.Just me then.Me and Adèle, who arrives every morning at seven thirty with the calm authority of a woman who has decided that whatever is happening in this apartment is manageable and she intends to prove it, and me and three babies who have already established distinct and specific opinions about every aspect of their existence.Ace's opinion about most things is that they should be louder.Grey's opinion is that everything should be examined thoroughly before any conclusions are drawn.Willa's opinion is that she should be in charge and everyone else should be aware of this and act accordingly.I find a bigger apartment in the seventh arrondissement in March, one with three bedrooms and a kitchen large enough to actually turn around in, and I move
I Left Broken and Fat, I Came Back His Boss CHAPTER TWELVE: Three
Emma's POVNobody tells you that giving birth to triplets feels like your body staging a full-scale rebellion and then demanding a standing ovation at the end of it.I am in labor for eleven hours, which the midwife assures me is actually quite good for triplets, and I want to ask her what her definition of good is and whether she has ever personally experienced eleven hours of her body attempting to turn itself inside out, but I am a little busy at the time.My mother is in the room.She holds my hand for the first six hours with the steady presence of a woman who has decided that nothing happening in this room is going to unsettle her, and then at hour seven I tell her very clearly to stop saying "Breathe through it" because I am breathing through it, I have been breathing through it for seven hours, I am an expert at breathing through it, and what I actually need is for everyone in this room to acknowledge that this is objectively a lot."This is objectively a lot," my mother says
I Left Broken and Fat, I Came Back His Boss CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Photograph
Liam's POVMarcus finds it on a Tuesday.He does not make a production of it. He sets it on my desk at the end of a briefing, a small printed photograph, the kind taken on a phone and printed later, worn at the edges the way things get when they have been handled more than once."Found in the linen closet during the apartment reorganization," he says. "I thought you might want it."He leaves before I can respond, which is a Marcus thing, delivering information and removing himself before the response becomes something he would have to navigate.I look at the photograph.It is Emma.At some event, maybe a year into the marriage, an outdoor function in the evening, the light going warm behind her. She is turned slightly away from the camera, looking at something off to the left, and she is laughing. Not the careful social smile I watched her deploy at events, the one she put on with the same deliberateness she put on the black dress, but the real smile, the full face kind, the kind that
I Left Broken and Fat, I Came Back His Boss CHAPTER TEN: Bellamy Inc
Emma's POVThe first contract is small.A French textile company, family owned, three generations deep, currently losing money in ways that are entirely preventable if someone who knows what they are looking at would just look at it. They find me through a mutual contact of my mother's cousin who knows someone who knows someone, which is the least glamorous origin story for a business relationship I can imagine, but here we are.I know nothing about textiles.I learn everything about textiles. I spend three weeks reading everything I can find, making calls to industry contacts who have no particular reason to talk to me but do anyway because I ask the right questions in the right order, and I sit at my secondhand kitchen table with my laptop and three different reference books and a French dictionary and the specific focused energy of a woman who has something to prove and is only just beginning to understand that the person she is proving it to is herself.I write a restructuring pl
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