Todos los capítulos de Tired of me, Mr. Taylor?: Capítulo 51 - Capítulo 60

Victor entered Damian’s office absurdly early, before most of Aella’s staff had properly settled behind their desks or made it through their first coffee of the morning.Damian looked up from the financial report on his screen. His father usually ignored the formality of waiting to be announced when something mattered, but appearing before the building had fully come alive meant whatever brought him there couldn’t wait.“Cecilia spoke to her father last night.”Damian leaned back slightly. “I assumed she would.”“Then you can probably imagine the conversation I had with him before I’d had the chance to finish my first cup of coffee.”“I can imagine several versions.”“None of them pleasant.”Victor crossed the office and took the chair opposite Damian’s desk. He looked as composed as usual, but Damian knew his father well enough to recognize the irritation beneath it.“What did she tell them?”“Very little. Apparently, she has decided the marriage is no longer something she wants.”Al

By Friday evening, Damian had stopped pretending Serena’s sudden professionalism was accidental.She hadn’t ignored him. That would have been easier to confront. Instead, she had removed every unnecessary reason for them to speak. A question about the November campaign went through Elena. Daniel handled the adjustment to her next development session. An email Damian sent regarding the revised campaign schedule received a perfectly courteous response confirming that the changes worked for her.Nothing personal. Nothing that invited another message.Three days earlier, Serena had stood in front of him at Street Nation and told him she was single but still not his. Now she was making certain he understood what that meant.Damian called Cecilia shortly after six. “Did you see Serena yesterday?”“Yes. At the Everhart walkthrough.”That was enough.“You told her.”“I told her the engagement ended, if that’s what you’re asking.”Damian leaned back in his chair. “What else?”“That we hadn’t a

By Saturday evening, the question beneath the original post had stopped being a question.Serena sat at the dining table with her laptop open in front of her and her phone facedown beside it. She had put it that way nearly twenty minutes ago after Claire told her, for the third time, to stop reading comments from strangers who knew nothing about her. It had not helped. The laptop was worse.One of the larger entertainment sites had picked up the story shortly after three. Another followed less than an hour later, then two financial gossip accounts, then several pages Serena had never heard of. The original post had given them enough to work with: her name, Damian’s name, payments made over nearly a year, and a cropped page proving there had been a private agreement between them. Everything the documents didn’t explain, the internet had supplied.DAMIAN TAYLOR’S SECRET MISTRESS?Serena stared at the headline until the words began to lose their shape. The article beneath it was careful

Serena made it to Ellis Atelier at eight-thirty Tuesday morning. By eight-forty-seven, the twelve-page agreement was online.Tessa entered Serena’s office without knocking, phone already in her hand. One look at her face was enough for Serena to know this wasn’t another headline built from Saturday’s leak.“What happened?”“The account posted again.”Serena’s hand stilled over the file she’d been reading. Tessa crossed the room and placed the phone on the desk. “It’s the agreement.”For several seconds, Serena didn’t touch it. Then she picked up the phone.There were photographs of page after page, clear enough to read. The names at the top. The effective date. The term. Confidentiality. Exclusivity. Compensation. The rules she and Damian had negotiated before either of them understood what those rules would eventually fail to contain. Private language that had existed between two people was now being copied across the internet.Serena scrolled once. Then stopped. She didn’t need to r

Malcolm was waiting in Damian’s office when he returned from Street Nation. There were three folders open across the table, Malcolm’s laptop between them and another member of Aella’s security team seated near the end. Damian removed his jacket, placed it over the back of a chair and went directly to the table.“What do we have?”“Something useful.”Malcolm turned the laptop toward him. The investigation had been running since the first documents appeared. Legal had reviewed everyone who had handled the original agreement. Finance had done the same with Serena’s payment records, while security worked through archived access and Claire compared everything against the copies retained on Serena’s side. Until now, they had been working with too many names and too many possible routes.That had changed.Malcolm explained that the pages released from the original agreement carried characteristics matching the copy retained within Aella’s legal archive rather than the version Claire held. Th