Chapter 25 Bree
Bree
I’ve been wearing the same oversized NYU hoodie for forty-seven hours.
This is what rock bottom looks like, apparently. Not glamorous weeping into a pillow or dramatically staring out rain-streaked windows. Just me, unwashed, surrounded by empty Ben & Jerry containers and scrolling through news alerts about myself like some kind of masochistic gremlin.
Sources say the CEO’s relationship with his subordinate raises questions about professional boundaries.
Pattern of manipulation.
I refresh the page again.
Stop refreshing.
You’re not going to find anything new.
But I do it anyway, because apparently I hate myself.
My phone buzzes. Again.
I’ve had it on silent since Monday, but every time it vibrates against my coffee table, I flinch like it’s a live grenade.
Could be work.
Could be reporters.
Could be Nico.
I haven’t looked.
Coward.
Yeah, well. Add it to the list.
The knock on my door a few minutes later makes me jump hard enough to spill warm ice cream on my laptop keyboard.
“Bree, I know you’re in there. Open up or I’m using the emergency key!”
Sora.
I drag myself off the couch and unlock the door. My best friend takes one look at me and winces. “Oh, honey. You look bad. Like, really bad.”
I force a smile. “Thanks. Really needed that.”
She shoves past me with a paper bag that smells like Thai food and a bottle of wine that looks expensive.
“Sit. Eat. Talk.” She points at my couch like she’s commanding a particularly stubborn golden retriever. “In that order.”
I sit.
She unpacks containers onto my tiny coffee table. Pad thai, spring rolls, some kind of curry that makes my stomach growl despite the fact I’ve been shoveling ice cream into my mouth all day.
“So.” Sora pours wine into two mismatched glasses. One says WORLD’S OKAYEST EMPLOYEE. The other has a faded picture of a cat wearing sunglasses. “The billionaire.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I reply.
“Too bad.” She hands me the cat glass. “You’re going to.”
I take a long drink. The wine is really good.
Figures.
“He tried to blackmail his brother,” I begin. “Years ago. To control who his brother loved. He wanted his brother’s wife for himself, well she wasn’t his wife at the time, but he tried to pressure his brother into giving her up. Like, what kind of twisted sicko does that to their own brother?”
“I read the article,” Sora states, unimpressed.
“Then you know.” My voice cracks and I hate it. “He never told me. He let me fall for him while hiding the worst thing he’s ever done. He let me trust him. A man like that, who could do something so cruel to his own brother... how do I know he wasn’t manipulating me the whole time?”
Sora chews a spring roll thoughtfully. “Did he blackmail you?”
I press my lips together, confused. “What? No.”
“Did he manipulate you into sleeping with him?” she presses.
“No, but that’s not the point.”
“It kind of is the point, though.” She sets down her chopsticks. “Look, I’m not saying what he did wasn’t shitty. It was. Epically shitty. But that was a decade ago. He reconciled with his brother. According to the article, Dom forgave him. Even funded his company.”
“He stalked me on a date,” I point out.
“Also shitty,” she agrees. “Weirdly hot, but shitty.”
“Sora...”
“I’m just saying.” She shrugs. “The man is clearly unhinged about you. That’s not nothing.”
I stare into my wine glass like it might have answers.
It just has wine.
“What’s to stop him from emotionally blackmailing me someday?” I press. “The pattern is there. You’re the one who always says people don’t change.”
“I say that about men who forget to text back. Not men who spent ten years in therapy and built an entire company around helping people.” She reaches over and squeezes my knee.
“He fucked up. Badly. But did he fuck up with you? Has he manipulated you? Threatened you? Used his power over you in any way you didn’t enthusiastically consent to? ”
The silence stretches.
Has he?
He’s been an asshole. Cold. Dismissive. But manipulative? Coercive?
No.
If anything, I’ve been the one with power in our private moments. He looks at me like I could destroy him with a word. Like I’m the one holding all the cards, even when I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water.
“Plus he’s filthy rich,” Sora adds cheerfully. “Worst case scenario, he screws up, you sue, buy an island. Live your best life.”
“I’m not interested in suing or settlements.”
Sora blinks. “Then what are you interested in?”
Him.
His stupid face.
The way he looks at me like I’m the only real thing in his life.
The way his voice drops when he says my name.
The scars I want to trace with my fingers until he stops flinching.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
Sora sees right through me. She always does.
“He’s a catch, Bree,” she says. “A fucked up, emotionally constipated, scarred in every possible way catch. Just like you. Don’t let him go so easily.”
Just like me.
Sora stays until midnight, then heads home with instructions for me to shower, sleep, and stop doom-scrolling.
I manage two out of three.
Thursday morning, I shower for the first time in three days, put on actual clothes, and take the subway to Hudson Yards.
Three days later, the office is still a disaster zone of barely suppressed panic. At least there are no reporters.
I take the elevator to the 28th floor. Piper’s smirk could power a small city. People scatter when I walk down the hall. Cressida catches my eye with something like sympathy before looking away.
Yeah.
Welcome back.
Nico is visible through his glass office walls. He looks like hell. Unshaven, sleeves rolled up, tie abandoned somewhere. The scars on his face stand out sharper than usual, stark against skin that’s gone pale from what I’m guessing is zero sleep.
He’s on the phone, pacing, one hand pressed to the back of his neck. The muscles in his forearms flex as he gestures at nothing.
Not the time to notice his forearms.
I walk to his office door and knock once before opening it.
He sees me and freezes mid-sentence. Something raw flickers across his face before he shuts it down.
“I’ll call you back.” He hangs up without waiting for a response.
We stare at each other.
“We need to talk,” I say, closing the door behind me.
He nods. Hits the panel that turns his smart glass opaque. The rest of the floor disappears behind frosted white, and suddenly it’s just us.
He swallows. “None of this matters. The governance reviews. The donors. Not until you tell me we’re okay.”
“I don’t know if we’re okay,” I reply.
He flinches like I’ve hit him. “Then tell me what to do.” His voice is desperate in a way I’ve never heard from him. “Tell me how to fix this.”
“You can start by explaining. Not the PR version. Not the summary. Everything.” I take a seat and wait.
He sits across from me, and his eyes gaze off into the distance.
The silence stretches. I watch him gather himself. It’s almost like he’s trying to decide whether to actually go through with this.
Then he apparently he makes up his mind.
“I told you I was fifteen when it happened.” His voice is quiet.
“Home alone. Well. Not alone. Dom was there, but—” He breaks off.
Rubs the scar at his jaw. “They came through the living room window. Two of them. I heard the glass break and I just... froze. Then I ran toward the sound because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Confront the threat.”
I don’t say anything. Don’t move.
“Dom was in his bedroom. He heard it, too. He could have—” Nico’s jaw works. “I don’t blame him for hiding. I did, for years, but I don’t anymore. He was scared. We were both kids, basically.”
“But you didn’t hide,” I say softly.
“No.” His laugh is bitter. “I faced them. Thought I could... I don’t know. Talk them down. Reason with them. Maybe fight them off.” He touches his face again, his fingers tracing the path of the scarring. “The broken bottle was a Corona. I remember that detail for some reason.”
My stomach turns. I force myself to stay still, to let him finish.
“He dragged it down my face. Like this.” His finger follows the twisted line from cheekbone to jaw. “Then this.” The claw marks near his temple. “I was screaming. Dom was still hiding. He hid the whole time. They only left when the neighbors’ lights came on.”
“Nico—”
“After that, I was... angry.” He looks at me now, and his eyes are haunted. “For years. At Dom. At the world. At myself for not being stronger, faster, smarter. The anger had nowhere to go, so it just sat there. Festering.”
He stands, starts pacing. “When Dom met Tatiana, I told myself I was in love with her, too.” He won’t look at me now.
“I wasn’t. I just wanted to take her from him.
I wanted him to see what it felt like to be abandoned, betrayed, helpless.
So I...” He stops. Forces the words out.
“I tried to blackmail him. Told him he owed me, for what he did. For hiding while home invaders ruined my face. For not defending me, like a brother should. I guilt tripped the shit out of him, basically. Tried to extort money from him, to boot. Wasn’t pretty. ”
He falls silent.
“What happened?” I finally ask.
“Dom arranged a meeting. Him, me, Tatiana. Thought we could all... talk it out or something.” Nico’s laugh is hollow. “It was a disaster. Tatiana was insulted. Rightfully so. She left him. Walked out because she couldn’t believe he’d even entertained my manipulation for a second.”
I wince. “God.”
“Yeah. And I felt...” He pauses, searching for the word. “Triumphant. For about five minutes. Then there was another home invasion. At Dom’s penthouse this time.”
My breath catches. “Another—”
“Dom fought back. Got shot. Just grazed his side, but still. He fought because he thought Tatiana was still there in the guest suite, that she needed protection. She wasn’t.
She’d already left because of what I’d done.
” The self-loathing in his voice is visceral.
“He risked his life for her even after she’d walked out.
That’s when he finally came to his senses about letting me manipulate him. ”
“What did he do?”
“Confronted me the next day. We got into an actual physical fight. Nothing serious, just...” He gestures vaguely.
“A scrap. Cleared the air with our fists like idiots. Then he told me he was done. That he loved her and I could either accept it or fuck off, but he wasn’t going to let me manipulate him anymore.
” Nico’s shoulders sag. “By then I’d realized what I’d become.
This bitter, vengeful asshole who used his trauma as an excuse to hurt the people closest to him. ”
“And then?”
“Then I got help. Real help. Therapy, not just the mandated sessions after the attack. It took years. As for Dom and I, eventually...” He sits back down, looking exhausted.
“Eventually I apologized. Really apologized, not the fake corporate kind. Told him I’d been wrong.
That he didn’t owe me anything, that his moment of fear during that first invasion didn’t justify what I tried to do to him. ”
“He forgave you.”
“Yeah.” Nico’s voice cracks slightly. “He did. Gave me the money to start the company. Told me he believed I could be better. That I could build something good. I’ve been trying, every day since then, to be the person Dom saw in me instead of the person I was.”
He pauses. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. For any of it. But I need you to know...” He meets my eyes, and God, the vulnerability there nearly undoes me. “I care about you, Bree. In a way I’ve never cared about anyone.”
My heart clenches.
Say something.
Say anything.
“I care about you, too,” I reply.
The relief that floods his face is almost painful to witness.
“But I don’t know if it’s enough,” I continue. “You hid this from me, and let me find out from a gossip article. And now my reputation is destroyed.”
“I’ll fix it.” He steps closer. “There’s a board meeting on Friday. I’ll fix all of it.”
“How?”
“Do you trust me?” His hand reaches for mine, stops halfway.
I hesitate. Finally: “Yes.”
He nods slowly. “Then give me until Friday.”
I look at him. This scarred, broken, brilliant disaster who looks at me like I’m his world.
Don’t let him go so easily, Sora’s voice reminds me.
“Until Friday,” I agree.
It’s not forgiveness.
It’s not even a promise.
But when his fingers close around mine, it feels like something close to hope.