บททั้งหมดของ The Heiress He Mistook For Nothing: บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

"I want to be here."He had said it and left it there — not surrounded by explanation, not protected by qualifiers, just placed on the kitchen table between us the same way he placed everything now. Directly. Without managing how it landed.I looked at him.The briefing document was still between us. Marcus's timeline, the Catherine Ashford injunction, Mrs. Okonkwo's financial connections, the Vantis Capital share position at eight point seven percent and climbing. All of it is still unresolved. All of it still requires attention and strategy and the kind of sustained professional focus that the last several months had demanded.And Sebastian Cole had just told me he wanted to be in this house every night.I did not answer immediately.Not because I did not know my answer. I had known my answer for longer than I had been willing to examine it. But the answer was larger than I had expected it to feel when it finally arrived — larger than the room, larger than the kitchen table, larger

SebastianAmelia called at three-forty-seven.I was at my desk reviewing the counter-statement Marcus had filed in response to Catherine's injunction attempt, and I answered before the second ring because I had been waiting for this call since she texted me that she was leaving the hotel."Tell me," I said.She told me.I listened for nine minutes without interrupting. Amelia's briefings were comprehensive and sequential and she did not waste words or add emotional texture she had not verified, so when she spoke for nine minutes, nine minutes of significant information had been gathered.Victoria had been the first contact. Twelve years ago. Before Daniel. Before the friendship I had called the most significant professional relationship of my adult life had even begun.Catherine had intelligence on me before Daniel introduced himself.I understood this intellectually while Amelia was still speaking. The intellectual understanding came first — the recognition of what the timeline meant

SebastianMarcus called at four in the afternoon."Catherine's legal team filed their response to the protected witness notification," he said. "Forty minutes ago.""How long did she have it?" I said."Six hours," Marcus said. "She had a response ready in six hours." He paused. "Which means she anticipated the protected witness move and had prepared her counter before we made it."I looked at the documents on my desk. "What does it say?"He told me.Three things, filed simultaneously as a single amended defence. The first: a technical challenge to the Vantis Capital beneficial ownership document, arguing that the jurisdiction's registration requirements had not been fully met and that the document's admissibility was therefore in question. The second: a counter-claim asserting that Sebastian Cole and Amelia Rhodes had conspired to coerce Daniel Ashford's cooperation with investigators through threat of additional legal exposure.The third was the one that changed the temperature of th

I called Marcus at seven.He answered on the first ring, which was standard for Marcus before eight in the morning — he was always operational before the professional day started, which was one of the qualities I had relied on throughout everything."Prepare the formal rejection of Catherine Ashford's settlement offer," I said. "No negotiated settlement. No protection of personal financial position. Full criminal referral proceeds on the existing timeline."Marcus was quiet for a moment. Not the pause of someone surprised — the pause of someone confirming that the instruction was complete and he had received it correctly."I'll have the formal response filed by noon," he said."Good," I said.I ended the call.I had not called Sebastian first.I spoke to him last night. He had said say no, I'll back you completely and I had said I know. That was the full conversation. This morning I had woken up at six-fifteen, made coffee, sat at the kitchen table where every significant decision in

SebastianThe investigators' offices were on the fourteenth floor of a building I had been to twice before — once for a deposition in an entirely unrelated matter years ago, once three months ago to formally submit the original PI file against Daniel. Neither visit had left me with any particular feeling about the building. It was simply a building where formal things happened.Today it was the building where I was going to sit across from my former best friend for the first time since I watched him walk out of my office.Amelia and I arrived together. We had not discussed the choice to come in the same car — it had simply been the obvious thing, and by this point we had enough shared practical understanding that obvious things happened without being negotiated.The room was small. Neutral furniture. A table, chairs, a window that faced a building rather than a view. Daniel was already seated when we entered. He had two lawyers with him — both of them visible, as Marcus had warned us,