Chapter 16 Gianna
Gianna
I stood outside Devlin Holdings for ten minutes before I could make myself go in.
The building was all glass and steel, expensive and imposing in a way that screamed money and power. The kind of place designed to make you feel small before you even stepped inside. People in expensive suits walked past me with purpose, everyone seeming to know exactly where they belonged.
I didn’t belong here. But I was going in anyway.
The lobby was marble and cold. A woman in her thirties looked up from the reception desk as I approached, her smile professional and completely fake.
“Can I help you?”
“I need to see Archer Devlin.”
Her smile didn’t waver, but her eyes shifted, calculating. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Devlin’s schedule is fully booked today. If you’d like to leave your name and contact information, I can have his assistant—.”
“Tell him Gianna Pearson is here.” My voice came out hard with purpose. “Tell him I need to see him now.”
Something in my tone must have registered, because her professional mask slipped slightly. “One moment please.”
She picked up her phone and spoke quietly, her eyes never leaving me like I might bolt or cause a scene. Maybe both. When she hung up, her expression was neutral.
“Mr. Devlin’s office is on the twenty-third floor. The elevators are—”
“I’ll find them.”
I walked away before she could finish, before I could think too hard about what I was doing.
The elevator ride felt endless, each floor ticking by while my heart hammered against my ribs.
The folder of documents felt heavy in my hands, proof of everything he’d done laid out in corporate language that made destruction sound inevitable.
The twenty-third floor was quieter than the lobby, all muted colors and expensive art that probably cost more than my apartment. Another receptionist sat at another desk, but before she could speak, I walked past her toward the only office with closed doors.
“Excuse me, you can’t just—”
I pushed the door open without knocking.
Archer was on the phone, standing by the windows overlooking the city he’d helped reshape through displacement and profit margins. He wore an expensive suit, looking every inch the CEO I’d been too blind to see.
When he saw my face, he hung up mid-sentence.
“Gianna—”
I threw the folder onto his desk. Papers scattered across the expensive wood, documentation of his sins spreading like a stain.
“Is your name Archer Devlin?” My voice came out steady despite the way my hands shook. “Are you the CEO of Devlin Holdings?”
He didn’t answer, just looked at me like he’d been waiting for this moment and dreading it in equal measure.
“Answer me.” The steadiness was gone now, replaced by something raw. “Was Sunset Park your project ten years ago?”
“Yes.” The word came out quiet. “To all of it. Yes.”
The confirmation hit me like a blow even though I’d known, had spent all night staring at the evidence. But hearing him say it made it real in a way the documents hadn’t.
“When did you know?” I asked. “When did you figure out who I was?”
“After we reconnected. I found out and I should have told you immediately, I know that. I was trying to fix things first, trying to—”
“Fix things?” I laughed, and the sound came out wrong, broken. “You were trying to fix things? Before what? Before I found out? Before you had to face what you’d done?”
He moved toward me but I stepped back fast enough that I nearly hit the door.
“Don’t touch me.” My voice came out hard. “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
He stopped immediately, his hand dropping to his side. He looked devastated but I didn’t care, couldn’t let myself care.
“My father died in a stairwell after your company sent that notice.” The words came out thick with resentment. “Heart attack. The stress killed him. Did you know that when you signed those authorizations? Did you even care?”
His face went white. “I didn’t know then. I swear I didn’t know—”
“Is that supposed to make it better?” I was yelling now, past caring that his assistant could probably hear through the door. “That you erased fifty-two families without bothering to learn their names? That my father was just a number on a spreadsheet you approved?”
“No.” His voice broke. “Nothing makes it better. Nothing excuses what I did.”
“Then why?” I grabbed one of the documents off his desk and held it up. “Why didn’t you tell me? During our dates, during the drive to Millbrook, at Mary’s house when we pretended to be married?” My voice cracked on the last word. “In bed when I gave you everything? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked like I’d hit him. “I was afraid of losing you.”
“So you lied instead. You let me fall for you, let me trust you, let me sleep with you while knowing exactly what you’d taken from me.”
“I know.” Tears were forming in his eyes, and I hated that I noticed, hated that part of me still wanted to comfort him.
“I was trying to become someone who deserved you before admitting who I’d been.
I know that was cowardice. I know I was being selfish.
But after that day at Mary’s, I couldn’t keep lying anymore. ”
His eyes closed like the words caused physical pain. “I love you, Gianna. I know I don’t have the right to say that after what I’ve done, but I do. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything.”
“Love?” I laughed again, that same broken sound.
“You call this love? You let me talk about my father’s death, about how Devlin Holdings destroyed my family, about the case I was building against your company.
You looked me in the eye and lied while I told you everything.
That’s not love, Archie. That’s manipulation. ”
“It wasn’t like that—”
“Then what was it like?” I was crying now, hot tears I couldn’t stop. “Explain it to me. Make me understand how the man who held me and told me I was beautiful and made me feel safe is the same man who killed my father.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“But you did!” The words came out as a scream. “You signed those papers. You authorized that project. You made the decision that destroyed my entire life. And then you had the audacity to let me fall in love with you without telling me the truth.”
He reached for me again, desperate. “Please. Let me fix this. I’ll do anything. I’ll resign, I’ll go public with everything, I’ll spend the rest of my life making this right. Just don’t leave. Please don’t leave.”
I stepped back toward the door, needing distance between us. “There’s nothing to fix. We’re done. I never want to see you again.”
“You don’t mean that.” His voice broke completely.
“I do.” The certainty in my voice surprised me.
“I mean it with everything I have left. I slept with the man who killed my father. Do you understand that? Every time I close my eyes now, I see you signing those papers and then I see you touching me and I feel sick. I feel disgusted with myself for being so blind, for wanting you, for loving you.”
His face crumpled and fresh tears spilled down his cheeks. “Gianna, please—”
“I can’t even stand to look at you.” The words came out cold, final. “Everything about you makes me feel dirty. The way you touched me, the things you said, the way I trusted you—all of it was built on lies. And I hate myself for believing them.”
“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true.” I grabbed the door handle.
“You’re the reason my father is dead. You’re the reason my mother spent years unable to leave the house without having panic attacks.
You’re the reason I had to drop out of school and work three jobs just to keep us fed.
And then you had the nerve to seduce me, to make me care about you, to let me think maybe I deserved something good. ”
“You do deserve something good—”
“Not from you!” The words echoed in his office. “ You don’t get to take everything from me and then pretend you can give it back. You don’t get to destroy my life and then play savior.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you did. Twice.” I stepped into the hallway. “Once when you signed those papers ten years ago, and again when you decided your guilt was more important than my right to know the truth. You’re a coward, Archie. And I was an idiot for believing you were anything else.”
“Gianna—”
I walked away. He called my name again but I kept walking, past his assistant who’d clearly heard everything, past the elevators to the stairs because I couldn’t bear being still. I took them two at a time, my breath coming in gasps that had nothing to do with exertion.
Twenty-three flights down, I burst through the lobby doors into afternoon sunlight that felt too bright, too normal for how thoroughly my world had just ended.
I made it half a block before my legs gave out.
I sat on the curb in broad daylight, surrounded by people rushing past to their important lives, and I fell apart. Crying like something inside me had broken beyond repair, like every dream I’d let myself have had shattered at once.
Because they had.
I’d let myself want him. Let myself imagine a future where I didn’t have to be careful all the time, where someone saw me and chose me and made me feel like I mattered. Where Sunday mornings meant waking up in his arms instead of facing another day alone.
And all of it had been built on the foundation of my father’s death.
A woman stopped and asked if I was okay, if I needed help. I told her I was fine, that I just needed a minute. She looked uncertain but moved on, probably late for something important.
I wasn’t fine. I wouldn’t be fine for a very long time.
But I would survive this. I’d survived worse.
I could survive losing Archie.
Even if right now, sitting on a curb in Manhattan with tears streaming down my face, it felt like losing him might actually break me.
Eventually, I pulled myself together. I stood up on shaking legs, wiped my face, and started walking without any clear destination. Just needing to move, to put distance between myself and that building, between myself and the man I thought I knew.
My phone rang. Sam’s name flashed across the screen.
“Where are you?” he asked when I answered. “You were supposed to meet me an hour ago.”
I’d forgotten completely. We were supposed to review practice problems for finals, supposed to be preparing for exams that suddenly seemed impossibly unimportant.
“I can’t.” My voice came out shaky. “Something came up.”
“Gianna, what’s wrong? You sound—”
“I can’t talk about it right now.” I stopped walking, leaning against a building because standing suddenly felt like too much. “I just need to be alone for a while.”
“Did something happen with Terrace Guy?”
The nickname made me want to scream. “His name is Archer Devlin. He’s the CEO of Devlin Holdings. He’s the reason my father died.”
There was silence on the other end. Then: “What?”
“I found out last night. He knew who I was this whole time, and he never told me.”
“Jesus Christ, Gianna.”
“I just left his office. I confronted him, he admitted everything, and I told him we’re done and I never want to see him again.” The words came out like I was reading from a script. “And now I’m standing on a street corner trying to remember how to breathe.”
“Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in Midtown.” I looked around for a street sign. “Near his building. I can’t remember the address.”
“Send me your location. Stay there. I’m coming.”
He hung up before I could protest. I sent my location with trembling fingers, then slid down the building wall to sit on the sidewalk again.
People walked past; some stared, but most didn’t notice, too absorbed in their own lives to care about one more person falling apart in a city full of broken things.
I sat there until Sam arrived twenty minutes later, slightly out of breath from rushing. He took one look at my face and sat down beside me without a word, just put his arm around my shoulders and let me cry again into his shirt.
“I loved him,” I said when I could finally speak. “I really loved him, Sam.”
“I know.”
“He destroyed my family, and I loved him anyway. What does that make me?”
“Human.” Sam’s voice was gentle. “It makes you human, Gi. You didn’t know.”
“But I should have. I should have seen it. The lies, the evasion, the way he never wanted to talk about his work in detail. All the signs were there and I was too stupid to see them.”
“You weren’t stupid. You were falling in love. Those things look similar sometimes.”
I leaned against him and watched the city move around us, indifferent to my pain. Sometimes that’s all you can do when the person you thought you knew turns out to be the monster you’ve been running from your entire life.