Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

THE EMAIL

Henry POV

The notification came while I was in the shower. I heard it distantly, that specific double-tone my phone makes for emails, different from texts, different from calls and I let it go. 

Whatever it was could wait. I had been awake since five trying to draft a follow-up to the AME proposal and my head needed the silence. I stood under the water with my eyes closed and made myself not think about it.

Then it went off again.

I turned off the shower, wrapped a towel around my waist, and stood at the bathroom mirror for a moment. The man looking back at me looked tired in the particular way of someone who had been waiting on something for too long. The merger proposal had been sitting with AME's team for three weeks. Three weeks of checking my phone every hour, of waking up early to refresh my email, of pretending to Rinnah that I wasn't checking my phone every hour. She noticed anyway. She always did.

I heard the bedroom door open.

I assumed it was Rinnah coming in from wherever she'd been, downstairs, the kitchen, one of her long morning routines that took up most of the bathroom time I actually needed. I unbolted the bathroom door and pushed it open.

She was already holding my phone.

Both hands, gripped tight, held behind her back the way she held things she had already decided belonged to her. Her brows were pulled together. Her expression was the specific one she wore when she had read something she hadn't been meant to read and was angry about what she'd found rather than about the reading.

"Who sent you this message?" she said.

"Good morning to you too, Rinnah."

"Henry."

I walked past her toward the wardrobe. We had done a version of this yesterday and again the night before — my secretary sending late emails, Rinnah deciding that late emails were a personal offense, the two of us going in circles about something that had nothing to do with what she actually wanted to argue about. I had learned to let it move past me like the weather. There was no other viable approach.

"I'm talking to you." Her voice climbed. "Is it Lena again? Because I've told you what I think about that woman sending messages at all hours—"

"Rinnah."

"Answer me. Is it because of a child? Is that why you're.."

"I haven't cheated on you." I pulled a t-shirt from the wardrobe without looking at it. "I am not cheating on you. Lena is my secretary. Secretaries send emails. That is the nature of secretaries."

"Then why does she call on weekends?"

"Because the work doesn't know it's the weekend."

She made a sound I had learned to recognize,frustration converting into something more volatile, the specific pressure change before the tears arrived. I turned to respond and found her already looking at my phone. Not holding it behind her back anymore. Looking at it. Typing.

"Rinnah—" I crossed the room in four steps and took the phone from her hands. "What are you doing?"

"I was going to tell whoever it is that it's the weekend and you have a family—"

I looked at the screen.

She had opened my email. The draft she'd started was three words long — I had gotten there in time — but it didn't matter because the email she'd opened it from was sitting right there on the screen and I read it and stopped moving entirely.

<Merger Contract Acceptance.>

I read it once. I read it again. I pulled out the desk chair without looking at it and sat down and opened my laptop because I needed to see it on a larger screen, needed it to be real in a way that a phone screen somehow wasn't sufficient for.

The email was loaded. I read it a third time, slowly.

AME had accepted the proposal.

They were coming in two days.

The relief was so complete it felt physical,something that had been held rigid in my chest for three weeks releasing all at once, my shoulders dropping, my breath coming easier than it had since I sent the proposal. This merger had been years in the making. Not just the proposal to AME,years of building Nicolas Enterprise back from the damage it had taken, years of watching deals fall through and partnerships dissolve and my reputation in the industry take hits I had been quietly absorbing without letting anyone see how badly they landed.

This was the one that changed all of it.

"Henry." Rinnah's voice had shifted entirely. She was standing very still, watching my face. "What is it?"

I turned the chair to face her. Her eyes were still red from the almost-tears, her arms crossed over her chest, the remnants of the argument still visible in the set of her jaw. But she was watching me carefully.

"The merger," I said. "AME accepted it."

Something broke open in her expression. The jaw unclenched. The arms dropped. She crossed the room and launched herself at me before I fully stood up, arms around my neck, and I caught her because I always caught her, and I held on for a moment because the relief needed somewhere to go.

"When?" she said into my shoulder.

"Two days."

She pulled back and kissed me quick, warm, genuine in the way she was always genuine when something good happened, when the competition fell away and she was simply herself. I let myself have the moment. I kissed her back.

"We need to prepare," I said when she pulled away. She was already thinking, I could see it, the way her eyes moved when she was planning. 

"Whoever is running AME now, I don't know them personally. Marc's wife took over after he died. I need everything ready,the reception, the team briefed, the contract reviewed once more before they arrive."

"She," Rinnah said.

"What?"

"The new CEO. It's a woman." She stepped back and smoothed her hair, already transitioning into the version of herself she became when she was managing something. "I heard she's formidable. Very composed. The kind of woman who doesn't say anything she doesn't mean."

"Good." I reached for my t-shirt. "Then she'll respond to a straightforward deal."

Rinnah watched me dress with an expression I couldn't fully read. Something had settled behind her eyes, not the argument from before, something quieter and more considered. She picked up her phone from the bedside table and looked at it briefly.

"What's her name?" I asked. "The CEO."

A pause. Small enough that I almost missed it.

"Aurora," Rinnah said. "Aurora Marc."

I nodded, already moving on, the reception, the team briefing, the contract review. There was too much to arrange and two days was not enough time to do it properly.

I pulled up my contacts and started making calls.