Chapter Twenty-Seven
EVERETT
I’m at the tower for the first full day since France, buried under the kind of backlog that happens when a man who hasn’t taken a vacation in five years suddenly decides to spend two weeks in the south of France pretending he’s the type of person who relaxes.
I don’t relax. I never have. Aria doesn’t need to know that the entire time I was watching her paint on that balcony, I was also answering emails under the table.
My desk looks like a crime scene. Contracts waiting for signatures. Two acquisition briefs thick enough to use as doorstops. A stack of Hawkeyes projections I should’ve reviewed an hour ago. Three emails flagged urgent by people who clearly don’t know what the word means.
I’m halfway through a quarterly review when my phone buzzes.
I glance at the screen.
Genevieve Holiday.
Fuck.
My father’s sister. Not technically one of the trustees—worse. Conrad appointed her as the board’s overseer. The neutral party. The one who’s supposed to make sure the trustees follow the letter of the trust and don’t use it as a weapon.
Conrad called her neutral.
That was generous.
I answer on the second ring.
"Genevieve."
"Everett." No warmth. No small talk. Genevieve doesn’t do preamble. "The board has requested a meeting tomorrow morning. Ten a.m. At the tower."
I sit back in my chair.
"Regarding what."
"The marriage clause."
I stop breathing for about two full seconds.
"What specifically about the marriage clause?"
A pause. Not a long one. Just long enough to tell me she’s picking her words.
"They didn’t share details with me," she says. "Only that it was urgent."
Right. And I’m a man who takes vacations.
"Understood," I say.
"I’ll see you tomorrow."
The line goes dead.
I set the phone on the desk. Pick it back up. Set it down again.
Then I call Christian.
He answers on the first ring because Christian always answers on the first ring when it’s me. Fourteen years of cleaning up Kauffman disasters has given him a sixth sense for the sound of incoming bullshit.
"What happened?"
"Genevieve. Board meeting tomorrow. Ten o’clock. Marriage clause."
Silence.
"That’s not good."
"No."
"Did she say what they have?"
"She said she didn’t know."
Christian lets out a breath. "Of course she did." A pause. "All right. I’m coming to the tower. Call Everly. Don’t go home yet. And cancel the rest of your day."
"Already on it."
He hangs up.
I sit there.
The quarterly review is still open on my screen. The numbers haven’t changed. The Hawkeyes projections are still waiting. Everything looks exactly the way it did three minutes ago.
This is fine. It’s a meeting. People have meetings.
Except my hands are cold.
I notice it the way I always notice it—too late. The temperature drops in my fingers first. Then the base of my palms. Then the fine shake starts, barely visible, the kind nobody would catch unless they were looking.
Nobody’s looking.
I flatten both hands on the desk. Press hard enough to feel the wood grain under my palms.
Four in. Seven hold. Eight out.
Again.
My fingers settle. Mostly.
I buzz the assistant line. Sharon picks up, not Jeremy.
"Clear the rest of my schedule."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
"Yes, sir."
The line clicks off.
I check Jeremy’s thread on my phone out of habit.
A few texts from the last couple days—status updates, a question about sponsorship approvals, something about a contract packet that needed my signature.
Nothing off. Just the kind of messages that stack up when your assistant is handling things while you’ve been working from home because your wife has made the estate feel more like where you belong than the tower ever did.
My phone buzzes.
Everly.
On my way. Don’t do anything reckless before I get there.
Too late for that. I already got married.
She beats Christian by nine minutes.
Of course she does.
Everly walks in wearing a cream blazer and heels sharp enough to qualify as a threat, phone already in her hand.
She isn’t moving.
Everly is always moving—texting, rearranging, talking with her hands. When Everly goes still, someone’s about to have a very bad day.
"Tell me everything."
I do.
Her face doesn’t move while I talk. Not a flinch. Not a blink.
"Okay," she says when I’m done. "We plan for the worst and make them choke on it."
"That’s your legal strategy? Make them choke?"
"I’m not the lawyer. I’m the one who makes sure the optics are so clean the legal strategy is irrelevant." She drops into the chair across from me. "Where the hell is Christian?"
"Probably parking. He drives like a man who’s never been late for anything in his life."
"He drives like a man who lets people merge."
"Same thing."
Christian walks in before she can escalate, tie loosened, briefcase in one hand, already looking like a man who canceled three meetings and would like to bill someone for the inconvenience. He drops into the other chair, opens his laptop, and says, "Start at the beginning."
I repeat everything Genevieve said. Word for word. Christian listens without interrupting, which is how I know he’s taking it seriously. His jaw tightens once, at marriage clause, and then settles.
"Do you want Jeremy looped in?" he asks.
"No. He’s been swamped keeping things running while I’ve been out. No point dragging him into this unless I have to."
Everly glances up from her phone. "Has he heard anything?"
"Not beyond the usual. A few texts. Nothing that flagged."
Christian nods once. "Leave it that way for tonight."
Then Everly takes over.
That’s what she does. You give Everly a crisis and she doesn’t panic—she produces. Within thirty seconds she’s texting three people at once and dictating strategy like she rehearsed it in the car.
"PR pulls every piece of honeymoon media we have," she says, thumbs moving. "Every candid, every pap shot, every frame of you two looking like you can’t keep your hands off each other."
Christian doesn’t look up from his screen. "And do what with it?"
"Place it. Everywhere. Local outlets. National if I can get it. Social. If the board wants to question whether this marriage is real, they can do it while Seattle is drowning in photos that say otherwise."
She’s in full war mode. I’ve seen this before—with Dad’s estate, with Colston’s thing last year, with the Zayne situation that almost went public. Clipped sentences. Narrowed focus. No wasted movement.
"The Pacific Northwest Monthly feature," she says. "I’m moving it up."
Christian glances at her. "Can you?"
"I can if the editor values access to this family more than she values her weekend." Everly looks at me. "By Monday morning, every screen in Seattle will show you two looking offensively in love."
A week ago that sentence would’ve been strategy.
Now it’s just true.
Something about that makes it harder to breathe than anything Genevieve said on the phone.
Christian closes one file and opens another.
"There’s something else."
Everly’s hands stop moving.
I look at him.
"If they believe the marriage was entered into fraudulently, they may request a broader verification review."
"Meaning."
His face goes flat. Lawyer-flat. The expression he uses in depositions. "Proof of a genuine marital relationship."
Everly is the one who says it.
"You mean consummation."
Christian doesn’t answer.
Which is answer enough.
The room goes quiet for about three seconds.
Then I lean back in my chair and look at the ceiling because my dead father managed to write a trust document that requires his children to prove they’re having sex, and the fact that I’m surprised by this says more about my optimism than his character.
"Don’t worry about that part," I say.
They both look at me.
"We’d pass."
The silence after that is different.
Christian’s jaw unclenches. That’s all he gives me. Everly’s mouth twitches once—not a smile, but close.
"Good," she says.
Then she goes back to her phone.
The strategy session stretches into the evening.
Media plans. Legal language. Talking points.
Containment scenarios for outcomes I don’t want to think about but Christian makes me think about anyway because that’s his job.
He walks through trust provisions line by line while Everly builds a PR offense out of honeymoon photos and carefully placed exclusives.
Somewhere around seven thirty, Sharon brings coffee nobody asked for and a tray of sandwiches she leaves on the credenza. Nobody touches them.
At one point Christian rubs his jaw and says, "Best case, this is procedural. They’re testing the integrity of the clause and we pass. Worst case, they think they have enough to force terms."
"What terms?" Everly asks.
He looks at me when he answers.
"Whatever they think Everett will agree to if it keeps his wife out of the fallout."
That lands exactly where he aimed it.
Because that’s the part. That’s the only part that matters now.
Not the inheritance. Not the tower. Not the damn money.
Aria.
If they find the contract. The payment structure. The arrangement that started this.
They don’t just make me look compromised. They make her look bought. And if that happens, the money tied to the deal—the money paying for Brookhaven, the money standing between her father and a facility that would break her heart—all of it goes with it.
I built that man an apartment in my house.
And now I might have to prove I deserve to keep the house around it.
It’s past nine when they finally leave.
Everly presses a kiss to my cheek at the door, which she hasn’t done since I was maybe twelve, and says, "Don’t spiral. It ruins your skin."
Christian catches my eye over her shoulder. Holds it for a second.
"That was almost support," I tell him.
"Don’t get used to it."
The door closes.
The office goes quiet.
City lights wash the windows blue and white. The lamp on my desk throws a circle over paperwork nobody’s touching. An elevator dings somewhere down the hall. Then nothing.
I loosen my tie. Run both hands through my hair.
And then it hits.
Not the warning this time. Not the cold hands and the fine shake and the manageable version I’ve been white-knuckling through for the last six hours.
The real thing.
My heart rate goes from resting to pounding so fast I feel it in my teeth. My chest locks. The air that was fine a second ago won’t go down—it catches halfway and stays there, and I can’t get it through. I try. It won’t move.
I can’t breathe.
That’s it. That’s the only thought. The strategy is gone.
The plan is gone. Christian’s legal briefs, Everly’s media wall—gone.
My hands are gripping the edge of the desk hard enough to turn my knuckles white and the room is shrinking and my body has decided, without consulting my brain, that something is very wrong.
I slide out of the chair and down to the floor. Back against the desk.
Knees up. Palms flat on the carpet.
Ground.
Carpet. Desk. Cold air on my neck. Watch on my wrist.
The lamp.
The window.
The door.
Traffic.
The hum of the building doing what buildings do at nine o’clock at night when everybody with a normal life has gone home.
Breathe.
Four in. I get to two and a half.
Again. Three.
Again. Almost four.
The room stops moving.
My pulse drops out of my throat. Not settled. Just... less.
I don’t know how long I sit there. A few minutes. Maybe ten. Long enough for the worst of it to pass and leave me feeling hollowed out. Empty. Like something inside my chest got clenched too hard and doesn’t know how to release.
I tip my head back against the desk and close my eyes.
My phone buzzes.
I reach for it without looking.
Aria.
Are you coming home for dinner? Matteo finished prep but I wanted to wait to eat with you.
She waited.
Of course she waited.
She’s at the estate right now. Probably barefoot in the kitchen.
Probably has paint on her wrists because she never notices until later, and I’ve started checking for it every time she walks into a room because I like knowing she’s been in the studio.
Dinner’s warm because she assumed we’d eat together.
I should go home.
I should drive back to the estate, walk through the door, sit down across from my wife and tell her that Genevieve called and the board is coming and everything might be about to fall apart.
That’s what I should do.
I try not to think about the look on her face if I did.
I type:
Something came up for work. I’m staying in town tonight.
Her response is almost immediate.
Want me to drive in and stay with you?
My chest clenches.
There’s something about that text that damn near breaks me. I can see her—already reaching for her keys, already making room in the problem before she even knows what it is. Because that’s who Aria is. She doesn’t wait for the details. She just shows up.
I type back:
No. I’m going to sleep in my office until I get this dealt with. Stay at the house. Paint.
A long pause. Long enough that I almost type something else—something real—before her reply comes through.
Okay. Don’t work too hard. I’ll leave dinner in the fridge for you.
Then:
Miss you already.
I stare at the screen until it dims.
Then I turn the phone face down on the carpet beside me and sit there in the dark, on the floor of my office, while my wife sends me a heart and I don’t send one back.
Stay at the house. Paint.
I just told her to go use the studio. The damn studio. The thing I built because it was easier than saying what she had become to me out loud.
And now I’m using it to keep her away from me.
I know what I’m doing. I hate that I know. My father did this for thirty years—shut the doors, handled it alone, kept everyone at arm’s length and called it strength. I watched him do it. I swore I wouldn’t.
Lie.
Because if the board cracks this open—if they find the contract, the payments, the arrangement—Aria doesn’t just lose me.
She loses Brookhaven.
Her father loses everything.
I can’t let that happen.
So I sit on the floor in the dark and tell myself this is protection.
And I don’t text her back.