Lahat ng Kabanata ng Mr. CEO, You Lost Me Too Late: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

CHAPTER THIRTY TWOWhat Raymond KnowsAria's POVWe agreed on neutral ground.Sandra's suggestion. She said she wasn't letting either of us walk into a meeting with Raymond Cavendish's lawyer on territory that wasn't ours, so she booked a room at a hotel near the city centre, the kind with meeting rooms off the lobby that existed precisely for conversations nobody wanted to have anywhere more personal.Alex picked me up on the way.He was in the car when I came down, engine running, and when I got in he looked at me the way he'd been looking at me since the night on Nina's floor, like he was checking something he'd been worrying about quietly."You don't have to come," he said. "Whatever Raymond has, I can tell you afterward.""It was addressed to both of us," I said. "I'm coming."He didn't argue. He pulled into traffic and we drove without talking much and it was the comfortable kind of quiet that I was still getting used to, the kind that didn't ask anything of either of us."Whate

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUREight Weeks OutAria's POVJerome called a full team meeting on Monday morning, which never happened on a Monday, which meant something.Everyone gathered around the center table. Bisi with her arms crossed. Kwame still holding his coffee. Adaeze sketching even now, pencil moving on a scrap of paper while she listened. Theo leaning against the fabric rail. Lena with her clipboard already out.Jerome stood at the head of the table and looked at all of us."Eight weeks," he said. "I want to say that out loud so it's real for everyone, not just on the schedule." He looked around the room. "Eight weeks until this collection walks in front of press, buyers, and everyone who has ever doubted whether this house could do something bold again."Nobody said anything. The room had gone very still."We are not behind," Jerome continued. "I want to be clear about that. We are exactly where we should be for eight weeks out. But exactly where we should be means there is no room l

CHAPTER THIRTY SIXQuiet HoursAria's POVWe didn't let go of each other's hands right away.Bisi noticed, obviously, because Bisi noticed everything, but she didn't say anything beyond a brief look that lasted exactly one second before she went back to her pins like she hadn't seen a thing. That was its own kind of kindness."I should let you get back to it," Alex said eventually, glancing at the dress form behind me."You could stay," I said. "If you want. I'm not done for another hour at least."He looked at me for a moment, like he was checking whether the offer was real."I'd like that," he said.He found a stool at the end of the table and sat there quietly while I went back to the hem, Bisi on one side pinning, me on the other adjusting the drape, both of us working in the particular silence that happens when two people know exactly what they're doing and don't need to narrate it to each other.Alex didn't try to fill that silence either. He just sat there, jacket off now, slee

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHTThe Last FittingAria's POVBisi delivered the finished dress on a Thursday evening and the three of us, me, Bisi, and Clara, stood around it in Nina's living room like we were looking at something that required a moment of silence before anyone spoke.It was finished.Not in the provisional, almost the way it had been at every previous stage. Finished the way things are finished when every decision along the way turned out to be the right one. The shoulder line clean and certain. The seam down the back doing exactly what I had drawn it to do weeks ago on a scrap of paper in this same room. The cap sleeve that Clara had fought about for three sessions and then surrendered to completely, sitting exactly as it was supposed to on her shoulders."Put it on," Bisi said, before either Clara or I could say anything.Clara changed behind Nina's bedroom door and came out slowly, the way you come out of a room when you are not entirely sure what you are going to find waitin

CHAPTER FORTYThe Third PartyAria's POVThe woman came to the studio on a Wednesday.Not to me directly. She came to the front desk and asked for Jerome, which was the first strange thing, because nobody who actually knew Jerome showed up unannounced and asked for him at the front desk. His assistant turned her away. She left a card. Jerome's assistant brought it to me because the name on the card was one I didn't recognise but the firm was one I did.Hartley and Associates. Margaret's original lawyers. The ones who had held the private arrangement document for eleven years.I called Sandra before I did anything else."Don't speak to her," Sandra said immediately. "Don't let her near you at the studio. She's not there about Jerome. She's there because she knows you're there and she can't come within a hundred metres of you directly.""She sent a third party to my workplace," I said."Yes. And that is a violation of the spirit of the restraining order even if it's technically outside