Chapter 5

The silence in the Rolls Royce had stretched long enough that Irina had started counting streetlights just to give her brain something to do.

Neo's question still hung between them like smoke that refused to clear.

Sex?

He'd said it so casually. Like he was asking if she wanted cream in her coffee.

"Look," she started, stopped, then started again. "I think we should keep things.. clean."

Neo glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "Clean."

"Yeah. Separate and clean."

"You said clean twice."

"I know what I said, Neo."

She caught the faint curve of a smirk at the corner of his mouth and wanted to throw something at it.

"Separate works for me," he said. No wounded ego, no argument. Just separate works for me, like she'd suggested they use different TV remotes.

"And separate bathrooms," she added.

"Irina." He said her name like he was physically restraining a laugh. "The master suite has three bathrooms."

She blinked. "Three."

"Three."

She turned to look out the window so he wouldn't see her face. Three bathrooms in one room. Twenty-four hours ago she'd been lying in a hospital bed with a cast on her leg. Now she was in a Rolls Royce with a ten million dollar contract, a ring on her finger, headed somewhere with three bathrooms in one bedroom.

God had a truly unhinged sense of humor.

"That works," she said, keeping her voice even.

Nothing could have prepared her for the McKinney Mansion.

She'd seen pictures — Anna had shown her years ago, the kind that unhinged your jaw. But photographs were filthy liars. No photograph could communicate the sheer scale of the thing. The iron gates alone were taller than her apartment building.

"Jesus," she said, when the car stopped at the front steps.

"I'll give you the tour," Neo said.

"Can we start outside and work inward? I need to mentally prepare."

He laughed. A real one, not the boardroom kind. It transformed his face entirely and Irina filed that information away without fully understanding why.

The exterior was white stone and glass, enormous columns flanking the entrance, manicured hedges lining the path. It looked less like a home and more like a government building that had decided to become aspirational.

Inside was worse. Or better. Depending on who you were.

 The foyer had a chandelier the size of a small country. Polished marble floors that clicked under Irina's heels — she walked carefully because falling flat on her face in the McKinney Mansion on her wedding night was not the story she wanted to tell her grandchildren.

Neo walked her through at a measured pace. Three sitting rooms. A formal dining room that seated twenty. A kitchen the size of her entire former apartment — she told him this and he said that's an exaggeration, and she said Neo, I'm being generous, and he looked at the kitchen, looked at her, and said fair point.

Then she stopped walking entirely.

The library. Floor to ceiling shelves, a rolling ladder on a brass rail, leather armchairs, warm amber lighting and the quiet papery smell of a room that actually got used.

"This is the only room in this entire house that looks like a human being lives here," she said. "It's the only room my father actually cared about," Neo said. Something moved across his face, too quick to catch. "He built the rest for appearances."

She looked at him. "And you? Did you build anything here for yourself?"

The question surprised him. She could tell. He looked around the library before answering. "Working on it," he said quietly.

She nodded and they kept walking.

The master suite confirmed everything she'd suspected about billionaires and restraint — which was that they had none.

King bed. Garden view. Walk-in closet the size of a studio apartment. And three bathrooms. She counted.

"I'll take that one," she said, pointing to the furthest one.

"That's the one I usually use," Neo said.

She didn't move her finger.

"...I'll take the middle one," he said.

"Smart man."

He muttered something under his breath as he walked away and she chose not to ask him to repeat it.

Her things had already been moved — Neo had arranged it without fanfare. Clothes in the closet, toiletries on the counter. On the bedside table, a glass of water and two painkillers. Her leg was still healing and someone had remembered, even when she'd forgotten.

She stood holding the painkillers and looked around.

She was Mrs. McKinney. Ten million dollars sat in an account with her name on it. Her sister was in a coma. And she was standing in a bedroom the size of a football pitch, on her wedding night, in Anna's dress.

She looked down at the gown.

They'd been going to collect it the morning everything fell apart.

The painkillers blurred slightly. She blinked hard.

Don't you dare, she told herself. Not tonight.

A knock came at the door. Soft. Neo leaned in the frame — jacket off, shirt untucked, top button undone. The most undone she'd seen him. She was annoyed at herself for noticing.

"You eat anything today?" he asked.

"The sandwich at the hospital."

 He disappeared. Twelve minutes later he was back with a plate — bread, cold cuts, fruit, cheese. Simple. He'd gotten it himself rather than calling staff, and that meant something she wasn't ready to unpack.

"Eat," he said.

"Bossy on the wedding night. Noted."

"Eat, Irina."

She ate. He stood by the window, hands in his pockets, giving her quiet without making it feel like a gift.

When she finished, he moved toward the connecting door. Paused.

"That thing you said at the ceremony," he said, without turning. "About being imperfect but doing all you can." A beat. "It wasn't nothing."

The door clicked shut.

Irina stared at it for a long time.

"Lord have mercy," she whispered.

Then she spent forty-five minutes trying to get out of a wedding gown alone.

She was never telling anyone that.