All Chapters of EYES OPEN: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The restaurant is on the fourteenth floor of a building that Rhys helped restore six years ago, which he mentions with the quiet particular pride of someone pointing out a thing they made better, and I file it alongside everything else I am collecting about him, the novel at twenty three, the early arrivals, the way he reads buildings like people.We are shown to a table by the window.The city is spread below us like something deliberate, all light and movement, and I sit across from him in the green dress and he is wearing the grey shirt and we look at each other across a table that has candles and good stemware and absolutely no agenda beyond this."Martin Raymond asked me not to make Vivienne the public villain," I say. "I told him I had already made that choice."Rhys looks at me across the candles. "You protected her.""I protected her child," I say. "Different motivation."He is quiet for a moment. "She sent me a message today," he says. "First time she has contacted me directl

He is waiting outside my office building on a Tuesday.Not Stanley. Not a lawyer. Not a phone call or a message or a carefully managed interaction with distance and legal language between us.Derek. In person.With the particular expression of a man who has rehearsed something and is not entirely confident it survived contact with reality.I stop walking."No flowers this time," I say."You put the last ones in the conference room," he says. "I heard.""They were nice flowers," I say. "The conference room deserved them."He almost smiles. Almost. "Can we walk?" he says. "Just walk. Ten minutes."I look at him.He looks back.There is something different about him today. Not the hospital rawness and not the performance either. Something in between that feels more like the actual man underneath both of those versions, quieter, more certain of very little, which paradoxically makes him seem more trustworthy than he ever did when he was certain of everything."Ten minutes," I say.We walk.

Helena Cross talks for twenty minutes and I do not interrupt once.Not because I have nothing to say but because she is the kind of person who constructs an argument the way architects construct buildings, load bearing, no wasted material, and interrupting it would be like knocking out a wall mid build just to prove you could.She tells me what Harlow Creative Group is building in London. A new division, brand strategy at a scale that most firms do not attempt, working with clients across four industries simultaneously, the kind of creative challenge that requires someone who can hold multiple complex narratives in their head and make them all point in the same direction.She tells me why she wants me specifically. Not flattery. Evidence. She has read everything I have put out publicly. She has spoken to people who have worked with me. She references specific decisions I made on specific campaigns by name and explains exactly why those decisions told her something about how I think.Sh

Helena Cross picks up on the first ring."Ms. Vann," she says. "I expected you to wait the three weeks.""I expected to wait the three weeks too," I say. "You bought Rhys Callahan's restoration project."A pause. Not the pause of someone caught out, the pause of someone who was waiting for this specific sentence."I did," she says."Why?" "Because it is an exceptional property with significant heritage value and my company has been looking for a London-adjacent retreat and event space for two years," she says. "When it came to my attention that it was available, I moved on it.""It was not available," I say. "Rhys has a contract.""Rhys has a contract to restore it," she says pleasantly. "Which I fully intend to honour. I bought the property, not the restoration agreement. He continues his work, I own the building when it is finished." A pause. "It is actually a rather elegant arrangement."I sit with that for a moment.She is telling the truth. I can feel it. Not the whole truth nec

I read the message three times.Then I hand the phone to Rhys without speaking because my voice has temporarily abandoned me and the sandwich in my hand has lost all appeal and the golden afternoon light through the window is doing its beautiful thing completely indifferent to the fact that everything just tilted.Rhys reads it.His jaw does the thing."Helena Cross is Tasha's aunt," he says."That is what it says," I reply."Which means when Helena said she had been watching you for eighteen months..." he says slowly."...she had a source inside my life," I say. "Tasha. Her own niece. Already embedded."The window seat suddenly feels very small.I stand up and walk to the middle of the room and stand there in the dust and the old stone quiet and I think about eighteen months of being watched by someone I did not know existed through someone I thought I knew completely.Rhys comes to stand behind me. Not touching. Just present. Giving me the space to feel what I need to feel before he