جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 28

Chapter 21Angela's POV"Hi Mum, I am at the airport. I cannot see anyone matching the description you gave me, are you sure this is the right place?" I craned my neck over the crowd, scanning every face for tinted stubble and blonde hair, holding my phone tighter against my ear and wondering if my mother had lost her mind."Just look around properly, he should be there, Angela." She said it like I was the one being difficult, and then the line went dead before I could get a single word back in.I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at it. That woman.I clicked my tongue and shook my head, dragging my suitcase forward through the arrivals hall. The journey from California to London had already wrung me out completely and now I was supposed to play some guessing game in a crowd of strangers before I could even sit down. I was tired, my lower back ached, and the overhead lighting in this airport was doing absolutely nothing for my mood.I kept walking, eyes moving from one person t

Chapter 23Angela's POVMy head was pounding so hard that when I finally managed to crack my eyes open, the white fluorescent light above me felt like a direct attack. I shut them again immediately and just let the pain sit, because fighting it was making it worse., I lay there trying to remember where I was and how I had gotten there.The inside of my eyelids were orange from the light above me. Fluorescent, I thought, that particular flat brightness that only ever meant hospitals or airport bathrooms, and I was fairly certain I was not in an airport bathroom.My eyes snapped open.White ceiling, white walls, the faint smell of antiseptic and something chemical underneath it. A figure standing close, blurry at first, then coming into focus slowly. A male in white coat, stethoscope hanging around his neck."Are you awake?" the voice said, and I realised I had been watching their mouth move without actually processing the words.I turned my head carefully and looked at him. He was w

Chapter 25The man from outside the hospital. The one who had said that name twice and looked at me like he was seeing something he had given up on finding.He was wearing a suit today, dark charcoal, and he looked composed in a way that was clearly costing him something. His jaw was set and his hands were loose at his sides and he was looking at me with those same eyes, that same particular quality of intensity that made my skin feel tight across my shoulders.I held his gaze for exactly two seconds.Then I looked back at the CFO.“You were saying the Q3 timeline has flexibility,” I said calmly. “Walk me through what that means in practical terms.”From my peripheral vision I saw the stranger pull out a chair midway down the table and sit. He did not announce himself. He did not apologise for being late. He just sat down and opened the folder in front of him and nobody at the table acted like anything unusual had happened, which told me he was expected.I took one note in my margi

Chapter 27 Angela's POV “Engage? Say what that means and why you thought a boardroom full of shareholders was the appropriate place to announce it to a woman who did not even know your name before.” Noah looked at me for a moment. His jaw was set but his eyes were doing something more complicated, moving over my face in a way that felt less like assessment and more like he was searching for something specific and not finding it in the place he expected. “You do not remember me,” he said. It was not a question. “I have never met you before yesterday,” I said. Something moved through his expression at that. There and gone too quickly for me to catch the full shape of it. “We met when we were seven years old,” he said, and his voice had shifted into something more careful, the way someone’s voice shifted when they were choosing each word with full awareness that the wrong one would end the conversation. “Our families had an arrangement. It was made between both sides when we we