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All Chapters of Reborn as the True Billionaire : Chapter 121 - Chapter 128

128 Chapters

121

Morana’s POVIris caught me in the corridor outside the courtroom, waiting near the elevators while Tristan spoke with our legal team a few feet away, close enough to notice but far enough to give me space if I wanted it.“Can I have a minut?” I glanced at Tristan. He’d already seen her approach, his attention shifting even mid-conversation and I gave a small shake of my head that meant I was fine, that this didn’t require intervention. He held my gaze a moment longer than necessary before returning to the legal team though I knew he wasn’t actually listening to them anymore.“I don’t have anything to trade this time” Iris said, reading the wariness I hadn’t fully hidden. “No documents. No leverage. I’m cooperating fully with the prosecutors on my own charges. Whatever comes for me now, I’ve already accepted it.”“Then what is this?”She wrapped her arms around herself, the grey coat swallowing her thinner frame and looked genuinely uncertain for the first time since I’d known her.

122

Tristan’s POVShe fell asleep on the couch around nine, the exhaustion of the last few months finally catching up with her all at once. I sat across from her for a long time just watching her breathe, the tension she’d been carrying in her shoulders for weeks finally releasing into something that looked like actual rest.I’d been sitting on this for three weeks. Not because I was afraid to say it. I’d never been afraid of much, not in the way that stopped me from acting once I’d decided something mattered. I’d been waiting because the timing had never been right because there was always another crisis stacked behind the last one, Xavier’s sentencing bleeding into Iris’s revelation bleeding into the courthouse and the press and eleven patients’ families who deserved answers before either of us could think about anything else.Tonight was quiet for the first time in months. No board meetings tomorrow that required either of us personally. No press circus or legal filing waiting on a si

123

Morana’s POVDr. Patricia Hale’s office was smaller than I expected, warm in a deliberate way that felt designed to counteract exactly the kind of controlled composure both Tristan and I brought into every room we occupied professionally. Two chairs angled toward each other instead of a couch, which felt oddly more intimate than I’d anticipated.I sat with my hands folded in my lap, aware of exactly how corporate my posture looked and glanced at Tristan beside me, who’d adopted the same careful stillness he brought to board meetings, jaw set, expression unreadable.“Neither of you needs to perform anything here,” Dr. Hale said, watching us both with the particular patience of someone who’d clearly seen this exact tension in every powerful couple who’d ever walked through her door. “This isn’t a negotiation. There’s no outcome you need to secure.”“Old habits,” I said.“Understandably.” She had a legal pad in her lap, though she wasn’t writing yet, just watching us both with an attenti

124

Morana’s POVHe knocked, which was ridiculous because it was his own penthouse. I was standing in the living room when I heard it and for a full three seconds I genuinely didn’t understand what was happening until I looked through the peephole and found Tristan Rothschild standing in the hallway outside his own front door holding a single flower like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it.I opened the door and just looked at him.“You knocked” I stated the obvious. “It’s a first date,” he said, entirely serious as though this explained everything. “I thought the door should be part of it.”“You live here.”“I’m aware.”I looked at the flower. It was not a bouquet. Not the dozen roses I half expected given his general approach to grand gestures. Just one flower, something pale and slightly crumpled at the edges like it had survived a journey it wasn’t fully prepared for.“Is that a carnation?” I tried to hide my smile. “It’s whatever was closest to the register.”“You panicked

125

Morana’s POVDr. Storms ran the Friday board meeting without me for the first time in months. I found out how it went from a text summary Felix sent afterward instead of sitting through it myself and something about that felt like an actual milestone worth acknowledging.She handled the Hendricks acquisition question better than you would have. Don’t tell her I said that. Felix texted.I heard that, came Yemi’s response in the same thread, apparently added by Felix without my knowledge. And thank you, I think.I set the phone down and looked at Tristan across the kitchen island, where he was reading something on his own phone with an expression that suggested Reid had sent something equally reassuring.“Rothschild’s quarterly numbers came in,” he said. “Reid presented them himself. Investors didn’t ask a single question about my absence.”“Should we be offended by that?”“Deeply offended,” he said, not looking up. “Apparently we’re replaceable.”“Apparently we built something that do

126

Morana’s POVHe cancelled Friday at 4 PM, forty minutes before we were supposed to leave for the farm, standing in the doorway of his office with his phone still in his hand and an expression I recognized immediately because I’d spent five years learning to read exactly this look on someone else’s face.“Reid needs me for a call,” he said. “European investors, something about the Milan acquisition timeline. I have to take it.”“Now?”“It’s urgent.”“Everything’s urgent to someone,” I said and I heard the edge in my own voice before I’d fully decided to let it show. “That’s what makes it urgent. You taught me that.”“This is different.”“How?”“It’s a genuine timing issue, not something Reid could have anticipated. The investors are in a different time zone, this is the only window that works for everyone.”I felt something cold settle in my chest, familiar in a way that had nothing to do with Tristan specifically and everything to do with five years of learning that plans meant nothin

127

Tristan’s POVThe gala has been exactly one year ago tonight. I hadn’t planned anything extravagant. No garden with fairy lights, no private jet, none of the grand gestures I’d apparently developed a habit of over the past months. Just the farmhouse, quiet, the fireplace lit against the early autumn cold and a bottle of wine I’d chosen myself instead of asking Reid to source something impressive.Morana was upstairs changing out of her farm clothes and I stood in the kitchen doing something I hadn’t done in longer than I could accurately remember. Nothing. Just standing there waitin and letting the quiet exist without filling it with a phone call or a report or the next necessary task.A year ago tonight I’d watched her walk into that ballroom in a dress she hadn’t worn in five years and something in me had recognized her before she’d even reached the entrance, some part of my mind that had been cataloging her for six years finally understanding that the distance I’d maintained was ab

128

Morana’s POVWe stayed at the farm for another week after the anniversary, longer than we’d originally planned and somewhere in the quiet mornings. The ridiculous chicken chaos and the slow unhurried evenings, I found myself thinking about what came next in a way that had nothing to do with strategy.“I want to do something,” I said one morning, sitting on the porch steps with coffee going cold in my hands.Tristan looked up from where he was attempting, with limited success, to repair a section of fence Gerald had apparently decided needed reorganizing.“What kind of something?”“We got married in fifteen minutes at City Hall. With witnesses who were basically strangers, for reasons that had nothing to do with choosing each other and everything to do with survival.” I grunned at him. “I want to do it again. Properly. Not legally, we don’t need that part twice. Just for us.”He set down the fence post he’d been holding and came to sit beside me on the steps.“A ceremony,” he said.“Sm

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