Nora's POV

The elevator was moving slow.

I stood in the middle of it and watched the numbers count down and thought about nothing. That was the strange part. After everything I'd just seen, after everything Sienna had said — my mind was completely quiet.

Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve.

She'll forgive you. She always does.

I had forgiven him. That was the thing sitting heavy in my chest right now. I had forgiven Derek plenty of times over two years. The cancelled plans. The way he'd missed my company's anniversary dinner because of a work trip he'd booked without telling me. The birthday he'd spent mostly on his phone.

Small things. Ordinary things. The kind of things you chalk up to a person being human and flawed and yours anyway.

He was always so good after. That was what made it easy. He'd show up with food, say the right things, look at me like I was the only person in the room, and I'd think — this is what love looks like. Imperfect and real.

Six. Five. Four.

I thought about the meals.

Every Tuesday and Thursday he'd arrive at my hospital room with containers of food, still warm. Told me he'd cooked them himself. I'd believed him completely because of course I had — Derek was meticulous, controlled, the kind of man who followed recipes to the letter.

The elevator opened.

My stomach turned.

Her kitchen. His apartment. Sienna standing over a stove in whatever she wore when she was comfortable, cooking the meals I had eaten in a hospital bed and felt grateful for.

I walked out into the lobby and pushed through the front door.

My phone buzzed. Sienna's name on the screen. I almost didn't open it.

It was a digital wedding invite. Clean design, elegant font, their names side by side.

Derek Mao & Sienna Park

request the pleasure of your company…

She'd had it ready. She had sent it within minutes of me walking out the door, like she'd been waiting for the right moment. Like this was just an item on a list she was finally getting to check off.

I stared at it until the words blurred.

Dr. Patel's voice came back to me. You're lucky to have such a devoted boyfriend.

I put my phone in my pocket and started walking.

I don't know how long I walked before I noticed it was raining.

My hair was flat against my face, my discharge clothes soaked through, my bag doing nothing to protect anything inside it. I kept walking anyway. The street was grey and wet and the city moved around me like I wasn't there.

I thought about the first time Derek told me he loved me. We were in his kitchen. He'd made pasta and it was slightly overcooked and he'd been so annoyed at himself that I'd laughed, and that was when he said it — just blurted it out, like it surprised him too.

I'd thought about that night so many times.

I wondered now if Sienna had been in that kitchen too. If she'd been there before me, after me, during the same week. I wondered exactly how long I had been the last to know.

My dad's name lit up my screen.

I watched it ring.

He called again. Then a third time. Then a fourth. I counted them the way I'd counted the minutes in the car outside Derek's building. Something to focus on. Fifth call. I let it ring out.

Whatever he needed, it was a business deal. It was always a business deal. My father didn't call five times out of concern — he called five times when something needed to be managed, and I was usually the most convenient tool available.

Not today.

I kept walking.

A car slowed beside me.

The window came down and Yuna leaned across the passenger seat with an umbrella in one hand and a tote bag in the other and the expression of someone who had been frantically rerouting their entire afternoon.

"Get in," she said.

"How did you—"

"I called the hospital when I saw your text. They said you'd already left." She pushed the door open. "You've been walking for twenty minutes, Nora. In the rain. Get in the car."

I got in.

She handed me the umbrella first, then the tote bag. Inside was a change of clothes — jeans, a clean sweater, my spare sneakers that I kept in her car for reasons neither of us had ever examined too closely.

"I'm sorry about the missed calls," she said, already pulling into traffic. "I was at—" She stopped.

"Where were you?" I asked.

A pause. The kind that means someone is rearranging what they were about to say.

I already knew.

"It doesn't matter," I said quietly. "Whatever you saw — it's fine. He's my ex."

Yuna didn't say anything for a moment. Then she reached over and put her hand briefly on mine. That was all. No speech, no I told you so, no wide-eyed performance of shock.

That was why she was the only person I trusted completely.

Her phone rang through the car speakers. The screen on the dashboard read: Mr. Ashfield.

We both looked at it.

"Take it," I said.

She answered. "Mr. Ashfield, this is Yuna—"

"Where is she." Not a question. His voice was flat and stripped of its usual authority, which was strange enough that I sat up straighter.

"Sir, she's with me. We're—"

"Bring her to the mansion. Now." Another pause. Something underneath his voice I had never heard before. "Please."

Yuna glanced at me. I nodded.

My father didn't say please.

My father didn't say please, and his voice had never sounded like that, and when we pulled up to the mansion every light in the house was on even though it was the middle of the day.

I walked in.

My mother was sitting on the stairs with both hands over her mouth. Two of my father's assistants were standing against the wall doing nothing. Someone was crying in the next room.

My father walked out of his study.

He looked older than he had the last time I'd seen him. Like the last few hours had taken something from him that wasn't coming back.

"Dad," I said. "What happened?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Your grandfather is dead."

The room tilted.

"What?!"

Nora's POV

"In his sleep," my mother said. "He just — didn't wake up."

I looked at her. "He was fine last week."

"The doctor said it happens. At his age, it—"

"He was seventy-one," I said. "He walked three kilometers every morning. He argued with his cardiologist about being put on blood pressure medication because his numbers were too good."

My mother pressed her lips together and looked away.

I stood in the middle of my grandfather's sitting room and stared at the arrangement of things that didn't fit. The doctor had already come and gone, which felt fast. The paperwork was already being handled, which felt faster. My father's assistants were moving through the house.

Nobody looked devastated. They looked prepared.

That was the thing I couldn't shake.

I found myself standing in the doorway of his bedroom.

He looked peaceful. That's what people always said, and I used to think it was something people said because they didn't know what else to say. Now I understood it. He did look peaceful. His hands were folded. His face was still.

I thought about the last real conversation I'd had with him. Three weeks ago, before I got sick. We'd sat on the back veranda and he'd drunk his tea and said something that had made me laugh uncomfortably at the time.

You trust too easily, Nora-girl. That's your mother's fault. Ashfields don't trust. Ashfields verify.

I'd said, You're paranoid, Grandpa.

He'd looked at me over the rim of his cup. Completely serious. Paranoid men die in their beds at ninety. Trusting men die early and everyone cries and nobody asks the right questions.

I had laughed. Changed the subject.

I wasn't laughing now.

He'd said something else, months before that. I'd filed it away as the dark muttering of an old man who'd spent too many years in boardrooms. Someone is being very patient with me. Patient people are the most dangerous kind.

I looked at him lying in his bed.

Who?

My uncle Garrett was in the hallway when I turned around.

He had his phone in his hand and his jacket on, which meant he was leaving. He was the only person in the house who looked like he was somewhere else in his head — not grief, not shock. Something more like a man checking items off a list.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

He looked up. Smiled the way he always smiled at me — like I was still twelve and asking about something I wouldn't understand. "I have some calls to make. Business doesn't stop, sweetheart."

"Our grandfather just died."

"And your father needs me handling things." He squeezed my shoulder once. "You should be with your mother."

He was gone before I could say another word.

I watched him walk down the stairs and thought about patience. About the most dangerous kind.

My father called me into the study an hour later.

He looked worse up close. Grey around the edges, eyes that hadn't quite focused since I'd arrived. He sat behind his father's desk — which already felt wrong — and folded his hands the same way my grandfather's were folded upstairs, and I had to look at the window instead.

"The company is in trouble," he said.

I looked back at him. "What kind of trouble?"

"The kind that doesn't announce itself." He paused. "Your grandfather was the one holding the key relationships. Without him, two of our largest partners have already signaled they're reviewing their positions. If we don't move quickly—"

"How close to bankruptcy?" I asked.

He didn't answer, which was its own answer.

"There's a deal," he said. "One. If you close it, we stabilize. We buy ourselves enough time to restructure."

I sat down slowly. "And if I don't?"

He didn't answer that either.

I sat with it for a moment. My grandfather's body was still warm upstairs, and my father was already talking about the company, and my uncle had left to make calls, and none of this — none of this — felt like grief.

It felt like positioning.

I said I'd think about it. I hugged my mother for a long time in the kitchen, held her while she cried in a way she'd never let herself cry in front of my father. I made her tea she didn't drink. I told her I'd be back tomorrow.

Then I left.

Yuna had the car running.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, when I got in. "He was a good man."

"He was," I said.

She didn't push. She pulled out of the driveway and let the silence sit, which I appreciated more than I could say.

After a few minutes I straightened and pulled out my phone. My grandfather's voice was still moving through my head — patient people are the most dangerous kind — and I couldn't sit in grief right now. If I sat in it, I'd have to sit in all of it. Derek and Sienna and the invite and the meals and the apartment.

Later. I'd sit in it later.

"I need a deal," I said. "One that can stabilize Ashfield Holdings fast. Who are our options?"

Yuna was quiet for a moment. "Most of the viable partners are joint ventures with your uncle."

I said nothing.

"Which means if the relationships shift after—" she glanced at me— "after today, those deals could get complicated. Politically."

"So not those," I said. "Who else?"

She pulled up something on her phone, balancing it against the steering wheel. "There's one. Voss Enterprises. No existing ties to your uncle, completely independent, and big enough to stabilize you three times over with one contract."

I'd heard the name. Everyone in the industry had heard the name. "Set up a meeting."

"I've tried," Yuna said carefully. "Twice. His people are—" she chose her word— "selective. He doesn't take meetings he doesn't personally approve. Getting past his gatekeepers alone takes weeks."

I almost laughed. Some CEO sitting behind a wall of assistants, deciding who was worthy of his time.

"He sounds insufferable," I said.

"He sounds terrifying, actually," Yuna said. "But that's not the issue."

"Then what is?"

She hesitated. Just briefly. Then she looked at me in the rearview mirror.

"He's on the guest list," she said. "For the wedding. Derek's wedding. He's going to be there."

I stared at her reflection.

"Callum Voss," she said, "is going to be at your ex-boyfriend's wedding in two weeks."

The car was very quiet.

"Say that again," I said.