Chapter Six : Not Tonight.

Elara

I stood in the quiet kitchen with smoke drifting through the open door, my pulse racing, a slow shiver crawling down my spine.

*Take today, Elara. But you won't forget last night, and I won't let you.*

I read it once. Then twice. By the fifth time I wasn't reading it anymore. I was just staring at it.

I didn't type anything. If I answered, it would turn into a conversation, and I wasn't ready for that. I turned the phone face down on the counter. A moment later I turned it over and looked again.

Ten years of cold looks. Ten years of nods aimed at the wall. And last night, the gentlest hands I had ever felt, and two words whispered against my ear.

Happy birthday.

My lips still felt like his. I pressed the back of my hand against them, then pulled it away like I'd touched a hot stove.

"Ellie!" Mara called from the patio. "Is it rude to roast marshmallows over a dead handbag?"

I shoved the phone into my pocket and went outside.

The fire had burned down to glowing embers. Mara sat on an overturned bucket with a stick in one hand and a bag of marshmallows in her lap. We had both taken the day off work. She called it a spiritual emergency. I had called it a family matter. The plan was cake, and no men.

"Very rude," I said.

"Good. I like rude." She held out the bag. "We are gathered here today to say goodbye to a very ugly purse. It lived loudly. It died orange."

A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.

"There she is." Mara pointed her stick at me. "Want my Lucien impression?"

"Please don't."

She flattened her face into a bored stare. "Is something burning?" she drawled. "Do you ever listen, Elara?" Then she sniffed the smoke and gasped. "Oh. Something *is* burning. All his presents."

I laughed so hard I had to hold the railing. Then the laugh wobbled and turned into something else, and Mara dropped the act and put her arm around me.

"Hey. You can be sad and laugh at the same time. It's allowed."

"I'm just angry at him."

"Good. Stay angry." She squeezed my shoulder. "You keep touching your pocket."

"I do not."

"Every thirty seconds. Who's texting you?"

"Nobody. Wrong number."

"A wrong number that made your face go red?"

"It's the smoke."

"Ellie, smoke doesn't do that to your ears." She narrowed her eyes. I stared hard at the embers until she let it go. "Fine. Keep your secrets. But if Lucien calls tonight, don't pick up on the first ring. You always do. Count to six."

"Six?"

"Six. Slowly. In your head. While thinking mean thoughts."

I almost smiled. She stood up, brushed ash off her jacket, and handed me the bag of marshmallows.

"I have to go home. My cat thinks I joined a cult." She pointed back toward the kitchen. "There's a fruit basket on your counter. Eat something. Grief needs vitamins. I'll be back at nine with ice cream."

"You don't have to."

"I know. That's why it counts." She kissed the top of my head. "Don't be nice to him tonight. Be boring. Boring is a weapon."

She left. The front door clicked, and the house went terribly quiet.

I stood in the kitchen for a long time. Then I went upstairs and washed my face. In the mirror, I tugged my scarf higher over the mark on my neck, and I didn't look at the woman beneath it.

My wedding ring sat on the nightstand where I'd left it. I slid it on. It was cold.

My phone was still in my pocket. I took it out and looked at his message one more time.

I didn't answer.

---

Cassian

The door opened without a knock.

Lucien walked in with the smile he wore when he wanted something. A woman came in on his arm.

She was tall, in a cream dress and heels, with long dark hair and red lipstick. Sunglasses sat pushed up on her head. I had seen that mouth smirk across a velvet booth three nights ago.

Was he serious? He brought her here?

A man in a charcoal suit followed a step behind them. He closed the door without a sound, set a folder on my desk before anyone asked, and pulled a pen from his pocket exactly as Lucien reached for one. Lucien didn't look at him.

"Adrian, my three o'clock?"

"Moved to four, Mr. Veyne. The car will be at the south entrance at three-thirty."

"Fine." Lucien waved a hand and dropped into my guest chair. The woman perched on the arm of it, crossing her legs. Adrian stepped back to the door, tablet against his chest, and went still. I had seen him in that spot a hundred times. He never sat. He never spoke unless he was spoken to.

"You remember Ivy," Lucien said.

"Cassian Rooke." She tilted her head. "Lucien says you're no fun."

I didn't look at her. I looked at Lucien. "Your guest can wait in the lobby."

"Relax, Cass."

"In my building, guests wait in the lobby."

"She's with me."

"Then she can wait with you In the lobby"

I kept my voice flat and quiet. It was the voice I used on men who owed me money. "I don't do business in front of strangers."

Ivy's smile thinned. Lucien laughed.

"See? That's what I mean. Ruthless." He patted Ivy's knee. "Give us two minutes, darling."

"Of course." She slid off the chair. She didn't head for the door. She bent down, cupped Lucien's jaw, and kissed him on the mouth, slow and deliberate, right there in front of me. Her eyes stayed open and fixed on mine the whole time.

Lucien's hand slid up her back. He didn't pull away. He didn't so much as glance in my direction.

The pen creaked in my grip.

This is the man Elara was in love with. The man she waited four hours for with candles and a cake. He brought his mistress into my office, in the middle of the day, and kissed her like I was part of the furniture.

I set the pen down. The click against the desk was too loud, and I made myself breathe in through my nose, slow and quiet. My jaw was so tight my teeth ached. Heat pounded behind my eyes, and the nails of my other hand dug crescents into my palm under the desk. I kept my face blank. I had sat across from men who insulted me for an hour and never raised my voice. I had just never wanted to put anyone through a wall this badly.

"Don't be long, baby," Ivy murmured against his lips. She straightened, smoothed her dress, and gave me a small, pleased smile.

Baby. In my own office.

Adrian opened the door for her. She walked out like she owned the place. It closed behind her, and Adrian stepped back into his spot letting out a sighn.

"Saturday night," Lucien said, wiping a trace of red from his lip with his thumb. "Honestly, I barely remember it."

"I remember enough."

"Oh, come on. Don't look at me like that. I'd had a few drinks, things got loud, and now it's over."

He shrugged. He didn't look sorry at all. "I even went by the house the next morning.

Brought presents, said my sorry, did the whole good husband routine. And she wouldn't open a single one.”

"Hm." I turned a page of the contract without looking up. "Check the exit clause on page six."

"Sulking," Lucien went on, as if I hadn't spoken. "Women. They want an apology, then they won't take it. She'll come around, though.

Elara loves me too much to stay angry. She always forgives me. By tonight she'll be the one saying sorry."

The pen pressed so hard into the paper that it tore a line through the margin.

The worst part was that he was right. I had watched it happen for years. Every cruel word, every missed dinner, every night he didn't come home, and she picked up the phone on the second ring. She loved him. That was the truth I had never been able to cut out of myself, no matter how many deals I won or how many men I buried.

And he said it so easily. Like it was a bill he knew she'd pay.

"You know, I never understood it," Lucien said. "You used to like her, Cass."

I went still.

"Back in college." He said it lightly, studying the ceiling. "Remember? You told me about the girl in the library. The one by the window. I took one look at her and thought, well, somebody had better introduce himself."

The room seemed to shrink.

I remembered it. I remembered all of it.

Second year. A dark-haired girl at the same library table every evening, a book open in front of her and a pencil stuck in her hair. I had never spoken to her. I told Lucien about her one night in our dorm like it was a secret I couldn't carry alone. I said I'd talk to her soon. I said I just needed the right moment.

Months went by. I kept rehearsing the right words. I kept waiting.

Then one evening, Lucien walked into the common room, hand in hand with her.

"Cass," he'd said, grinning. "Meet my girlfriend. Elara."

I had been holding a cup of coffee. I remembered the heat of it through the paper. I remembered smiling. I remembered shaking her hand and hearing her say hello, and thinking, calmly, good for him even though I was really sad. I thought the feelings would disappear with time but it didn't.

Now, ten years later, in my own office, that same heat climbed up my neck.

My jaw locked. My hands closed into fists under the desk, and my nails bit into my palms until the skin stung. I stared at the wood grain and breathed through my nose, slow and quiet, while a voice in my head said what it had said a thousand times.

If you had walked up to her first. If you had said one word in that library. She would have been yours.

"You went quiet," Lucien said, watching me. "You did that back then, too. And now you can barely stand to be in a room with her. What changed?"

By the door, Adrian's eyes lifted from his tablet. One second. Then they dropped.

"People change," I said.

"They do." His smile never moved. "Anyway. I'm fixing it tonight. Nice dinner, a bottle of wine, a little tenderness. By midnight she'll be in my bed and forgetting the whole thing."

The pen snapped in my hand.

Was he out of his mind? A woman in a cream dress is waiting in my lobby, and he's planning to go home and sleep with his wife?

I set the pieces down very slowly. I made my fingers lie flat. A muscle jumped in my jaw, and I held it still.

"Maybe give her room," I said. My voice came out even, and I was surprised. "After Saturday, that could feel like pressure."

"Pressure? She's my wife."

"She was humiliated in front of a room full of people. Some women don't want to be touched after that."

"You wouldn't know, Cass. You've never been married." He grinned. "You say sorry, you light a candle, she melts. That's how it works. You're a bachelor with a calendar full of board meetings."

"Not always."

"Always." He stood and straightened his cuffs. "Come to dinner Friday. We'll sort out Whitcombe company over drinks."

At the door, Adrian's gaze passed over the broken pen and my white knuckles, the way you note a small thing for later. "Mr. Rooke," he murmured, and followed Lucien out.

I sat there with my pulse pounding in my ears.

She's his wife. You have no right.

I had told myself that for six years. It had never helped, and it didn't help now.

The door opened again ten minutes later. Julian walked in without knocking, took the coffee off my desk, and drank half of it.

"Lucien was whistling in the lobby," my stepbrother said. "That's his planning tune. And there was a woman on his arm who looked like she'd won something.”

"Business."

"Sure." He looked at the snapped pen. Then at me. "That was a four hundred dollar pen."

"I'll buy another."

"I'm sure." He set the cup down. Julian had been in my life since I was ten, when my father married his Mother, and he had never liked Lucien. He had never told me why. "I don't like him, you know. Never have. There's something in how he looks at you. Like he's keeping score."

"He's my friend."

"That's what worries me." He didn't push. He dropped a folder on my desk instead. "Whitcombe revisions came back from legal. They need Lucien's initials before the bank closes. He's heading home. If you happen to be near whatever's been eating you, that's a coincidence."

I looked at him. "Julian."

"Don't thank me. I don't want to know." He was already leaving. "Just hope she's worth it."

I turned and practically rushed out of my office.

There's no way in hell I'm going let Lucien have his way with Elara tonight.