[Serena’s POV]
Working late has become routine.
The office empties around seven, then again around nine, until it's just the overnight security guards and analysts too stubborn or too broken to go home. I fall into the second category. The fluorescent lights hum their familiar frequency, the spreadsheets blur together, and I don't have to think about the cold silence waiting in the penthouse.
Dominic appears at my desk with two cups of coffee, setting one beside my keyboard without asking. He's been doing that lately—anticipating, accommodating, treating my caffeine needs like data he's already analyzed.
"The integration analysis is fighting back," he says, pulling a chair to my desk. "Third quarter projections don't match the synergy assumptions."
"Because the synergy assumptions are wishful thinking dressed up in Excel formulas." I accept the coffee. Black, no sugar, strong enough to strip paint. He noticed. He remembered. "Someone in M&A is going to have a very uncomfortable meeting."
"Better them than us." His smile is quick, professional, but warmer underneath. "Walk me through your methodology? I want our numbers bulletproof before the presentation."
We spread the analysis across my desk, shoulders almost touching as we trace calculations. He asks good questions—probing but not challenging, curious rather than competitive. When I explain my depreciation modeling, he listens like it matters. Like I matter.
"You're different from what I expected," he says after we've solved the third-quarter discrepancy. "Everyone warned me about the ice queen of corporate strategy. Said you'd freeze me out before I could finish my first sentence."
"And yet here you are. Unfrozen."
"Barely." He leans back, studying me with quiet intensity. "What's the real story? Because whoever they're describing doesn't match the person explaining discount rate adjustments with genuine enthusiasm."
My fingers tighten around the cup. The real story is messy and none of his business. But his eyes are patient, the office is empty, and I'm so tired of being armored all the time.
"I was that analyst once," I admit. "The one nobody noticed. Working twice as hard for half the recognition, wondering if I'd ever be good enough." The confession tastes strange, unfamiliar. "The ice queen thing is defense mechanism. Easier to be cold than dismissed."
"I don't think you're cold. I think you're careful." Dominic's voice drops, thoughtful. "There's a difference."
The moment stretches—something unspoken hovering in the fluorescent air. He's looking at me like I'm worth seeing, worth knowing. It's been weeks since anyone looked at me like that.
"I should finish this section," I say, breaking the spell. "Board meeting's in three days."
Dominic nods, hiding any disappointment well. "I'll handle the executive summary. We make a good team, Vale."
We work until eleven, and when I gather my things, he offers to walk me to the elevator. I decline. The boundary needs to stay clear, even if I'm not entirely sure which side of it I want to be on.
The penthouse is lit when I arrive—unusual. Caspian sits in the living room with whiskey he hasn't touched, still in work clothes, looking like he's been waiting for hours.
"You're up," I say, dropping my bag by the door.
"We need to talk." He stands, face carrying that expression I've been avoiding—the one that says he knows we're drowning but doesn't know how to swim. "About Victoria. About everything."
"There's nothing to talk about. You're following the plan. I'm following mine." I move toward the kitchen, toward anything that gives my hands something to do. "The arrangement is working exactly as designed."
"The arrangement is killing us, Serena." He blocks my escape. "You don't respond to my texts. You pretend to be asleep when I come home. We're sharing a bed and living in different zip codes."
"What do you want me to say?" The anger surfaces fast and sharp. "That I'm fine watching tabloids speculate about you and your ex? That I enjoy photographs of her touching your arm while I explain to our daughter why Mommy's not smiling?"
"I forwarded you every text. Every meeting. Complete transparency, exactly like we agreed."
"Transparency isn't intimacy, Caspian. Knowing the schedule of your staged romance doesn't make it hurt less."
He flinches. Good. Let him feel something.
"The photographs," he says quietly. "The graduation photos. I need you to know—"
"That you doubted me." The words come out surgical. "That after everything—the paternity test, moving in here, trusting you with Aria—one envelope from your father made you wonder if I'd fucked someone else seven years ago. Yes. I'm aware."
"For one moment. One weak, stupid moment. And I hate myself for it." He pauses, something shifting in his expression. "But I'm not the only one keeping secrets. Caroline Davis. The diner in Queens."
My stomach drops. The coffee I drank with Dominic turns to acid.
"How do you know about that?"
"Sebastian." His voice is flat, tired. "He has contacts everywhere. Someone saw you meeting with my father's former assistant and thought he should know. He told me this morning."
The betrayal feels absurd—I'm angry at being caught doing exactly what I accused him of. Hiding things. Building cases in secret. We're mirror images of dysfunction.
"Caroline worked for Edward for twelve years," I say, forcing the words out. "She witnessed things. The Meridian acquisition—your father drove a man to suicide. Manufactured scandals, destroyed lives. She gave me a name. Margaret Okonkwo. Richard's widow."
Caspian absorbs this, jaw tight. "You've been investigating my father. Without telling me."
"You've been having dinners with your ex-girlfriend. While I pretend not to care."
"That's different—"
"Is it?" I meet his eyes. "We're both playing games while hiding the parts that matter. You keep your doubts about my faithfulness. I keep my meetings with witnesses. We're failing each other in matching patterns."
The kitchen feels too bright. My hands twitch toward the dish towel—the urge to clean something, impose order on this chaos.
"Don't," Caspian says softly. "Whatever you're about to clean—just stop. Can you just stop?"
I freeze, dish towel half-raised. He noticed. Of course he noticed.
"My mother died when I was sixteen." The words spill before I can stop them—truth I've never fully told him. "Heart attack in our kitchen. I found her on the floor when I got home from school. The dishes were still in the sink. Her coffee was still warm."
He doesn't move. Doesn't breathe. Just waits.
"The paramedics came. Then the coroner. Then everyone left, and I was alone with her absence everywhere. So I cleaned." My voice sounds distant. "I scrubbed the kitchen until three in the morning. Then the bathroom. Then her bedroom. Everything she'd touched because if I stopped, I would have to feel it."
I'm shaking. When did I start shaking?
"Control," I continue, barely audible. "That's what the cleaning is. If I can control the mess, I can control the grief. If I keep things orderly, I can keep from falling apart. It's stupid and I know it's stupid but I can't ‘just stop’."
Caspian crosses the kitchen in two steps and pulls me against his chest. Not fixing. Not solving. Just holding.
"I'm sorry," he says into my hair. "About your mother. About the photographs. About all of it."
We sink to the kitchen floor somehow—him against the cabinets, me curled into his side, both too exhausted for the couch ten feet away. The tile is cold and uncomfortable and exactly what we deserve.
"I'm sorry I doubted you," he says.
"I know." My voice sounds hollow, scraped clean. "I'm still angry."
"I know that too."
We sit in the fluorescent light, not fixed, not healed, just finally honest. His hand finds mine on the tile. I let him take it.
It's not forgiveness. It's not resolution. But it's something real, and right now, real is enough.