Chapter Rovin
Rovin
I don't sleep.
This is not unusual, I sleep poorly under the best of circumstances, my mind running scenarios, calculating outcomes, planning the next day's decisions before the current day has ended.
But tonight, the insomnia is different. It has dark hair and whiskey-coloured eyes and a spine like a column of fire visible through the open back of a black dress.
Claudia Hartley is sleeping fifty feet from my bed, and I am sitting in my kitchen at three in the morning, drinking water and thinking about the word children.
She said it with intent. The way a general says victory, with full understanding of what it requires and absolute willingness to pursue it. She told me she wanted to give my name to children who would inherit something unbreakable, and I felt the words settle into my bones like a prophecy.
I want her.
The intensity of it surprises me. I’ve wanted women before, I’ve taken them to bed with the appropriate mutual understanding, and have watched them leave in the morning without particular attachment.
My relationships have been clean, transactional, and brief.
They have served a purpose, and the purpose has never been permanence.
Claudia is different. Claudia walked into that room and restructured my understanding of what I need, and she did it in under five minutes.
I keep thinking about her hands. The way they managed the silverware at dinner.
The way they folded in her lap during our negotiation.
The way her fingers tightened, just slightly, when I said the word heirs.
She wants what I want. She wants it with the same clarity and the same ferocity, and that symmetry between us is the most intoxicating thing I have ever encountered.
I finish the water. I set the glass in the sink.
Her door is closed. I walk past it on the way to my own room, and I stop. I don't touch the handle. I stand in the hallway and I listen, and I hear nothing, which means she is either asleep or lying still in the dark.
Both images undo me.
In the morning, I am in the kitchen before she wakes. I make coffee and say good morning to the housekeeper. I consider breakfast and decide against it until she comes down.
She appears at seven-thirty wearing one of the outfits from the wardrobe I had prepared, a cream cashmere sweater and dark trousers that fit her well but not perfectly.
Her hair is damp, tucked behind her ears.
Her face is bare and beautiful. A small birthmark that wasn’t visible last night shadows her left eye lid.
"Good morning," she says. Her voice is different. Softer. The careful composure is still there, but it has been loosened by sleep, and I can see the woman underneath the tension of last night.
"Sit," I say, and gesture to the island. “Greta will prepare whatever you want for breakfast.”
She turns to Greta and says, “Just toast please, but I’m happy to make it myself.”
Greta smiles and shakes her head, before shooing Claudia towards the stool I’ve pulls out for her. She sits.
She reaches for the coffee. Black. No cream. The same way I drink mine.
She begins to take a sip, but as soon as the hot liquid touches her lips, her eyes close and her shoulders drop an inch. She swallows, keeping her eyes closed, and exhales slowly.
“It’s too long since I had good coffee,” she states, then opens her eyes and fixes them on mine. "Did you sleep?" she asks.
"Yes."
"You're lying."
I look at her. She flashes her eyebrows and takes another slow sip of coffee, looking at me over the rim of the mug. She sees through me and I find that exhilarating.
"I slept poorly," I amend.
"Why?"
Because you were fifty feet from my bed and I wanted you in it. Because you told me you've been watching me for six years and I can't stop thinking about what that means. Because you said children and something inside me cracked open.
"New situation," I say. "I don't adapt quickly to change."
The corner of her mouth curves as Greta slides a plate of scrambled eggs and toast towards her. She smiles her thanks and plucks up her fork. She eats all of it with the focused attention I noticed last night.
"I have meetings today," I say. "If you need clothes, personal items, anything, tell the concierge and it will be arranged."
"I need my things from my apartment."
"Give me the address. I'll send someone," I offer.
"I'd rather go myself."
I consider this. The impulse to say no is immediate and strong. I don't want her out of this house. I don't want her in a cab crossing the city back to whatever remnant of her old life still exists. I want her here, where I can see her, where I know she is safe and present and mine.
But she isn’t mine yet. Not fully. And controlling her movements will destroy whatever this is before it begins.
"Take one of my drivers," I say. "And one of the security team."
"Is that necessary?"
"My name is attached to you now. There are people who would use that against me."
She absorbs this. I watch her process the information, watch the intelligence work behind her eyes as she calculates risk and accepts it.
"All right," she says. "Your driver. Your security."
I nod. She finishes her coffee and sets the mug down. Her hand brushes mine as she reaches for the fruit plate. The contact lasts less than a second. My hand catches hers before I've made a conscious decision to move, and her fingers still in my grip.
We stay like that. Her hand in mine, across the counter, with the remains of breakfast between us. Her pulse is quick against my thumb. She doesn't pull away.
"Rovin," she says, and hearing my name in her voice is something I will never recover from. "You should go to your meetings."
I release her hand. "Tonight. We'll talk tonight."
"What about?"
"The timeline."
"The timeline is yours," she says. “I’m ready when you are.”
I pick up my jacket from the back of the chair while I consider her words. I have acquired assets worth hundreds of millions. I have negotiated with killers and politicians and intelligence operatives. I have never, in my entire professional life, felt this close to losing control.
She is in my kitchen telling me she is ready to be my wife, and I am already thinking about what she will look like carrying my child.