The office had emptied hours ago.
I stayed late finishing reports—quarterly summaries that needed review before tomorrow's board meeting.
The work was mindless enough to keep my hands busy while my thoughts churned through everything that had happened over the past few days.
Victoria's threat. Charles beneath my mouth. The photo still circulating through industry newsletters.
I needed the distraction of spreadsheets and projections. Numbers didn't judge. Numbers didn't complicate.
Around nine, I stood to stretch and noticed light spilling from Sebastian's office across the floor. Strange. He usually left by seven, claiming that working late was for people who couldn't manage their time properly.
I'd heard him say it often enough, usually with that insufferable smirk.
Curiosity pulled me toward his door.
I found him behind his desk, tie loosened, top button undone. A whisky bottle sat open beside him, amber liquid catching the lamplight. He stared at his phone like it had delivered a death sentence, face pale, jaw tight.
He looked wrong. The sharp confidence that defined him had vanished completely. In its place was something I'd never seen—vulnerability so raw it made my chest ache.
"Sebastian?"
He looked up. For once, no sarcasm. No walls. No cutting remarks or defensive posturing. Just exhaustion, deep and devastating.
"My mother's in the hospital." His voice was flat, hollowed out. "They say it's nothing serious—just a fall, broken wrist, overnight observation. Standard procedure for someone her age."
"I'm sorry. That must be frightening, even if it's minor."
He laughed, the sound bitter and broken.
"The thing is, I wasn't there. I'm never there." He set down his glass, staring at the amber liquid like it held answers he couldn't find. "Too busy climbing the corporate ladder, too focused on proving myself."
His voice turned bitter.
"Too consumed with becoming someone important to check if she's eating properly. If the stairs in her building are too steep."
He shook his head slowly. Swallowed hard. "If she needs help with groceries or bills or any of the thousand small things that pile up when you're aging alone."
I moved into the office and sat in the chair across from his desk. The whisky bottle was half empty. I wondered how long he'd been sitting here, drowning guilt in alcohol.
"She's going to be okay," I said quietly. "You said yourself—it's just observation. A broken wrist heals."
"This time it's a broken wrist."
He drained his glass, grimacing at the burn. "Next time it could be a hip. Or a stroke. Or she could fall and no one finds her for days because her son is too bloody important to visit more than twice a year."
"Sebastian…"
"I send money. Every month, like clockwork."
He poured another measure of whisky, watching it swirl in the glass. "Enough that she doesn't have to work anymore, enough that she could move somewhere nicer if she wanted."
He took a long drink before continuing. "But she won't leave Birmingham. Won't leave the flat where she raised me, the neighborhood where everyone knows her name."
His voice cracked. "And I keep telling myself the money is enough. That I'm taking care of her."
The pain in his words cut through every assumption I'd ever made about him. This wasn't the arrogant executive who dominated boardrooms.
This was a son terrified of losing his mother, drowning in guilt he couldn't escape.
"You're not a bad son," I said. "You built a life she can be proud of. You gave her security she never had before."
"Security isn't presence. It's not holding her hand when she's scared. It's not being the person she calls when something goes wrong."
He pushed back from his desk, running both hands through his hair. "I need to get out of here. Clear my head. I can't sit in this office staring at walls."
He looked at me then, grey eyes raw and desperate in a way I'd never witnessed.
"I don't want to be alone right now," he admitted. "I know I have no right to ask, after everything, but—would you come with me? Just for a drive."
"Yes. I'll come."
An hour later, we were in his car heading north on the M1. London disappeared behind us, replaced by dark motorway and the glow of passing headlights.
Sebastian drove in silence, hands tight on the wheel, jaw clenched.
I didn't ask where we were going. Somehow, I already knew.
Birmingham emerged from the darkness around midnight.
Not the city center with its modern developments and corporate towers, but the outskirts—cramped terraced houses, corner shops with metal shutters, streets that had seen better decades.
Sebastian parked on a narrow road lined with identical brick buildings. He sat for a moment, staring through the windscreen at a world I'd never seen him inhabit.
"This is where I grew up," he said quietly. "This exact street. That flat there, second floor, the one with the broken window box my mum keeps meaning to fix."
We walked together through streets that told his history.
He pointed out landmarks with a tour guide's precision—the corner shop where his mum still knew everyone by name, where she'd sent him for milk and bread when they could afford it.
The tiny flat with the radiator that never worked properly, where he'd done homework wearing three jumpers because they couldn't pay the heating bill.
The bus stop where he'd waited every morning for school, dreaming of something bigger than these grey streets.
"I used to stand right there," he said, gesturing to a cracked pavement corner.
"I'd watch the businessmen drive past in their nice cars, heading to jobs that paid more in a week than my mum made in a month. And I'd think—someday, that'll be me."
"And now you are."
"And now I am." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Funny how getting everything you wanted can feel so empty."
We walked past a small church, a boarded-up pub, a playground with rusted swings.
Sebastian narrated each location with quiet intensity—the park where he'd learned to fight back against bullies, the library where he'd discovered ambition, the spot where he'd told his mother he'd gotten into university and watched her cry.
"No one at Pemberton knows where I come from," he said eventually.
"They see the suits, the arrogance, the success. They assume I'm old money pretending to be self-made, or self-made pretending to be old money. They don't see this."
He gestured at the cramped street, the peeling paint, the life he'd spent years escaping.
"Why are you showing me?" I asked.
Sebastian stopped walking. Turned to face me fully, grey eyes holding mine in the dim streetlight.
"Because you're the only person I want to know."
The words hung between us, simple and devastating. Not a seduction. Not a strategy. Just truth, offered without armor.
We walked in silence after that. The streets grew familiar as we looped back toward his car, retracing steps through his history.
At some point, I couldn't say when, his hand found mine. Fingers intertwining, grip warm and steady.
Neither of us acknowledged it. Neither of us let go.
I realized, with a clarity that terrified me, that I was in serious trouble.