All Chapters of You Shouldn’t Have Found Me : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Zara stayed staring at the photograph on Nathan's laptop.Daniel.The same man who'd smiled at her across the office every morning. The same man who had once brought her coffee when she was too buried in work to leave her desk. The same man she'd spoken to a hundred times without ever once wondering if there was another reason he kept finding excuses to be near her.Now she couldn't stop replaying every conversation they'd ever had. Every question he'd asked. Every look that had lingered a beat too long. Every moment she'd dismissed at the time because it had seemed so harmless."He knew me before I knew him," she said quietly.Nathan didn't answer right away.Sebastian's fingers tightened around hers. "We don't know that yet."She looked at him. "He had pictures of me from three years ago.""I know.""He was watching me.""I know.""Then what else don't we know?"He held her gaze steadily. "Everything that happened between those pictures and the day you walked into my office."The wo

Zara could not look away from him.For a moment the storage facility seemed to shrink around them. The dim light overhead, the cold concrete beneath her feet, Daniel standing several yards away with blood on his face, Nathan watching the corridor with one hand ready at his side. None of it mattered as much as the man standing in front of her.He looked exactly as she remembered.The same scar cutting through his left eyebrow. The same unsettling calm. The same eyes that had watched her from the doorway that night as though he'd known her long before she'd ever known him.Sebastian moved slightly in front of her.The man's gaze shifted to him at last. "You always do that."Sebastian's expression stayed cold. "Do what?""Stand between her and everything you don't understand."Zara felt his fingers tighten around hers."That's because I don't trust people who appear out of nowhere and expect me to believe they're protecting her."A faint smile touched the man's mouth. "I never said I was

Hawthorne Co. looked exactly as it always did from the outside, glass and steel catching the grey London morning, the flag above the entrance barely stirring in the wind. Zara had half expected the building to look different somehow, after everything. It didn't. Only she did.Nathan was waiting in the small meeting room on the executive floor when they arrived, the blinds drawn, a cup of untouched tea gone cold on the table in front of him. Daniel sat across from him, a security officer stationed by the door, the bruising beneath his eye gone a duller yellow green overnight.Sebastian didn't sit. "You said this wasn't something for the phone.""It isn't." Nathan glanced at Daniel. "Tell them what you told me."Daniel looked at Zara first, something apologetic still sitting behind his eyes. "When I was going through Blackridge's old records, I found something that had nothing to do with the company at all. A personal file. Your mother's name was on it."Zara's chest tightened. "What ki

Hawthorne Co. had a rhythm Zara had almost forgotten during the weeks of chaos, the hum of the espresso machine on the executive floor, the particular click of heels on marble at nine each morning, the low murmur of a hundred conversations happening at once behind glass walls.She'd asked to come back properly, not just to visit, and Sebastian had agreed on exactly one condition."You work from my floor," he'd said. "Where I can see you.""That sounds less like a workplace accommodation and more like surveillance.""Call it whatever helps you say yes."She'd said yes.Her new desk sat just outside his office, close enough that she could hear him through the door most of the time, close enough that he leaned out at least four times that first morning with questions that very clearly did not require leaning out of his office to ask."Zara."She didn't look up from her screen. "Yes?""Did you move my pen.""I didn't touch your pen.""There were two pens on my desk this morning. Now there

Sebastian's penthouse had never really been designed for dinner parties. The kitchen was built for someone who ordered in more often than he cooked, the dining table large enough for board meetings rather than intimate evenings, every surface sleek and cold in the particular way expensive things sometimes were.It didn't feel that way tonight.Zara had spent the afternoon dragging Chloe around the local market, arguing over which cheese was worth the price and which was simply expensive for the sake of being expensive, and the kitchen now smelled like garlic and roasting chicken and the particular chaos of two people who had never quite agreed on how much salt was too much salt."You're doing it again," Chloe said, swatting Zara's hand away from the pan."Doing what?""Seasoning with your feelings instead of a spoon.""That's not a real criticism.""It's a very real criticism. Ask Sebastian how the eggs went that one morning.""Don't bring the eggs into this."Sebastian, setting the t