Chapter 9 Who?

Celeste's POV

"What happened to your hand?" Dmitri asked.

"Nothing."

I hid it behind my back at once — so fast that even I could tell how deliberate it looked.

He didn't press. He just looked at me, and that look made me deeply uncomfortable, as though the harder I tried to hide it, the more clearly he could see exactly what I was afraid of.

We didn't speak again the whole way back.

After I got in, I caught up on sleep. That evening, Julian asked me to dinner.

He'd picked a very quiet restaurant, a table by the window with a thin candle burning on it. He pulled out my chair for me, natural as anything, like a man who'd done it many times.

I had a bad feeling the moment I sat down.

He was too good to me.

So good that every time I accepted a little of it, I felt like I was taking advantage of him.

Once we'd ordered, he spoke first. "You've been running yourself ragged lately."

"I'm fine."

"Don't say fine." He looked at me, very serious. "The F&G project is enormous pressure, Ethan's attitude is off, and you come home looking worse every day."

I picked up my water glass and said nothing.

I knew he was worried about me.

But being worried over made me uncomfortable, like a thin net settling over me strand by strand, and I couldn't find a way out.

"I want to talk to F&G's head office," he paused, "about pulling you off the project. Have someone else handle the liaison."

I set the glass down. My fingers brushed the side and came away cold.

"Julian," I said, "don't forget you're my boss. This is my job. What you should care about is how to pay me more, not whether I'm tired."

"I know." His voice dropped even softer. "But I don't want to watch you keep taking it."

I looked at him and my chest tightened.

I saw all of it — how good he was. And the clearer I saw it, the less I could accept it.

I didn't want to owe him.

And I didn't want him thinking that one word from him would make me drop everything.

"Thank you," I said. "But I'm not going to run from a fight."

"This isn't running, it's—"

"I have a lot left to finish." I cut him off and forced the corner of my mouth up. "And work is something I want to handle myself."

He looked at me and said nothing for a long time.

I could feel his disappointment.

For a moment, I actually felt guilty.

But the guilt was quickly buried under something else.

I'm not a person who lets herself be arranged. Three years ago, my life was arranged for me by other people — and then it came down in ruins.

Now I just want to make my own decisions.

Then he smiled, a bitter sort of smile.

"You're always like this," he said. "You carry everything yourself. You won't even say the word 'help.'"

I didn't answer.

It wasn't that I didn't want to say it.

It was that I didn't know what would happen once I did.

After dinner, he insisted on driving me home.

The car stopped outside my building, and he didn't let me out right away — he just turned and looked at me.

"If you ever need help," he said, "don't overthink it. Just come to me. Don't forget, I'm your boss."

"Okay."

"Celeste." He stopped me. "I really wish I were more than your boss. I mean it. I want to be part of your life."

I pushed the door open and didn't answer him — and I had no way to answer that.

After I got out I walked to the entrance, and when I looked back he was still sitting in the car, not driving off.

The streetlight fell across the windshield. I couldn't make out his expression — only that the car stayed where it was, motionless.

I stood in the doorway, my chest tight and stifling.

I thought: if three years ago someone had been waiting behind me like this, would I have had to carry all of it alone?

The thought had barely surfaced before I pushed it back down.

There is no "if."

I turned and went upstairs.

The next morning, I had just walked into the president's office at MR when I heard Julian on the phone out in the corridor, loud enough for the whole floor to hear.

"What do you mean, settlement suspended? That's three months of contract payment!"

I stopped in my tracks.

He hung up and looked up, his eyes shot through with red.

"F&G says MR's settlement has to go through a routine review." He rubbed his temple. "During the review, all payments are frozen."

My stomach dropped.

"How long?"

"They didn't say. Said it's a procedural matter, told us to be patient." He gave a bitter laugh. "My patience is nearly dead."

I stood there, my mind racing.

A routine review — at a timing like this? What were the odds.

Julian had just asked me to dinner, and now the settlement was frozen.

My first thought was that this was no coincidence.

I thought of Dmitri.

My heart rate jumped.

So he really was watching me.

I couldn't tell whether what I felt was anger or fear.

All I knew was that if MR's money was in trouble, Julian would be dragged into it, the company would be brought down — and I would lose the job that keeps my mother's treatment going.

I grabbed my phone, walked straight out of the office, and headed for F&G.

Dmitri was sitting behind his desk, head down over some documents. He didn't look up even when he heard me come in.

In that instant, the fire inside me caught.

"You're the one who blocked MR's settlement?" My voice was cold.

"Business as usual." He turned a page, tone flat. "MR's contract falls within the review scope. It goes through procedure. Nothing wrong with it."

"Procedure?" I gave a cold laugh. "Three months of payment frozen with one word, and you call that procedure?"

He finally raised his eyes. They were very dark and very deep, and nothing in them gave anything away.

"You can go ask Julian," he said. "Until the review is finished, no one can touch that money."

"You know exactly what this means for MR."

"I do." He said it evenly. "Which is why you have time to submit the supplementary materials."

"And if we can't?"

He didn't answer.

In that moment I suddenly wanted to ask him — three years ago, did you know everything too, and just stand by and watch me go through all of it?

But the question jammed in my throat and wouldn't come out.

I clenched my fists and turned to leave. The moment my hand touched the doorknob, his voice came from behind me.

"Celeste."

I stopped, my heart lurching.

I didn't want to turn around, and I couldn't help it.

"Don't let me see you meeting Julian alone in private again."

I turned back.

He had already lowered his head again, as if that sentence had been nothing, tossed off in passing.

I stood in the doorway, my throat tight.

I went back to the desk Dmitri had set up for me, meaning to finish the materials and report to him. I picked up the coffee on the desk — by all logic it should have gone cold by now, though there was a thin film of condensation on the cup.

I lifted it, about to throw it out, and my fingers touched the side — and something was wrong.

The cup was hot.

I froze.

I distinctly remembered setting down a cold cup that morning.

And now it was hot enough to sting my fingertips.

I stared at the cup, my head a mess.

Who?

Why would anyone care about me this much?

I didn't dare follow the thought further. I only felt that somewhere in my chest, this cup of hot coffee had burned a hole straight through.

I set the cup back on the desk and looked up — just in time to see Dmitri's office door easing shut from the inside.