Chapter 11 · The Ex's Gambit

The private elevator chimed and nobody knocked after it.

Caspian Thorne walked onto the sixtieth floor with his coat open and a folder under his arm, and the first thing he saw was the contract on his father's desk. Two hundred pages. A pen lying across the signature line. My name not on it yet.

"Should I come back?" he said. "Or is this the part where the two of you stop pretending?"

Marcus didn't stand. That was the worst part. He stayed behind the mahogany with one hand flat on the desk and looked at his son the way a man looks at a bill he's already decided to dispute.

"You're not on my calendar."

"I'm on the shareholders'. That's better." Caspian dropped the folder. It hit the wood and slid an inch, and I watched his eyes come to me last, like I was furniture he'd been meaning to replace. "Helena. You look tired."

"You look like a man about to get billed for the last thirty seconds."

He smiled. Same smile from five years of Sunday brunches, the one that used to make me think he was charming.