Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Julian Wants Her Back

Vale Holdings lost another nine percent that week.

Celeste watched it happen from the Blackwood library, a cup of tea at her elbow and the Northgate fallout spread across the oak table. Two more clients had paused their contracts. The board had forced a public statement. A financial columnist had written, in a headline she read twice, **"VALE'S EMPIRE: BUILT ON SAND?"**

She should have felt victorious.

Instead, she felt watched.

The black sedan had appeared three times since the diner. Once outside the estate gates. Once behind her car on the way to a meeting with Damian's attorneys. Once, impossibly, parked across from the florist where she had stopped to buy lilies for her mother's grave.

She had told Damian. He had doubled the security detail and said nothing more, but his jaw had gone hard in the way that meant he was thinking of something he wasn't ready to share.

*Later,* he'd promised.

She was getting very tired of *later.*

The message arrived on a Thursday evening.

Not a call. Julian knew better than to call. It was a handwritten note, delivered by courier to the estate in a cream envelope she recognized instantly, the same stationery he had once used to write her love letters.

*Cece. Please. One hour. The old place on Alder Street. I'll come alone. J.*

Celeste stared at it for a long time.

"Burn it," Damian said from the doorway. He had read it over her shoulder, and his voice was very controlled. "It's a trap."

"Probably."

"Then why are you putting on your coat?"

"Because I want to see his face." She slid her arms into the sleeves. "And because desperate men say things."

"I'm coming with you."

"No." She turned and met his eyes. "If he sees you, he'll perform. If he thinks I'm alone, he'll confess."

"Celeste."

"I'll wear the wire. Reyes will be across the street." She softened her voice, just slightly. "You said you'd trust me to fight my own way."

A long, difficult silence.

"One hour," Damian said finally. "If you're not out by then, I'm coming through the door."

"Fair."

She was almost to the hall when his hand caught her wrist, gently. A touch with a question in it.

"Be careful," he said, low. "He's more dangerous when he's begging."

The restaurant on Alder Street had been their first real date.

Julian had chosen it because it was cheap, candlelit, and run by an old woman who gave them free bread. Seven years later, it had changed hands, but the corner booth was exactly the same, cracked red leather, a wobbly table, a window fogged with the breath of strangers.

Julian was already there.

She almost didn't recognize him.

The tailored suit hung loose. His hair was uncombed, his jaw rough with two days of stubble. Dark crescents sat beneath his eyes, and his hands, always so steady, trembled around a glass of whiskey he clearly hadn't been drinking for the taste.

"Cece," he breathed, rising too fast. "You came."

"Don't call me that."

"Sorry. Celeste." He gestured at the seat. "Please. Sit."

She sat. The leather creaked beneath her, a sound that belonged to another life.

For a moment, neither spoke. Then Julian pressed both palms against his face and laughed, a ragged, broken sound.

"God, you look well," he said. "That's the worst part. You look *happy.*"

"I'm not here for compliments."

"No. No, of course." He lowered his hands. His eyes were red-rimmed, wet. "I'm here to apologize. I know that's absurd. I know you can't believe it. But I need you to hear me."

"I'm listening."

"I made a mistake." His voice cracked. "The worst mistake of my life. I was a fool. I was weak, and I was *manipulated,* Celeste. By her."

"By Isabella."

"Yes!" He leaned forward, desperate. "She wormed her way in. She told me you were cold, that you'd stopped believing in me. She whispered things, and I was under so much pressure, and I let myself be swayed. But I never wanted to leave you. Not really. I never stopped loving you."

Celeste watched him. She noted the tremor in his lip. The practiced hitch in his breath.

*He's good,* she thought. *He was always so good.*

"The baby," she said.

Something flickered across his face. "I'll handle it. Provide for the child. But it was never real, Celeste. It was a *lapse.* You're my wife."

"I'm Damian Blackwood's wife."

"On paper." Julian's mouth twisted. "I know what that marriage is. Contract. Strategy. A revenge play." His eyes lifted, sharp suddenly beneath the tears. "I've been watching, remember. I know you. You'd never marry a man you didn't love unless you wanted to hurt someone. And you wanted to hurt *me.*"

*There you are,* she thought.

"Come home," he said, softer. "Let me fix it. Divorce him. We'll restructure Vale, put your name on the shares. Half of everything, Cece. You've earned it. I'll sign tonight."

It was a beautiful offer. A perfect one. Exactly what she would have begged for three months ago.

She slid her hand across the table and let it rest beside his. His breath caught.

"Julian," she said gently. "Why would you give me half the company now?"

"Because I love you."

"No."

His smile faltered.

"Because I'm bleeding you," Celeste said. "And you're hoping that if I come home, I'll stop."

The tenderness drained from his face like water from a cracked glass.

"That's unfair."

"Is it?" She withdrew her hand. "You didn't fight for me when I was broke and barefoot in the rain. You fight now, when I'm the one holding the knife."

"You're being cruel."

"I learned from the best."

He stared at her. For a long moment, the mask hung between them, slipping, and she saw what lay beneath. Not heartbreak. Not regret.

Fear.

"You don't understand what you're doing," he said, low and hoarse. "You think this is about me. It isn't. There are people above me, Celeste. People who will not forgive what you've started."

The wire against her ribs seemed to tighten.

"Who?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Julian. *Who?*"

He shook his head. "Just stop. Please. Walk away from Blackwood and I'll protect you. I swear I can protect you."

"From whom?"

His phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at it and went white.

Celeste caught the name on the screen before he snatched it away.

*I.H.*

Julian stood so abruptly the table rocked. "I have to go."

"Julian..."

"Don't follow me. Don't *contact* me." His voice cracked into something almost panicked. "It's coming apart. It's all coming apart. She's going to..."

He stopped.

Then, quieter, bleakly, "If she tells them, we're all dead."

He was gone before Celeste could answer, the bell above the door chiming softly behind him.

She sat in the cracked red booth with the ruin of her marriage cooling in two untouched glasses, her heart pounding against the wire.

*If she tells them.*

Tells them what?

Across the street, Reyes's voice whispered in her earpiece. "Mrs. Blackwood? You all right?"

"Yes," she said slowly, staring at the empty seat. "But Isabella is about to do something desperate."

And for the first time, Celeste realized she wasn't the only one who had been fighting for her life.