* Present *
The kitchen table disappears under paper.
Caroline Chen's documents spread across the mahogany like a crime scene—financial records, shell company registrations, photographs of people I don't recognize but Serena apparently does.
My own notes join the chaos: the threat of disinheritance, Victoria's confession about being used as a pawn, screenshots of the tabloid attacks that have made Serena's professional life a daily humiliation.
Aria is at Maya's for the night. We planned this deliberately—no innocent ears for what we're about to excavate.
"Start from the beginning," Serena says, her voice carrying that particular steadiness she uses when she's terrified but refusing to show it. "Everything your father threatened."
So I tell her. The conditions for my inheritance—marriage to an acceptable partner, which explicitly excludes scholarship students with illegitimate children. The way he'd couched it in business language, like he was negotiating a merger rather than threatening to erase his granddaughter from the Rothwell dynasty.
Serena's jaw tightens, but she doesn't interrupt. Just absorbs it with that terrifying focus she's always brought to battle.
"The Victoria meetings," I continue. "They were his idea from the start. He's been coaching her—texting instructions, coordinating photo opportunities. The whole reconciliation narrative was manufactured."
"I knew that part." Her voice is flat. "What I didn't know was whether you were performing for him or for me."
The words land like a slap. Deserved, probably.
"For him. Always for him." I meet her eyes across the table, across all this evidence of my father's manipulation. "I thought I was protecting you by playing his game. I was wrong."
She's quiet for a long moment. The city hums outside, indifferent to our crisis.
"The tabloid attacks," she says finally, reaching for one of the printouts. "This woman claiming to know me—I've never seen her face. But she knew details about my scholarship applications, my mother's medical bills. Information that isn't public."
"My father has resources. Private investigators, people who dig."
"He's trying to destroy my reputation." Her voice doesn't waver, but her hands do—just slightly, barely visible. "Make me unemployable. Drive me back to wherever he thinks I belong."
"Yes."
No point softening it. She'd see through any attempt anyway.
Serena looks at the papers, then at me. Something shifts in her expression—the walls she's kept between us since the Victoria revelation starting to thin.
"Caroline's information is solid," she says. "The Margaret Okonkwo connection, the pattern of destroyed careers. Your father ruins people systematically. He's done it before unless someone stops him."
"Someone meaning us."
"Someone meaning us." She pauses, and I watch her work through something internal. "There's something I need to tell you."
My chest tightens. Nothing good ever follows those words.
"Dominic Reyes," she says, and the name hits me like ice water. "At work. We've been collaborating on projects since the media circus started. He's been... kind. Supportive. Treating me like a professional when everyone else treats me like a scandal."
I keep my expression neutral through sheer force of will. "And?"
"I noticed him." Her eyes meet mine, unflinching. "Not attraction—not exactly. More like recognition. Someone who appreciates me without all the combat. Without the history, the complications, the constant friction."
The silence stretches between us. Jealousy burns in my chest, irrational and useless.
"Did he make you feel what I make you feel?"
The question comes out raw, vulnerable, embarrassingly direct for someone who's built his personality around never being caught off-guard.
Serena's answer is immediate. "No."
I wait, because she's not done.
"Even in fantasy," she continues, something almost amused in her voice now, "uncomplicated sounded boring. Restful, maybe. But boring." A ghost of a smile crosses her face. "I think I might be addicted to our friction."
The tension in my chest releases so fast it's almost painful. I exhale a laugh that sounds embarrassingly relieved.
"That's possibly the most backhanded compliment I've ever received."
"Consider it on-brand." She's almost smiling now. "You drive me insane, Caspian. You make everything harder than it needs to be. You come with a psychopath father and a society girlfriend and enough emotional baggage to sink a cruise ship."
"You're really selling the relationship here."
"But you also make me feel things I didn't know I was capable of." Her voice goes serious, and her hand reaches across the table to cover mine. "Real things. Complicated, infuriating, completely inconvenient things."
I turn my palm up, threading our fingers together. Her hand is warm, steady now—the trembling from earlier gone.
"So what do we do?" I ask. "About all of this?"
Serena looks at the papers spread across the table. Caroline's evidence, Victoria's pawned existence, my father's calculated cruelty.
"We end it," she says. "The Victoria charade. The pretending. We expose what he's done—the destroyed careers, the manufactured scandals, all of it. We burn down his power base before he can use it against us."
"That's war."
"We're already at war. We've just been playing defense." Her grip on my hand tightens. "I'm tired of being reactive. Tired of waiting for his next move. If we're going to survive this, we need to strike first."
I think about my father's face the last time we spoke—the cold calculation behind his eyes, the way he'd looked at Aria like she was a problem to be solved rather than a child to be loved. The threat of disinheritance doesn't scare me anymore. Losing the money would hurt, but losing Serena and Aria would destroy me.
"I have an idea," I say slowly. "One final performance."
Serena raises an eyebrow—that expression that means she's listening but reserving judgment.
"Victoria wants out. She told me explicitly—she's tired of being used, tired of being a pawn in his game. If I stage a very public rejection, on camera, at an event where he can't control the narrative..."
"You reject her and denounce his influence at the same time." Serena's eyes sharpen as she follows the logic. "Make it impossible for him to spin."
"Exactly. A dinner, somewhere visible. Photographers, witnesses, the whole Manhattan society circus watching. I tell Victoria it's over—permanently—and I make it clear that I'm choosing my family over his approval."
"Your family meaning us."
"My family meaning you and Aria. The only family that matters." I squeeze her hand. "He can keep the inheritance. I'll build something new."
Serena studies me for a long moment—searching for doubt, maybe, or performance. Whatever she finds seems to satisfy her.
"We do this together," she says. "No more separate strategies, no more protecting each other through secrets. Partners."
"Partners," I agree.
The word feels different now than it did during all those office negotiations. It feels real. Solid.
We spend the next hour planning—which venue, which journalists to ensure are present, how to coordinate with Victoria so she's prepared for her role in the finale. Serena takes notes in her precise handwriting, and I watch her work through logistics with the same intensity she once applied to demolishing my arguments in class.
She's magnificent like this. Focused, fierce, utterly brilliant.
Sometime around midnight, we finally gather the papers into order. The plan isn't perfect—nothing ever is when you're fighting someone with my father's resources—but it's ours.
"One more dinner with Victoria," I say. "And then it's done."
Serena leans across the table and kisses me—quick, fierce, tasting like determination.
"Make it count, Rothwell. I want fireworks."
"For you? Apocalyptic fireworks. The kind that make headlines."
She laughs, and the sound settles something in my chest that's been anxious for weeks.
We're finally fighting on the same side. And God help anyone who gets in our way.