44. Grayson
44
GRAYSON
T he morning is quiet, the kind of heavy quiet that hums beneath the surface like a fuse waiting to burn. I stand at the floor-to-ceiling window of our penthouse, the city below me cloaked in gray-blue haze. The early hour casts everything in muted tones, glass, steel, sky. For a moment, Manhattan doesn’t feel like a battlefield. It feels like a secret.
My coffee cools in my hand, untouched. I’ve been holding it for ten minutes, maybe more. My reflection stares back at me in the glass, bare-chested, jaw shadowed, a man with the weight of a name he never asked for and a war he didn’t start. The man the world will be talking about today.
Behind me, I hear the rustle of sheets. Margot shifts in bed, her bare shoulder catching the light. She’s half-wrapped in the duvet, one hand curled over her bump, hair spilling like ink across the pillows. Even in sleep, she looks steady. Grounded. A woman who could tame storms without raising her voice.
She murmurs something unintelligible, then sighs, settling again. I set the coffee down.
I cross the room and press a kiss to her temple, slow and reverent, and whisper, “I’ve got this.”
She doesn’t wake, but her fingers twitch slightly, like she heard me.
***
Perfectly Matched HQ is different in the early hours. The lobby lights are dimmed to a soft golden glow. The scent of citrus cleaner still lingers in the air from the overnight crew. Even the elevators move slower, as if the building itself is bracing.
Olivia is already in the boardroom when I arrive. She’s dressed in deep navy, tailored to kill, her heels clicking as she paces in front of the massive display wall, flipping through live social feeds and pulse metrics.
“Good morning,” she says without looking up. “You slept?”
“Enough.”
“Liar.”
I shrug out of my coat and hang it over the back of one of the chairs. “Where are we?”
“ PulseMatch goes live at ten. We’re scheduled for ten-fifteen. I’ve booked simultaneous streams to all major networks, plus international media via syndicate. Our piece is prepped. The copy’s final. The script is clean.”
“Do we have a leak risk?”
“Always,” she says, finally turning toward me. “But I’d rather play offense.”
She hands me a folder. Thick card-stock. Gold foil logo. I flip it open. The headline reads: Legacy Isn’t Blood. It’s Choice.
I meet her eyes. “You wrote this?”
She nods. “With Margot.”
The words catch in my throat. I nod and set the folder down. Across the room, Cassian strolls in with two lattes and a stack of printouts. “People are hungry for a fall. Just make sure they choke on it when they try to swallow ours.”
The prep room is cold. Too cold. The studio crew likes it that way, keeps sweat at bay, they say. I roll my shoulders beneath the dark jacket Olivia insisted I wear. It’s not a suit. It’s armor.
Margot joins me a few minutes before we go live, wearing a cream blazer that hugs her figure just above the bump. Her lips are bare, her eyes lined, her expression sharp enough to slice glass.
“You look lethal,” I say, rising.
“Good,” she murmurs. “I’m tired of playing polite.”
She takes my hand, lacing her fingers with mine. Her skin is warm. Steady. I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until she squeezes gently.
“We don’t flinch,” she says.
I nod. The countdown begins. The camera clicks on. The lights are unforgiving, but I don’t blink. My face is steady. My voice is calm.
“To those of you watching, let’s begin with the truth.”
I pause, letting silence do what no words could.
“I wasn’t born into the King name. It wasn’t a birthright. It was something I inherited from a man who raised me with purpose, who taught me to build, to fight, to lead. And I did.”
I look straight into the lens.
“But Perfectly Matched was never about inheritance. It wasn’t built from bloodlines or legacy. It was built by intention, by work, by choice.”
Margot steps forward beside me, her hand resting lightly over her stomach.
“I chose this man,” she says. “Not for his name. Not for the shadow he cast. But for who he is when no one’s looking. The world likes to tear down things it doesn’t understand. Love. Loyalty. Legacy that isn’t born but made.”
The camera stays on us for two long, weighted seconds. And then fades to black. We step off set into silence. No one in the crew says anything. Olivia checks her phone, then nods once and walks out. Cassian grins faintly and disappears into another room. I exhale slowly. Margot stays with me, her hand still wrapped around mine.
“You did it,” she says quietly.
“So did you.”
The door swings open again, and Olivia reappears, tablet in hand. Her eyes are sharp. Focused. “It’s out. Trending globally. Initial sentiment is split, but we expected that.”
“What’s Eleanor doing?”
“She just sat down. PulseMatch is live.”
We move to the screening room. It’s dark. Quiet. The screen in front of us fills with the stylized PulseMatch logo, then cuts to Eleanor, seated on a velvet chair beside a polished male anchor.
She looks elegant. Regal. Every line of her suit is perfection. Her hands are folded in her lap like she’s waiting to deliver a eulogy, and maybe she is.
“I raised Grayson King to lead,” she says smoothly, “but I didn’t raise him to lie.”
My jaw flexes.
“He knew the truth,” she continues. “He knew he wasn’t a biological heir, and he chose to withhold that information from the board, the investors, the public. I’m not here to destroy him. I’m here to correct the record.”
The anchor leans in. “And his real father?”
She pauses. Then smiles.
“Let’s just say… the truth is always more complicated than the narrative he prefers.”
She doesn’t name him. But it doesn’t matter. She just cracked the door open, and the world will shove it the rest of the way. Margot curses softly beside me. I reach for her hand again. Olivia enters with her phone, her expression pale.
“We have a problem,” she says.
“What kind of problem?”
“There’s a leak.”
She hands me the phone. My eyes skim the screen. A headline is already live on a media blog that shouldn’t have this fast of a turnaround. But there it is: Who is Grayson King’s Real Father? Sources Say He’s Still Alive—and Watching.
My breath leaves me in one controlled exhale. “She didn’t just want to humiliate me,” I say, the words razor-sharp in my throat. “She wants to pull him into it.”
“Do you think he’ll come forward?” Margot asks.
I don’t answer. Because I don’t know. And for the first time in a long time, I feel the edge of something I haven’t let myself feel since I was a teenager. Fear.