CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Aria’s POV

I was at my desk when he walked onto the accounts floor.

I could feel him even before he walked in, the subtle recalibration of the room’s energy that preceded him like a signal.

Priya straightened almost unnoticeably, two workers having a conversation two desks over wound down without a conclusion.

The floor atmosphere almost like it came to an end as it adjusted.

I kept my eyes on my screen.

His footsteps came down the second row and stopped at my desk.

“Morning, Miss Ashford,” he greeted.

I looked up. He was holding a folder, the perfect kind of prop for this kind of moment.

His expression was well professionalised in the way it always was at work, but beneath it was the unprofessional events that had happened between us outside the company’s wall.

“Good morning, sir.” I replied.

“The Harrington report you sent Marcus.” He dropped the folder gently on the edge of my desk. “I’ve marked a few items I’ll like you to cross-reference against the Chelton account. They may be related.”

“I’ll look at it today, sir” I replied, stressing on the honorific.

“No rush,” he said. “End of the week is fine.”

He held my gaze for exactly one beat longer.

Then he picked up the folder and walked back toward the elevator, and the room exhaled around him. Priya leaned toward my direction without turning her head.

“He has never,” she said, in a low voice, pitched exclusively for me, “personally delivered a cross-reference note to this or to any staff.”

“I think he was just passing through,” I said.

“The elevator is in the other direction,” she reminded.

I didn’t reply her, I subtly returned to my screen.

Let Priya believe whatever she want.

***

The morning passed efficiently, but I was busy trying to concentrate on the reconciliation accounts.

I worked through the Harrington file, made progress on two other secondary accounts Marcus had assigned me.

I ate my lunch at my desk when it was time to.

Memories of last night clouding my mind, even when I tried to focus.

By three o’clock I had cleared almost all the accounts Marcus assigned me for the week.

Then I moved over to the Chelton cross-reference Xavier had dropped for me in three morning.

Around few minutes to 5pm, my internal notification chimed.

I glanced at it, expecting Marcus, or Chloe from HR about a form I had forgotten to complete, or another account I was supposed to work on, but it was none of it.

The sender field read: I. Sinclair.

I sat very still for a moment.

Ivanna Sinclair was not an employee of Beaumont Group. She had no internal system access that I was aware of. The message existing in my work inbox at all required either a guest account or someone with administrative access having created one on her behalf, which meant it had been deliberate, planned, and arranged in advance.

I opened it.

Ms. Ashford.

I’ll be direct, since we both know the pleasantries have run their course. Whatever you believe is developing between you and Xavier, I will advise you to end it. Not for my sake only, but for yours as well. We both knew you are a single mother with a new job in a building owned by a man who will eventually choose his family legacy over a distraction, however compelling he currently finds it hard. I have known Xavier Beaumont operate for years and I know exactly what he does with people that doesn’t fit into his social class. I am being kind by telling you this now rather than letting you find out the harder way.

Consider this pleasant courtesy.

— I.S.

The words sounds more confusing as I read it, as if it was written in a complex language.

Then I closed the inbox.

I sat at my desk with the Chelton cross-reference open on my screen and the message sitting in my inbox, and I thought about the information Ivanna Sinclair had seemingly passed across to me.

She was right that Xavier would eventually choose. And she was right that I was a single mother with a new job and considerably more to lose than she did if any of this went sideways.

What she had gotten wrong was the assumption that I needed to be told any of that.

I knew those exact things. I had been running them every single day, against every moment that had seem to build around us, with the precision of a woman who had learned what it cost to stop running them.

I didn’t need Ivanna Sinclair to inform me about my own risk assessment.

One part of me wanted Xavier Beaumont to answer the question he had left hanging. The ones he hadn’t said out loud and the ones he had.

I closed the Chelton file, saved my work, and shut down my laptop with the last event of the day still lingering on me.

The right question wasn’t whether I could afford the turn of event.

It was whether Xavier himself would be honest enough in the turn of these events.