Linden
The next day I open an email from Felix Shaw, the Dunleavy family lawyer, and find the standard dissolution message.
Like he thinks we need a reminder about the coming exit timeline or something, when I can still feel my hand on her stomach and hear her saying she believes I care about her but doesn't trust the machinery around me.
Subject line: Dissolution Materials, Standard Prep, No Action Required Tonight.
Charming.
"No action required" is lawyer code for the fucking knife is already on the table.
My temperature is probably up. I ignore that because I'm a Dunleavy man and we're bred, polished, and legally advised to ignore basic goddamn human limits until a physician or a wife takes the choice away.
Rain hits the windows in hard sheets. The lamps are low, and my laptop sits on the bed beside me.
On the bedside chair, my Sentinel pages sit beside a glass of water I forgot to drink. The top page is covered in red ink.
No survivor-route prediction without independent safety carveout. False names, broken timelines, duplicate phones, and missed check-ins cannot be weighted as fraud indicators.
And so on and so forth.
I used to defend the old model because I built it and because I hate admitting I built a blade without asking whose throat it would find first. Now my handwriting is all over the pages.
Progress. Pathetic, late, necessary progress.
My phone vibrates. Again. Again.
Amos: Board prep call is still holding at 9:15 unless you release them.
Amos: Greta wants revised numbers before morning.
Amos: Nadine's office is asking whether you have reviewed the stability posture memo.
Amos: Linden, answer one of these.
I type: Proceed with numbers. Hold Nadine. Send Greta the variance table.
The bedroom door opens. Aubrey has permission for this room, and she's learned I'll lie if she asks whether I'm fine.
She steps in wearing her flannel open over a T-shirt. Her wedding band catches the lamp when she closes the door. She's got her expression locked down. I've come to fucking hate that look.
"Why are you in bed with a laptop?" she asks.
"Because I'm fucking versatile."
"Try again."
"I'm reviewing board prep."
"You're sweating through your shirt."
"Advanced review technique."
Aubrey crosses the room carefully on her bad ankle. She reaches the bed, looks at my face, then at the laptop, then at the email on my laptop.
Her mouth tightens when she sees the dissolution header.
Fuck Felix. Fuck timing. Fuck every calendar built by men who never had to watch the woman they love read the motherfucking exit plan.
Aubrey reads the first page. "This came this morning?"
"Felix. Standard prep."
"Standard prep," she repeats. "Of course."
I reach for the laptop. The room tilts. My hand falls short, and my stomach drops hard enough that I have to stop moving.
Aubrey sees it.
"Okay. No." She closes the laptop. "You're done with this shit."
"I'm not done," I counter. "The day is just starting."
"You are extremely done," she replies. She touches my forehead.
"I have a call," I protest.
"You have a fever," she replies.
"The vote is in a few days," I counter.
"Linden Dunleavy. Stop being a stubborn rich dumbass."
That gets through. It shouldn't.
She takes the laptop.
"Put it back," I order her.
"No," she replies.
I should push. The old fucking instinct comes up. Reclaim the room. Set the terms. Tell her I need twenty minutes, which is bullshit because twenty minutes becomes six goddamn hours and then I wake up wearing the same damn clothes with a cardiac monitor on my chest while everyone pretends surprise.
"I'm taking your temperature," she says. "Now lay down."
A laugh tears out of me and turns into a cough. It hurts my ribs like hell.
She places the laptop on the dresser, well out of reach, then sits on the edge of the bed and presses the back of her hand to my forehead. Her palm is still taped from the Channel Seven incident.
"You're hot," she says.
"So are you," I retort.
"Don't flirt with me while you're clammy," she replies.
"I can multitask," I reply.
"You can shut up." She searches through the bedside drawers, finds the thermometer. She slips it under my tongue.
We wait.
The thermometer beeps.
"One-oh-one point nine," she says. "You absolute idiot."
I shrug. "I've worked through worse shit."
My phone vibrates again. Then again. Then again.
Aubrey holds out her hand. "Phone."
"No."
She doesn't move. "Phone, Linden."
I hand it over because fever has made me weak. Yeah, that's why I do it. No other reason.
She reads the stacked messages. I watch her eyes move. She doesn't snoop through anything else. She stays inside the thread with Amos.
I watch Aubrey type.
Aubrey: This is Aubrey. Linden has a fever and is off today. If something is urgent, send it here and label why it can't wait until morning.
Amos replies in under thirty seconds.
Amos: Understood. Is he conscious and refusing help, or conscious and accepting help?
"Asshole," I mutter.
Aubrey's mouth twitches. "He knows you."
She types.
Aubrey: Conscious. Accepting help under protest.
Amos: Good. I'll reroute board prep to tomorrow and hold nonessential traffic. Please advise if you need Chet, Zella, clinic, or security adjustment.
Another message arrives.
Amos: Felix says the dissolution thread can remain untouched. No deadline tonight. He apologizes for the timing.
Aubrey sets the phone face down on the table.
"There," she says. "Your empire survives until breakfast."
She grabs the glass of water that I forgot to drink from the chair. She offers it to me. I hate that my fucking hand shakes when I take it. Then I see the shadows under her eyes.
"Marnie still cold?" I ask.
She doesn't answer fast. That's answer enough.
"She's professional," Aubrey says.
"That's not what I asked."
"No. It's not fixed." She shakes two tablets into her palm. "Lantern House is still.. weird as hell with me. Marnie answers the work questions. She doesn't ask if I ate. She used to ask if I ate."
I want to buy the note again and crush Perry Lattimer, the bastard who used Lantern House's note to get at Aubrey. But that's exactly the kind of shit Aubrey's been begging me not to do.
"I'm sorry," I say.
She looks at me, tired and wary.
"No solutions?" she asks.
"No solutions unless you ask," I agree.
"Damn." She seems astonished. "Well I'll be. The fever made you teachable."
"Temporary condition," I retort.
She gives me the tablets and waits until I swallow them.
Her eyes drop to the Sentinel pages on the chair next to the bed. "These are for your company?"
I nod warily.
She picks up the top page and reads a few lines. Her taped palm rests near my handwriting.
"You changed the false-name section," she says.
"I'm changing the whole goddamn thing," I reply.
"All of it?" Again that astonishment.
"What I can fucking reach before the vote, anyway," he answers. "And the rest I can force after. Once I have more say in the company."
Aubrey keeps reading. I shouldn't be watching her like this when I'm sweating through a fever. But I do anyway.
And I want her.
Shitty timing.
She sets the page down carefully.
"These are for later," she says.
"I'm not that sick," I reply. "I can still review them."
She folds her arms. "Yeah sure. You can review the inside of your eyelids."
"Aubrey..."
But she won't back down. "You can be mad. You can be scared. You can be a pain in my ass. But you're not working through this fever today."
She reaches over and turns off the nearest lamp. The papers stay visible in the dim light.
She goes to the bathroom and returns with a cool cloth which she lays across my forehead. She rests her hand on my shoulder, over my damp shirt.
I close my eyes.
The vote is still coming. Nadine waits. The Board wants its clean bullshit order. Felix's dissolution email remains unsigned. The safe move is to treat this marriage as temporary because temporary is cleaner and easier to govern.
Fuck safe.