THE MORNING AFTER

CHAPTER 4: THE MORNING AFTER

I sleep for maybe two hours.

Every time I close my eyes, I see Dominic's face in the kitchen. The way his thumb brushed my lip. The heat of his hand on my waist. The challenge in his voice. *Three days.*

By seven-thirty, I give up on sleep entirely.

Felicity's clothes hang in the closet like accusations. Everything is designer, expensive, and at least one size too small. I squeeze into a cream-colored dress that pinches at the waist and shows more leg than I'm comfortable with. The shoes are worse. Heels that make me feel like I'm walking on stilts.

I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. The makeup is gone, washed off last night, and without it I look more like myself. But the dress, the shoes, the wedding ring on my finger, they all scream *wrong*.

I don't belong here.

But I have three days to pretend I do.

The house is a maze of glass and marble. I take two wrong turns before I find the dining room. Morning light pours through floor-to-ceiling windows, turning everything gold. The ocean sparkles beyond the glass, endless and uncaring.

Dominic sits at the head of a table that could seat twenty. He's in a charcoal suit, his dark hair still damp from a shower. The Wall Street Journal is spread in front of him, and he doesn't look up when I enter.

"Good morning," I try.

"Morning." He turns a page.

I slide into a chair three seats away. Too close feels dangerous after last night. Too far feels obvious.

Mrs. Chen appears with coffee and a smile. "Scrambled eggs and toast, Mrs. Laurent? Or would you prefer something else?"

The fake name makes my skin crawl. "That's perfect, thank you."

She sets down a plate in front of Dominic first. He nods without looking up from his paper. Then she places mine, the portions generous, the eggs fluffy and golden.

I pick up my fork. Dominic's eyes flick to me over the edge of the newspaper.

I freeze. "What?"

"Nothing." He goes back to reading.

But I can feel his attention on me as I eat. Every bite feels monitored, analyzed. I force myself to chew slowly, to act normal, whatever that means.

Halfway through the eggs, he speaks. "You don't eat like Felicity either."

My fork clatters against the plate. "Excuse me?"

"She picked at her food. Rearranged it on her plate to make it look like she ate more than she did." He folds the newspaper, finally meeting my eyes. "You actually finish what's on your plate."

"Maybe I'm just hungry."

"Or maybe you're not used to wasting things." He takes a sip of coffee, and there's something in his gaze that feels too knowing. "Growing up as the spare daughter. I imagine resources were distributed... differently."

Heat crawls up my neck. He's right, but I won't give him the satisfaction of admitting it. "Is there a point to this observation?"

"Just making conversation with my wife." The word drips with sarcasm. "My assistant will send you the files by noon. I assume you have a laptop?"

"Yes."

"Good." He stands, buttoning his suit jacket. "Three days, Iris. Don't waste them."

Then he's gone, leaving me alone with half-eaten eggs and the sound of waves crashing against rocks.

After breakfast, I explore.

The house is even bigger than I thought. Rooms I don't have names for, hallways that lead to more hallways. Everything is clean lines and cold surfaces. Beautiful, but empty. Like a house designed to impress, not to live in.

I find the library by accident, turning down a corridor I haven't tried yet. The door is unlocked, and inside is the first space that feels alive. Books line every wall from floor to ceiling. Old leather spines next to new paperbacks. Fiction mixed with finance textbooks. Someone actually reads these.

I run my fingers along a shelf, breathing in the smell of paper and dust. This room makes sense. This room I understand.

Dominic's study is three doors down. I try the handle, but it's locked. Of course it is.

The greenhouse is at the back of the property, past a stone patio and a pool that looks like it's never been used. The glass structure is old, Victorian maybe, with wrought iron frames and climbing vines that have gone wild. Inside, it smells like earth and roses. Plant life spills over tables, reaching toward sunlight. No one's trimmed anything in months, but somehow it makes the space more beautiful. Wild and honest.

"She used to spend hours in here."

I spin around. An older man stands in the doorway, leaning on a cane. He has Dominic's sharp features but weathered, like they've been carved by years of disappointment. Silver hair, expensive suit, eyes that miss nothing.

"Victor Laurent," he introduces himself. "Dominic's father."

My throat goes dry. "Mr. Laurent. I didn't realize you lived here."

"I don't. I'm staying for the week. Wanted to meet my new daughter-in-law." He steps into the greenhouse, studying me the way Dominic does. Like I'm a puzzle to solve. "You're not her."

There's no point in lying. "No, I'm not."

"Good." He moves past me to a rosebush, touching the petals with surprising gentleness. "She wouldn't have lasted a week here. Too soft. Too focused on appearances." He glances at me over his shoulder. "You, though. You might actually survive my son."

"I don't understand."

"You will." He starts to leave, then pauses. "The library was my wife's. She'd want someone to use it. Don't let Dominic scare you away from it."

He's gone before I can ask what he means.

I stand in the greenhouse for another ten minutes, trying to process the conversation. Victor Laurent just gave me permission to invade his dead wife's space. And he seemed... glad I'm not Felicity?

Nothing about this family makes sense.

Back in my room, my laptop dings with an email.

**From:** Morgan Reeves

**Subject:** Files per Mr. Laurent's request

**Attachment:** LaurentIndustries_Q1-Q4.zip

No greeting. No explanation. Just thousands of pages of financial documents compressed into one file.

I d******d it and stare at the folder on my desktop. This is it. My chance to prove I'm worth keeping. Or my ticket back to obscurity.

The library calls to me. I grab my laptop and a notebook, ignoring the way Felicity's too-tight dress digs into my ribs.

The leather chair by the window is perfect. I curl into it, balancing the laptop on my knees, and open the first file.

Numbers flood the screen. Revenue reports, expense sheets, quarterly projections. Laurent Industries has six divisions, each bleeding money in different ways. The tech division is hemorrhaging cash on a product that's two years behind schedule. Real estate is underwater on three properties. Manufacturing costs are up forty percent while output is down.

It's a mess. A beautiful, complicated, solvable mess.

I open my notebook and start writing. Revenue streams, cost centers, inefficiencies. My hand cramps after the first hour, but I don't stop. This is what I'm good at. Not wearing designer dresses or playing the perfect wife. This. Numbers. Logic. Solutions.

The morning light shifts to afternoon gold. My coffee goes cold. Mrs. Chen brings me lunch on a tray, but I barely taste it.

Somewhere in the fourth file, I see it. A pattern in the losses. The tech division and manufacturing are both spending on redundant research. They're duplicating work, wasting money on projects that could be consolidated. And the real estate problem isn't about the properties themselves. It's about the financing structure. They're paying premium rates on loans that could be refinanced for half the cost.

I grab my pen and start calculating. If they consolidate the R&D departments, they could cut costs by thirty percent. Refinancing the properties would save another twelve million annually. And if they divest the smallest division entirely, the one that's never turned a profit, they could inject that capital into the tech product everyone's waiting for.

It's not perfect. But it's a start.

I open the first file again, and the numbers swim before my eyes. Millions in losses, hemorrhaging cash, a division drowning. But underneath the chaos, I see it. A pattern. A solution.

Maybe I can do this after all.