Chapter 5

Lena's POV

I stayed against that wall for a long time.

Long enough to hear the shape of it. Long enough to understand that this wasn't a conversation they were just starting, this was a conversation that had already been going on. Decisions already made. Wheels already turning.

Damien had pulled three of Aiden's contracts. Just like that. One phone call, probably. Maybe not even that. Maybe just an email from an assistant and the thing was done.

Abel had a file. A full one. Bank records, business history, every person Aiden had ever shaken hands with. Abel said it the way you'd say I made breakfast, like it was just something he'd done between other things.

Henry was tracking Aiden's remaining partners.

Quietly. Methodically. The way Henry did everything.

They weren't asking my permission.

They weren't even telling me.

They were just, doing it. Because someone had hurt their sister. And apparently that was simply not something a Morrison allowed to go unanswered.

I stood there in the dark corridor in my monogrammed robe and I didn't know what I felt.

Part of me wanted to push the door open and say yes. More. Faster.

Part of me was terrified of who these men were.

Both parts were true at the same time and I didn't know what to do with that.

I pushed off the wall. I got my water from the kitchen.

I went back upstairs and didn't sleep until almost four in the morning.

The doctor arrived at nine.

I hadn't even finished getting dressed. There was a knock at my bedroom door and when I opened it, a woman in her fifties stood there with a medical bag and a calm, professional smile.

"Miss Morrison. I'm Dr. Adaeze. Your brother arranged for me to check on you this morning."

I blinked. "Which brother?"

"Mr. Damien."

Of course.

I let her in. She was thorough and quiet and asked her questions without making me feel examined.

Blood pressure, iron levels, the pregnancy itself, she checked everything with the kind of careful attention that told me she'd been briefed on the full situation before she arrived.

When she finished she looked at me and said: "The baby is healthy. Strong heartbeat. Given everything you've been through physically in the last few days, you're both doing remarkably well."

I breathed out slowly.

"Remarkably well," I repeated.

She smiled. "You're stronger than you think, Miss Morrison."

After she left I sat on the edge of the bed for a while.

My hand on my stomach. The baby was okay. After the rain and the pavement and the hospital and everything, the baby was okay.

"Tough already," I murmured. "Just like your mother."

Damien's study looked different in daylight.

Less like a room someone worked in and more like a room that meant something. Dark wood, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a desk that was the size of a dining table and completely clear except for a laptop, a phone, and a single folder sitting in the center.

He was standing when I came in. He gestured to the chair across from the desk.

I sat.

He sat.

He opened the folder.

"I'll be direct," he said. Because of course he would.

Damien Morrison had probably never been indirect in his life.

"Morrison Corporation is one of the largest privately held business empires in the country. Real estate, finance, technology, hospitality. You are a co-owner by birth. That has always been true, regardless of whether you knew it." He turned a page. "What changes now is that you take your formal position."

I waited.

"CEO," he said. "Alongside me."

I almost laughed.

The sound actually started forming in my throat before I caught it. Because that was, that was absurd.

I had spent six years being told I was nothing. Six years in a house where I couldn't even open a bank account without Aiden's approval. Six years of being called worthless by a man whose shoes I used to polish.

And now someone was sitting across from me saying CEO.

"I have no experience," I said.

"You have instinct. You have intelligence. And you have this family behind you." He closed the folder.

"Experience is learned. What you were born with cannot be taught."

"Damien…."

"I'm not asking you to run it alone. I'm asking you to take what belongs to you."

I looked at him. The sharp face, the gray eyes, the absolute stillness of a man who had never once in his life doubted whether he deserved to be in a room.

I thought about what I'd overheard last night.

We need to destroy him.

Said without heat. Without drama. Just fact.

These men were dangerous. And they were mine.

And I was theirs. And I didn't fully know yet what that meant for me, what it would ask of me, what it would make me.

But I knew one thing.

I was done being the person things happened to.

"Alright," I said.

Something shifted in Damien's expression. So small that if I'd blinked I would have missed it.

He reached into the desk drawer and slid a document across the surface toward me.

It was thick. Twenty pages at least, dense with legal language I'd need a week to fully understand. But the top of the first page was clear enough.

“Morrison Corporation”

“Executive Appointment Agreement”

“Lena Morrison, Chief Executive Officer”

My name.

Printed there like it had always been there. Like the page had been waiting for me.

I stared at it.

My name. My real name. Not Norman. Not Aiden's wife or the barren one or any of the other things I'd been called. Morrison. CEO.

I reached for the pen on the desk.

Then I stopped.

My hand hovered over the page.

It was one thing to say alright in a chair. It was another thing entirely to put my name on something like this. To make it real. To become, officially and legally and permanently, someone with power.

Someone who could be held responsible for it.

Someone who had to be worth it.

The pen felt very heavy.

I looked up. Damien was watching me. Not impatiently. Not with any expression I could easily read. Just watching, the way he seemed to watch everything, like he was already several steps ahead and was simply waiting for the present to catch up.

"What if I'm not good at it?" I asked.

It came out smaller than I meant it to.

He didn't answer immediately. He looked at me for a moment in that way of his that made you feel like you were being taken apart and put back together faster than you could track.

Then he said:

"Take your time."

A pause.

"You've already waited twenty-four years."

I looked back down at the document.

At my name.

I didn't pick up the pen yet.