All Chapters of He Gave My Bed To His Mistress, So I Took Everything : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

VIVIAN'S POVGrandma was sitting up when I came in with the fruit."Look at you," she said. "You're thin. You've been sleeping in that chair.""I'm fine, Grandma.""You're not. Sit."I had just put the bag on the table when the door opened.I knew the old woman before she said anything. Small, silver-haired, with the same bright, clear look in her eyes she'd had on the street. She wore a wool coat and carried a cane and did not appear to be recovering from anything."Vivian!" she said."Mrs. Gray," I said, walking to the door to meet her. "You shouldn't be walking around alone—""I have my people." She patted the air behind her as we closed the door, and I saw two large men waiting patiently in the corridor. "Vivian." She took my hands. "I had to come and thank you. And to see how your grandmother is.""I should be the one thanking you." I swallowed. "You sent your grandson to help me. I couldn't have paid for the surgery without him. I promise I will pay back every cent. It may take

VIVIAN'S POVI sat at the table with the folder of formulas Whitmore had sent and more paperwork I needed to go through. I’d just started when my phone rang.I frowned slightly when I saw the hospital number. I picked up instantly and put the phone to my ear.“Doc, is my grandma alright?” I asked in panic."Yes Mrs. Lowe, this is Dr. Alvarez, your grandmother's attending." His voice was careful. Practiced. "She's been asking for you most of the morning. Nothing's wrong. Her numbers are good. She'd just like the company."Nothing's wrong.I breathed out a sigh of relief and I held onto those two words the whole ride over.I had told myself she was doing better. I had told myself that so many times over the last two days that I'd let myself go back to the office and even sit through an hour of Nathaniel's nonsense about lunch. And I let myself forget, for whole stretches of the afternoon, that there was a hospital bed with my grandmother in it and no one but strangers to sit beside her

NATHANIEL'S POV"I want a divorce."For a second I thought I'd misheard her. The words didn't fit anywhere in the day we'd just had. I’d stayed by her side all day, my hand at her back through an hour of relatives offering their sympathies to both of us like a unit."Vivi, you're not thinking clearly." I kept my voice low, looking around us to make sure none of the few stragglers could hear. "You just lost your grandmother.""I'm thinking more clearly than I have in years." her voice had lost that warmth I was used to hearing.That was the part that should have told me something. Not the request itself. People said all kinds of things over a casket, promises and threats they didn't mean a word of by morning. It was how steady she sounded saying it. Like she'd rehearsed it. Like she'd been carrying it around a lot longer than the one day I was prepared to blame for it."You're grieving." I insisted gently. Speaking in a tone you'd use to talk someone down from a tantrum. "I'm not going

VIVIAN'S POVHe fell right into it.Five years of learning that man — every tell, every soft spot, every place pride sat closer to the surface than sense — and it turned out all of it had a use after all.I'd spent five years learning Nathaniel so I could be exactly what he needed, so I'd never be the reason he looked elsewhere. It turned out the same knowledge worked just as well pointed the other direction. I knew exactly which words would make him stop thinking and start reacting.Wound his pride in the right place, at the right hour, in front of the right stranger, and he would always move exactly the way you needed him to.I remembered the exact dinner party, years ago, where a rival had made some offhand joke about Nathaniel inheriting rather than building. He'd smiled through the whole evening, charming as ever, and then quietly acquired the man's company within the month, just to prove he could. I used to think that story was about ambition. It was never about ambition. It was

VIVIAN'S POVI set my fork down with a quiet click against the plate. "I'm sorry, I must have misheard you. What?"Sebastian didn't flinch. "What if we dated? Genuinely. Publicly enough to satisfy my grandmother, privately enough that it's still ours to manage."Dating. Not a contract. Not a business transaction with a clear endpoint. It was a different kind of ask entirely, and I felt the instinctive pull back from it, the same way I'd felt when Mrs. Gray had first pushed that watch into my hand."That's not what we're doing here, Sebastian." I kept my voice low. "You're helping me take back what's mine, and I'm helping you find a treatment for your grandmother that would work. That's our arrangement. It's clean.""It's not clean anymore." He leaned forward slightly, his hands flat on the table. "You're living under my roof. It is private but word will get out soon enough, and you don't want time to rebuild yourself? To tie up loose ends that might cause drama so you can start ove