What's Real

Chapter Ten

Wren called Alaric from the cab before it even pulled away from her father's curb, phone hard against her ear, Theo's folder gripped so tight the edges had creased.

He picked up on the first ring. "Tell me you've heard."

"I've heard." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Camille's naming me in the restraining order filing. She's making it look like you used me, like I was a pawn in whatever campaign she's accusing you of running against her." She exhaled hard, forcing the panic into something usable. "I have proof, Alaric. Real proof. Theo brought me correspondence connecting Camille to the original leak fifteen years ago, and my father just confirmed the rest. She's not protecting herself from you. She's trying to bury the truth before it buries her."

A beat of silence. When Alaric spoke again his voice had gone low and dangerously controlled. "Where are you right now?"

"In a cab. Heading toward you, unless you tell me not to."

"Come here," he said immediately. "Now. I don't want you anywhere public until we know exactly what she's planning to say in that filing."

Voss Holdings' top floor at eight in the evening sat nearly empty, the frantic energy of the afternoon replaced by a heavy, waiting stillness. Alaric stood at the window of his office when Wren arrived, jacket gone, sleeves rolled to his forearms, looking less like the composed executive from that afternoon and more like a man who'd spent hours barely holding himself together.

He crossed the room the moment she walked in, and for a long wordless moment neither of them said anything at all. He pulled her against him, one hand splayed on her back, the other cradling the back of her head, and Wren felt something in her chest finally loosen after a day that had threatened to break her in half a dozen directions.

"I read the article," he said quietly against her hair. "Before you called. I want you to know none of it is true. I never told anyone I wanted your family broken. I wanted answers. I wanted, if I'm being completely honest, some version of justice for something I believed had been stolen from my own family." His arms tightened. "I never wanted this for you. Any of it."

"I know," Wren said, and meant it completely. "I have proof now, Alaric. Real proof that clears my father and points straight at Camille. We can end this tonight, if we move fast enough."

He pulled back just far enough to look at her, something fierce and grateful moving behind his eyes. "Show me."

They spread Theo's folder across his desk together, and for the next half hour the crisis outside seemed to recede slightly as they worked through it side by side. Cross-referencing dates, matching Camille's old correspondence against the merger collapse timeline, building, piece by piece, an outline that could dismantle both the restraining order and the article in one coordinated strike.

It was nearly ten when Alaric finally set down his pen, rubbed a hand over his face, and looked at her with an exhaustion that went beyond the physical.

"I need to say something," he said quietly, "and I need you to actually hear it, not file it away as evidence for later."

Wren straightened, giving him her full attention.

"I've spent ten years building a version of myself that doesn't get blindsided," he said. "That doesn't want anything he can't control the outcome of. In the space of two weeks, you've dismantled every part of that. I don't know how to be careful with you anymore, Wren. I've tried. I keep trying and it keeps failing, and I'm done pretending I want it to work."

Wren's breath caught. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," he said, closing the distance between them, "whatever happens tonight, whatever Camille manages to make public, whatever damage control we're forced into by morning, I don't want any version of this that goes back to masks and numbers and pretending I don't know your name." His hand came up to cradle her jaw, thumb tracing her cheekbone. "I want to be the man who gets to have this, in daylight, consequences and all. If you'll let me."

Wren answered the only way that felt honest. She closed the last of the distance herself, kissing him slow and certain, nothing left to hide behind. He made a low, rough sound against her mouth, hands sliding to her waist to pull her flush against him, and when he lifted her onto the edge of his desk, papers scattering to the floor, there was no mask between them. No anonymous room. No careful distance left standing.

It was slower than the times before, deliberate, like a promise instead of an escape. His mouth traced every inch of bared skin like he meant to memorize it properly this time. Her hands, finally free, mapped the real shape of him without a story or a suspicion standing between her fingers and his skin. When he finally settled over her, gaze locked on hers, raw, unguarded, the chaos of the entire day fell away completely, and Wren understood, with sudden overwhelming clarity, that whatever came next, the filing, the article, Camille's desperate final move, she wasn't standing in this alone.

Afterward, wrapped together on the couch along the far wall, his heartbeat slowing under her ear, Wren allowed herself thirty full seconds of uncomplicated peace before her phone, buzzing insistently across the room in her discarded bag, dragged them both back into the world they'd briefly managed to forget.

Alaric reached it first, glancing at the screen before handing it over, his expression already tight with dread.

Priya. Three missed calls, and a single text glowing at the top.

Call me back the SECOND you see this. Camille just gave a live interview. She's not just going after Alaric anymore. She's saying you helped him cover it up, that you knew about the original scandal before you ever set foot in that club, and the whole "investigation" was a performance from the start.

Wren's stomach dropped through the floor a second time that day.

"She's not just trying to protect herself anymore," she said, looking up at Alaric with dawning horror. "She's trying to destroy both of us at once, before either of us gets the chance to prove she's lying."