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Home / MM Romance / The S-Tier's Omega Bodyguard / Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

Lahat ng Kabanata ng The S-Tier's Omega Bodyguard : Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

112 Kabanata

The Break

Elliot found out on a Tuesday that Kieran had stopped answering his calls.Not from Kieran. From the silence itself, which was a specific kind of silence that was different from busy or distracted or bad timing. He called twice on Tuesday and once on Wednesday morning and the phone rang all the way through each time. No voicemail. No text back. Nothing.He texted Maya on Wednesday afternoon: Is he okay?She replied in about ten minutes: He's okay. Give him time.He texted back: How much time.She did not reply to that one.He gave it time. He was genuinely bad at giving it time. He sat at his desk and he worked and he went through two days of meetings that he was present for physically and somewhere else in his head, and he gave Kieran time the way a person gave time when they were holding the phone every hour and checking to see if anything had come through and nothing had.On the fourth day Maya called him.She said: "He wants you to come. Maya's apartment. Now if you can."Elliot s

Thirty Weeks — Alone

Dr. Chen's office had a specific smell, the kind of medical office smell that was not bad exactly, just permanent, the same every visit, and Kieran had decided somewhere around week twenty that he associated it now with cautious optimism and low blood pressure readings and the specific sound of two heartbeats on a monitor.Maya drove. She had been driving him to the appointments since the previous one, where Elliot had been in the passenger seat and it had been different in all the ways that were now visible by absence. She did not point this out. Neither did he. They talked about other things in the car the way they had been talking about other things for the past week, covering the large obvious gap with the particular care of two people who had decided not to make the other person say it.Dr. Chen had him on the table for the ultrasound and she moved the probe with the practiced ease of someone who had done this a few thousand times and she told him what she found, which was the sa

Thirty Weeks — The Other Side

Elliot worked.He worked more than he had worked in years, which was already a lot, which meant he was working at a level that his assistant Ryan had started noting in a neutral tone that was not quite concern but was adjacent to it. Elliot noticed Ryan noticing and did not address it because addressing it would require a conversation about why he was taking every meeting and staying past nine every night, and he was not ready to have that conversation with anyone except possibly Clara and only at midnight.He took every meeting. He cleared the backlog of decisions that had been waiting on him for two months. He rewrote the omega employment policy framework from scratch, not because the lawyers had asked him to, not because anyone had flagged the existing version as insufficient. He rewrote it because he could not sleep and the work was something he could do correctly and the framework needed to be better and he had the time.It took him four nights. When he handed it to the legal tea

Statement

Elliot called Kieran at four in the afternoon.He had the full access log by noon. He had the internal records audit by two. He had the name confirmed, the timeline confirmed, the specific moment confirmed, which was a Sunday three months ago when someone had opened the accommodation filing at eleven in the morning, which was not a working hour, which was a Sunday, and had spent fourteen minutes in it.He knew who had opened it and for how long and what was in it.He called.The phone rang twice. Three times. Four.He was already in the elevator when it connected.Kieran said: "Elliot.""There's something you need to know," Elliot said. "I need to tell you in person."A pause. He could hear the specific quality of the pause, the way it had a weight to it."Okay," Kieran said."I'm outside your building," Elliot said. "I can wait downstairs if you need a few minutes."Another pause."Come up," Kieran said.Kieran opened the door in a t-shirt and sweats and socks, which was thirty weeks

The Crisis

He'd been staring at the same security report for forty minutes when it started.Not cramping. He knew what cramping felt like had been living with various versions of it for months. This was different. Pressure, low and deep, like something pressing from the inside out. Consistent. Not spiking, not easing. Just there, and getting harder to breathe around.He sat back in his chair and waited. Sometimes things passed. Sometimes his body threw something at him and he breathed through it and it sorted itself out and he went back to work.This didn't pass.Five minutes in he called Dr. Chen.She picked up on the third ring and he described it — location, type, how long, what it felt like compared to other things he'd felt. She listened without interrupting. When he finished she said: "Go in now. Don't drive yourself. Call Maya."He didn't argue. He'd learned by now that the moments when Dr. Chen said don't drive, call someone, were not the moments to push back.He texted Maya: Need to go

Discharge — And After

Dr. Chen discharged him at nine.She went through the usual instructions rest, no stress, weekly check-ins, call immediately if anything changes. She said all of it looking at Kieran in the specific way she sometimes looked at him, like she was checking whether he was actually hearing it or just letting it pass through. He was hearing it. He was tired enough that everything had that slightly underwater quality, but he was hearing it."The hormonal numbers look better than yesterday," she said. "Whatever shifted last night keep doing that." She didn't elaborate. She didn't need to. She pulled the monitor leads off with the efficient care of someone who'd done it a thousand times and handed him the discharge sheet and said: "Nine days. Don't miss it."He didn't argue. He signed the form. He got dressed slowly, which he hated, because thirty-one weeks with twins meant getting dressed was now a whole event.Elliot drove him home.Maya had her own car and she'd taken it she needed to get b

Helen

She picked up on the second ring, like she'd been holding the phone."Hi," he said. "It's Kieran Hunt. You left me a voicemail."A pause. Like she needed a second to believe he'd actually called. "Yes. Hi. Thank you I didn't know if you would.""I said I would." He hadn't, technically, but it felt like the right thing to say. "You said you had a question.""Can we meet?" she said. "I know that's a lot to ask. I live in the city. Wherever works for you.He thought about his discharge instructions. Rest, no stress. He thought about Sophia's voice on the phone, lighter than before, painting again. He thought about the voicemail and the careful way she'd spoken, like someone who had been carrying something alone for a long time and was very unsure about putting it down."Tomorrow," he said. "There's a place near me called Birch. Noon."✦ ✦ ✦She was already there when he arrived.He spotted her through the window before he went in mid-thirties, dark coat, hands around a coffee cup she w

The Long Work

ELLIOTHe called Sophia on a Tuesday.Not through Hartley. Not through the company's legal team. He sat in his study at eight in the morning with his personal phone in his hand and called her himself.She picked up on the fourth ring. "Who is this?""Elliot Sinclair."A silence that lasted about four seconds. He held it."Okay," she said finally. Her voice was flat. Not hostile exactly. Just waiting. Giving him nothing for free."I know you don't want to hear from me," he said. He'd decided before the call that he wasn't going to pad this. She'd been through enough people trying to manage her. "I know there's nothing I can say that undoes it. I'm not calling because I think an apology fixes anything." He paused. "I'm calling because I did serious damage to your life and you deserved to hear from me directly that I know that. Not from a lawyer. From me."Sophia didn't say anything.He kept going. "The bond, the NDA, the way I structured your departure I told myself at the time it was n

Victoria and Elliot

ELLIOTVictoria was already in his office when he got back from the board meeting.She didn't call ahead. She never did when she'd decided a conversation needed to happen in person. He found her in the chair across from his desk, coat still on, looking at the city through his window with the expression she used when she was deciding whether what she was about to say was going to be useful or simply true. Sometimes those were the same thing. Not always."You could have called," he said."I was in the city. This was faster." She turned from the window. "Sit down, Elliot."He sat."I went to see him," she said. No preamble. Just that.He went still. "When?""Yesterday afternoon. He made tea. We talked for two hours." She looked at him with the precise, unhurried attention she'd been giving him since he was seven years old and it had never stopped working. "He's better than you deserve right now. I said that to him as well, so you're not being singled out."Elliot didn't say anything. He

Thirty-Three Weeks

KIERANHe moved back to his own apartment on a Friday.Not because he'd planned it specifically for Friday it was just when the timing worked out. Dr. Chen had said he was stable enough, Maya had signed off on the security upgrades he'd had installed two weeks ago, and he was thirty-two weeks pregnant and ready to stop living out of a bag in his sister's spare room.Elliot showed up on Saturday morning with flat-pack furniture.Kieran hadn't exactly asked him to. He'd mentioned, vaguely, that he needed to sort out the spare room before the twins arrived, and Elliot had said he'd come over at nine, and Kieran had looked at that text for a second and then said okay. He hadn't thought too hard about what that meant. He was getting better at not thinking too hard.Elliot arrived with two flat-pack boxes and coffee one regular, one decaf that Kieran hadn't asked for but apparently Elliot had memorised the fact that he needed decaf after ten weeks of watching him avoid caffeine. He set the

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