Chapter 11: Nostalgia
The file from the concierge had been a competitor’s acquisition plan, swiftly neutralized. Bethany had spent seven days turning that focus into a weapon. Her office became a bunker. Emails were battlegrounds. Conference calls were tactical maneuvers. She signed deals with a flourish that felt more like violence.
Control. It was the bedrock of everything. She controlled the narrative in the press, the temperature of the room in negotiations, the exact shade of espresso that arrived at ten-thirty. She controlled the memory of his hands on her skin by refusing to acknowledge it in daylight hours.
It was almost working.
Then, a scent from a passerby on the street—bergamot and cedar—would hijack her senses. Or she’d reach for a pen and her mind would flash, unbidden, to the sight of his tie abandoned on her hotel floor. A deep, unworthy part of her had wanted to keep it. She’d left it for housekeeping.
The problem wasn’t the wanting. Wanting was a simple, animal truth. It was the remembering that unstitched her. Not the fights, not the betrayal. The good parts. The parts she’d meticulously boxed up and stored in a mental attic labeled ‘Do Not Open.’
They bled out now.
Laughter in a cheap dive bar years ago, his arm around her shoulders, him whispering a ridiculous story about a rival’s unfortunate encounter with a fondue fountain. The way his whole face changed when he truly smiled, the hardened edges dissolving. Stolen kisses in elevators, in back alleys after tense meetings, a secret language of touch that felt more honest than any contract.
Most of all, the proposal.
Not some grand, public spectacle. He’d hated those. It had been on the roof of her old, cramped apartment building, the city sprawled below them like a stolen jewel box. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet, fidgeting. She’d thought it was business trouble. Then he’d just turned to her, took her hands, and said, “This life I lead… it’s ugly. It’s dangerous. It doesn’t deserve you. But I don’t deserve you either, and I’m too selfish to let you go. So marry me. Let me build you a world that’s safe. Let me try to be a man who does deserve you.”
She’d said yes before he’d finished. She’d been drowning in it, that hopeless, complete love. It felt like flying and falling at the same time.
Sitting in her sterile office, Bethany stared at a quarterly report until the numbers blurred. That was the real minefield. Not the lust, but the ghost of that belief. Could it ever be rebuilt? Or was she just mistaking the echo for the foundation?
Her intercom buzzed, sharp and welcome. “Ms. Montgomery, your eleven o’clock is here. A Mr. Rossi.” Marcus’s voice was carefully blank.
Her heart did a single, hard slam against her ribs. She hadn’t seen him since he walked out. She hadn’t answered his calls. Three of them. She’d memorized the times.
“Send him in.”
She stood, smoothing her hands over the sharp lines of her dove-gray trousersuit. Armor. She walked to the window, presenting her back to the door, a picture of casual absorption in the skyline. Control.
The door opened and shut. The air in the room thickened, charged with a new, familiar energy.
“Playing the power pose, Beth? Really?” Damien’s voice was amused, warm. He sounded rested. He sounded good.
She turned slowly. He leaned against the doorframe, not having taken a seat. He wore a dark suit that cost more than most cars, no tie, the top button of his shirt undone. He looked relaxed. Dangerous. He held two paper cups from the artisanal bakery she liked, three blocks over.
“What do you want, Damien?” Her voice was cooler than she felt.
“To bring you a peace offering.” He pushed off the doorframe and walked in, setting one cup on the vast, empty expanse of her desk. “Almond croissant. Your favorite. And a dirty chai, extra shot.”
It was so disarming. So ordinary. This was his strategy—not just the grand gestures, but the intimate, remembering gestures. He knew how to bypass the fortress walls and go straight for the ghost of the woman who used to live there.
“I’m in meetings all day,” she said, not moving from the window.
“Bullshit. You cleared your schedule after eleven. You always do on Thursdays to prep for the Friday investor call.” He took a sip from his own cup, watching her over the rim. “See? I remember things too.”
The familiarity was a trap. A delicious, warm trap.
“This doesn’t resolve anything,” she said, gesturing vaguely between them. “A week of silence, then pastries. It’s whiplash.”
“The silence was you, not me. I called. You’re the one who’s been playing chess with mergers and acquisitions to avoid playing checkers with this.” He took a step closer. The scent of him reached her, cutting through the sterile office perfume. “So, figure it out yet?”
“Figure what out?”
“Whether I’m real this time.”
The question, spoken aloud in her sanctuary of control, was terrifying. It laid her internal war bare on the polished concrete floor.
She walked to her desk, if only to put something solid between them. She picked up the chai. It was the perfect temperature. “A few conversations don’t erase years, Damien.”
“I’m not asking for an eraser. I’m asking for a… reconsideration. Based on new evidence.” He grinned, that boyish, disarming grin that had always been his most lethal weapon. “The evidence being that I’m here. That I’m trying. That I didn’t storm your boardroom with a squad of lawyers to force you into seeing me. I brought baked goods. That’s growth.”
Despite herself, a huff of air escaped her—not quite a laugh, but close. “Your moral barometer is profoundly broken.”
“But you’re smiling.”
“I am not.” She fought the tug at her lips.
He set his cup down and rounded the desk. He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, within reach, his presence a physical pressure. “Let me take you to dinner. Tonight. No agendas. No business. Just… see what it’s like to be in the same room without the world ending.”
She looked up at him. The city’s light reflected in his green eyes. She saw the man from the rooftop, layered over with the harder, more calculating man he’d become. She also saw the man who’d held her in the silent dawn, who had asked her what she wanted.
Wanting him was easy. It was a current pulling at her, constant and strong.
Believing him was the leap into the dark.
“Dinner,” she repeated, the word tasting foreign.
“Dinner,” he confirmed softly. “Say yes, Beth.”
Her phone buzzed on the desk. A Bloomberg alert. The world was right there, demanding, predictable, safe. She looked from the screen to his waiting face, to the offered croissant in its simple paper bag.
It wasn’t a decision to trust him. It was a decision to stop pretending she was unaffected.
“Fine,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Dinner. But I pick the place. And it’s not a date.”
His smile was slow, victorious, and infinitely soft. “It’s a dinner. Text me the address.” He reached out, and for a heartbeat she thought he’d cup her cheek. He didn’t. He just brushed a crumb—imaginary or real, she couldn’t tell—from the lapel of her jacket. A whisper of contact. Then he walked back to the door.
“Damien,” she called out as his hand touched the handle.
He paused, looking back.
“Why now?” she asked, the question raw. “After all this time, why the full-court press now?”
His expression sobered. The charm evaporated, leaving something stark and unnervingly honest. “Because I almost lost you for good last year. That situation with the Koretzky shipment.” He saw her flinch; they never spoke about the night she’d gotten a anonymous tip that he was lying dead in a warehouse. It had been false. A power play by an associate. But the five minutes she’d spent before confirming it was a hoax had carved something out of her. “It clarified things,” he said simply. “I’m done wasting time.”
He left, closing the door with a quiet click.
Bethany sank into her chair, the cool leather a shock. She stared at the croissant. She’d told him it wasn’t a date. But she’d said yes. And for the first time in a week, the static in her mind had cleared, replaced by a single, coherent thread of anticipation, terrifying and bright.