All Chapters of UNDISCLOSED : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Marcus West's office had not changed in the five years Nia had worked at this firm.Same desk, the heavy oak one he had brought from his original Wicker Park office when the firm outgrew it. Same photograph of his wife and daughters on the credenza behind him. Same view of the West Loop that every office on this floor shared but that somehow looked different from his more settled, more earned, view of someone who had been looking at it long enough to have stopped seeing it as impressive and started seeing it as simply his.He stood when she came in which he did not always do and gestured to the chair across from his desk.She sat.He sat."You know why you are here," he said."I have a reasonable idea," she said.He almost smiled. "The senior partner restructuring. Three positions being created as part of the integration's final phase." He looked at her directly. "I want you in one of them."She held his gaze. "Tell me what the position involves."He talked for twelve minutes.She lis

She told Darian at seven that evening.Not immediately after the board meeting she needed the hours between three fifteen and seven for herself. To walk back to her office and sit at her desk and look at the West Loop and understand what had just happened without anyone else's response shaping how she felt about it first.She had learned this about herself over the years. That her first reaction to significant things belonged to her alone. That giving it away too quickly to Imara, to Rowan, to anyone meant she sometimes arrived at other people's feelings about her life before she had fully formed her own.So she sat with it.Senior Partner. Above band. Her team. Her terms. Direct board reporting.She had walked into that room as herself and walked out with everything she had asked for and the asking had been honest and the getting had been earned and nobody in that room had given her anything she had not demonstrated she was worth.That was the part she sat with longest.Not the titl

Seren woke up at six forty three and immediately began assessing her situation.Nia watched her do it from the chair beside the bed where she had spent the night in the specific uncomfortable half-sleep of someone who could not fully rest but could not leave either. Seren's eyes opened, moved around the room, registered the monitor on her finger, the IV line, the hospital ceiling, and finally landed on her mother."I am still here," she announced."You are still here," Nia confirmed."Mr. Roof is not.""Mr. Roof is at home. He will be very relieved to see you."Seren considered the room with the systematic attention of someone conducting an inventory. "My chest feels better," she said. "Less funny.""The doctors gave you medicine to help with that.""It worked," she said, with the satisfaction of someone acknowledging a successful intervention. She looked at the monitor on her finger. "This is measuring my breathing.""Your oxygen levels.""Same thing." She looked at it for another mo

Nia chose a Sunday morning.Not because Sunday was special because Sunday had the specific quality of unhurried time that weekdays didn't, the kind where nobody had anywhere to be and the morning could expand into whatever it needed to be without competing with anything else.Darian arrived at nine with the croissants.Seren was already at the kitchen table in her pajamas conducting what appeared to be a detailed briefing of Mr. Roof on the week's events. She looked up when he came in, registered the bag, and returned to her briefing without breaking stride."She'll finish in a minute," Nia said quietly."I know," he said. He put the bag down and stood in the kitchen and waited with the patient unhurried attention he had learned was what Sunday mornings in this apartment required.They ate breakfast first.Nia had decided this early that the conversation would not happen on an empty stomach, that it would not happen before the ordinary morning rituals had been honored, that Seren des

He booked the flight on a Tuesday.Not impulsively he had been thinking about it for three weeks, turning it over with the careful attention he brought to decisions that mattered, examining it from every angle that was worth examining and a few that weren't.The conversation with Adaomi had continued. Not daily neither of them had approached it with the frantic energy of people making up for lost time. More carefully than that. Messages that arrived at considered intervals. Conversations that went somewhere real and then stopped before they went somewhere neither of them was ready for.She had not asked him to come.He had not announced he was coming.He simply booked the flight and then sent her a message that said I am going to be in London next Friday. I would like to see you if you are willing. No agenda. No expectations. Just see you.Her reply came in forty minutes.I know a good place for coffee. Friday at eleven.He looked at that message for a long time.Then he called his t