Chapter Nine #2
A knot loosened in my chest. The tension from tonight drained out of me bit by bit, and I let myself be soothed by his presence once more. Sinking into it.
“Is he okay?” I asked.
“He will be,” Ethan said. “You Langleys don’t like facing the things that hurt you. You just bottle it up.”
“Is that where you learned it?”
Ethan chuckled, closing his eyes and arching his neck over the back of the couch. How could someone be so effortlessly sexy?
He licked his lips, pale blue eyes drawing me right back in. “I’m really fucking tired, Ash. I’m going to bed.” His lips twitched. “There’s plenty of room if you need to crash.”
He was baiting me. And still, my whole body hummed. “In your bed?”
He nodded through another stretch. The urge to scoop him up and have him writhing like that on top of me burned low in my gut.
“Your call,” he said, slipping off the couch and finishing his drink.
“Technically, I shouldn’t even be here. Do those boundaries not apply to your bed?”
He strutted toward his room, unbuttoning his shirt as he walked. One shoulder slipped free, exposing just enough skin to spike the heat in my body instantly. And I knew what it was—even as I tilted my head to watch him. Payback. For earlier. For flirting when I shouldn’t have.
I just hated making him look sad. It was always easier when he was angry at me.
“I would never make my boss sleep on the couch,” he said, leaning against the doorframe with a wicked smirk. His shirt hung open, and even in the dim light I could see the lines of muscle over his stomach, the rise and fall of each breath.
“Goodnight, darling.”
“Goodnight, Sebastian.” He disappeared behind the door, his smile lingering even as it shut between us.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my palms over my face. A quiet “fuck” slipped out.
Slowly, I walked to his room. My fingertips grazed the wood of the door, sliding down until they hovered by the handle.
Just one turn. That’s all it would take.
I shook my head and stepped back.
Stick to the plan, Sebastian. You cannot afford more chaos. Not right now.
A dull ache spread through my chest as I walked away, each step heavier than the last.
Elena’s office felt unusually still.
Morning light washed the skyline in pale gold beyond the glass, traffic threading through the city below as if nothing in the world had changed. Inside these walls, however, everything felt suspended in time.
I hadn’t slept. Not properly.
Henry’s departure this morning kept looping in my head—the quick hug, the careful smile, the way he’d accepted my apology for basically attacking Mateo without offering much back.
I should have pushed. And now he was somewhere over the Atlantic while I sat here, waiting for another verdict I couldn’t control.
The door opened behind me. Elena stepped in, tablet tucked against her side, her expression composed in the way that meant the news wasn’t good. “They’ve reviewed the corrected submissions.”
“And?”
“They’re expanding the audit scope.”
The words landed with quiet finality. Of course they were. Which meant more files, more scrutiny, more time. More money burning while we waited.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, forcing my voice to remain even. “How long?”
“They won’t give a timeline,” she said, dropping to her chair.
“That’s not acceptable.”
“It’s not negotiable.”
Rising to my feet, I crossed to the windows, dragging a hand down my face as the city blurred beyond the glass. “We can’t just sit on our hands. There has to be a way to accelerate this.”
“There isn’t,” Elena replied calmly. “Not from our side.”
I turned back to her. “We corrected the error. What else do they want?”
“Time,” she said. “And proof that the problem isn’t systemic.”
The word lodged under my ribs. Systemic. As if the company we had built could be reduced to a compliance failure.
“As long as this review is active,” she continued, “they will assume risk. And risk slows everything down.”
I let out a breath that felt scraped raw. “We can’t afford slow.”
“No,” she agreed. “Which is why we stop trying to control the review and focus on what we can control.”
I stared at her.
She held my gaze, unflinching. “Private development,” she continued. “Bridge financing. Reallocating crews. Preserving liquidity. We ride it out.”
Ride it out. The words didn’t sit right. “That sounds like waiting.”
“It sounds like surviving,” she corrected.
The low hum beyond the glass pressed in, steady and indifferent.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, Henry’s voice surfaced again—the careful distance, the refusal to open a door I didn’t know how to knock on. Control slipping in one place was one thing, but control slipping everywhere felt like failure.
“We built this to withstand pressure,” I said. “If we just sit here—”
“We are not sitting,” Elena cut in, more forceful now. “We are adapting.” Her tone softened, but her eyes did not. “This is not just on you, Sebastian—it’s on all of us.”
It felt like it was.
Like if I had caught it sooner, tightened the process, burned that template the second it was approved, demanded better oversight, demanded sharper eyes, and demanded perfection the way I always did, then maybe this wouldn’t be happening.
Maybe the review wouldn’t be expanding. Maybe the crews wouldn’t be idle, and the money wouldn’t be bleeding out by the hour, and the company wouldn’t be standing here waiting to be judged.
You didn’t keep them safe.
This wasn’t the plan.
This wasn’t the fucking plan.