Chapter Six: A NEW CHAPTER

"At Morretti?"

"At Morretti." His eyes were bright. "Lila, you're wasted at your father's firm. They've got you analyzing other people's deals. You should be making them. I need someone who can walk into a room and make a client feel understood. That's you. That's exactly you."

"Miles, mixing work and a relationship—"

"Gets complicated for other people. Not us." He squeezed my hands. "Think about it. Building something together. Side by side."

It sounded wonderful. It also sounded like something I should talk over with someone who wasn't holding my hands across a candlelit table.

---

"Working for the man you're dating," my father said, "means he signs your paycheck."

We were in his office. He had his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and a contract open in front of him that he hadn't looked at since I walked in.

"He'd sign a paycheck I earned."

"I'm sure he would." He took the glasses off and folded them. "I'm only saying, sweetheart, that when the person who loves you is also the person who decides whether you get credit for your work, those two things have a way of getting tangled up. Be sure you'd be all right if they did."

"You think it's a mistake."

"I think you're the smartest person in any room you walk into." He sighed. "And I think Miles Morretti likes rooms where he's the one people look at. That's all. Make sure you keep your own name on your own work."

I nodded. I took the job anyway.

---

Within six weeks, I'd brought in two contracts, companies I'd met through my father's network and won on my own. Within four months, I had three more in the pipeline. Morretti Development had forty-seven employees, and by spring, people from other departments were stopping by my office to ask how I'd landed the Brennan account.

One of them was a woman from marketing with a sharp bob and a sharper mouth.

"Jessica Tran," she said, sticking her hand across my desk. "I've been watching you for three months, and I have to know. How did you get Brennan to return a call? Brennan's been ghosting us since before I got here."

"I sent their CFO a handwritten note about his daughter's lacrosse team."

"How did you know his daughter plays lacrosse?"

"It's on his desk. In a photo. I noticed it at a conference."

Jessica stared at me. "Okay. You're terrifying. Lunch?"

We had lunch every week after that.

Miles was proud of me. He told everyone. At business dinners, at client meetings, at the holiday party, with his hand on the small of my back:

"This is my girlfriend, Lila. She's incredibly talented."

He never mentioned the accounts. He never mentioned my title. It was always my girlfriend, always incredibly talented, like a description on a wine label.

"He means well," I told Jessica.

"Uh-huh." She stabbed her salad. "My last boyfriend meant well. He also introduced me as the little lady at his cousin's wedding."

"That's different."

"Is it, though?"

Eighteen months after the gala, a little after six on a Thursday evening, Miles came into my office without knocking. His face was bright. He was holding his phone up like it was a trophy.

"She graduated," he said. "Lila. Val graduated. Early. With honors."

"That's wonderful. Tell her congratulations."

"Tell her yourself. She's coming home." He was grinning so hard I could see his molars. "For good. Next month. And I want her here, at the company. With us."

"In what role?"

"Whatever she wants," Miles said.

---

"You must be Lila."

The girl from the photograph was standing in the foyer of the Morretti family home, and she was even prettier in person: long dark waves, porcelain skin, wide hazel eyes that looked permanently on the edge of tears. She was smaller than I'd expected. She looked like something you'd keep under glass.

"Valeria," I said, smiling. "It's so good to finally meet you."

She crossed the foyer and hugged me. She held on longer than a stranger should, her thin arms wrapped tight around my shoulders, and she smelled like vanilla and something expensive.

"Miles talks about you constantly," she said into my hair. "I feel like I already know you. My future sister-in-law."

Over her shoulder, I saw Miles turn bright red. "Val."

"What?" She let go of me and laughed, a soft, musical sound. "Oh, come on. Everyone can see it. I'm just saying it first."

Miles and I hadn't talked about marriage. Not seriously. Not yet.

"And I've heard so much about your work," Valeria went on, looking up at me with those enormous eyes. "Miles says you're brilliant. I'm hoping to learn from you. We could be a real family business. Wouldn't that be lovely?"

Everything she said was perfect. Her voice was warm, and she was smiling. When she pulled back, though, her eyes went over me once, quickly, from my shoes to my earrings, and for a fraction of a second her smile didn't reach them.

Then it did, and I felt guilty for noticing. She was twenty years old. She'd lost her mother. She was trying.

"That would be lovely," I said.

---

Her diploma came in a leather folder with gold edging. Miles showed it to me in his office like he'd won it himself: University of Cambridge, a crest, a Latin line, a signature. There were transcripts, all firsts.

"With honors," he said. "In three years."

I did the math. "She started at seventeen?"

"She's brilliant," Miles said. "I told you."

I looked at the transcript again. It had no seal, only a printed logo. I'd seen real Cambridge transcripts before, when my father hired an analyst who'd gone there. I thought they'd had a raised seal.

I almost said something. Then Miles put his arm around me and kissed my temple and said, "I'm so happy you two get along," and I let it go.

---

She started as a junior project manager on a Monday. Miles threw a welcome party in the main conference room with a cake that said WELCOME HOME, VAL in blue frosting.

"This is the future," he announced, one arm around Valeria's shoulders, the other reaching out to pull me in on his other side. "Family, building something great together."

Everyone applauded. Valeria ducked her head and blushed.

"I'm just happy to be here," she said softly. "To learn from the best. Miles and Lila have built something amazing. I just hope I can contribute something meaningful."

"Laying it on a little thick," Jessica murmured beside me.

"Be nice. She's young."

"I'm being very nice. I haven't said what I'm actually thinking."

---

Two weeks later, I came back to the office at nine at night because I'd left my laptop charger behind.

The floor was dark except for a single lamp, and it was in my office.

Valeria was sitting at my desk, in my chair, with my desktop computer awake in front of her. The Hartwell folder was open on the screen, and the green progress bar of a file transfer was crawling across the bottom of it.

She looked up. For one second, her face was completely blank.

Then she smiled, wide and sweet.

"Oh! Lila. You scared me." She stood up quickly, and her hand brushed the keyboard, and the screen went dark. "I was just looking for a stapler."