Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Sebastian “Bash” Laurent
I watched it happen from the windows of my office, coffee untouched on my desk, phone buzzing with notifications I wasn’t reading.
Daniel had fielded thirty-two calls before eight o’clock.
My legal team was assembling in the conference room down the hall.
The board wanted an emergency session by noon.
None of it mattered as much as the byline.
Emilia Rivera. And the truth she had chosen to print — all of it, exactly as it was, without softening the edges or protecting the man at the center of it.
She’d done exactly what she’d promised. Exposed Richard Hartley’s corruption, traced the money to Victor Corsetti’s offshore accounts, laid bare the rot festering inside my own company with the surgical precision of someone who had spent weeks understanding exactly where to cut.
She’d done it without me.
That shouldn’t have landed the way it did. We’d agreed to work together, but somewhere between last night’s strategy session and this morning’s headlines, she’d made her choice. Her story. Her terms. Her byline.
I should have been furious. Instead, standing at my window watching Chicago come fully awake beneath me, I found myself smiling at my own reflection in the glass.
She’d beaten me to the punch.
Damned if I didn’t admire her for it.
My phone buzzed. This time I looked.
Emilia: On my way. We should talk.
Three words that could mean anything. My gut tightened with something that had stopped pretending it was anything other than anticipation.
“Mr. Laurent.” Daniel appeared in the doorway, tablet in hand. “The Tribune is requesting a statement. So is the Journal, Bloomberg, and approximately seventeen other outlets.”
“Tell them we’re cooperating fully with any investigation and that Laurent Enterprises is committed to transparency.”
Daniel’s eyebrow lifted a fraction. “That’s surprisingly diplomatic.”
“I’m feeling diplomatic.”
“You’re never diplomatic.” A pause. “Is this about Ms. Rivera’s article?”
“Everything is about Ms. Rivera.” I turned from the window. “Clear my morning. When she arrives, send her straight up.”
“The board—”
“Can wait.”
He disappeared, and I was left alone with the weight of what was coming. The article had named Richard as the primary architect of the corruption scheme. Connected him to Victor. Detailed the kickbacks, the substandard materials, the bribed inspectors.
What it hadn’t done was destroy me.
She could have. The evidence she’d gathered over the past weeks gave her everything she needed to bury Laurent Enterprises entirely.
Instead she’d been precise. Careful. She’d cut out the cancer while leaving the body intact — not because I deserved the mercy, but because the truth as she’d found it didn’t require my destruction to be complete.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
The elevator chimed twenty minutes later.
She strode into my office like she owned it — her hair still damp from a shower, wearing jeans and a sweater that made her look younger than her years, none of the professional armor she usually carried.
No blazer. No notebook held like a shield.
Just Emilia, walking toward me with her chin up and her eyes steady and the particular expression of a woman who had done something difficult and was prepared to stand behind it.
“You did it,” I said.
She stopped three feet from my desk. “I did.”
“Without telling me.”
“Without asking permission.” Her chin lifted. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes.” She crossed her arms. “You would have tried to control the narrative. Managed the fallout. Made it about protecting your empire instead of exposing the truth.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t I?” She met my gaze without flinching. “Sebastian, you’ve spent thirty years building walls. Control is your default setting. I couldn’t risk you compromising the story to save your reputation.”
The words landed like a physical blow — not because they were cruel, but because they were accurate. I had been planning exactly that. Running strategies in my head, calculating which revelations could be softened, which details could be managed before publication.
She’d seen right through me. Again.
“You’re right,” I said. The words tasted foreign, and I let them. “I would have tried to manage it.”
Something shifted in her expression. Surprise, maybe. Or the specific relief of someone who’d braced for a fight and found understanding instead.
“But you didn’t destroy me,” I continued. “You had everything you needed to burn Laurent Enterprises to the ground, and you didn’t.”
“That wasn’t the story.”
“Wasn’t it?” I moved around the desk, closing the distance between us. “A corrupt billionaire using his power to cover up negligence. Headlines write themselves.”
“The corrupt billionaire was Richard Hartley. And Victor Corsetti.” She held her ground as I approached. “You were the one trying to stop them. Quietly. Inefficiently. But trying.”
“How do you know I wasn’t just protecting my own interests?”
“Because I’ve been inside your head for weeks now.
I’ve seen your files. I’ve watched you obsess over finding the truth.
” Her voice softened. “I’ve seen the man behind the reputation, Sebastian.
The one who keeps voicemails from his mother.
Who does things he’d never admit to and thinks no one notices. ”
“You’ve been thorough.”
“I’m an investigative journalist. Thorough is my job.”
“And what did your investigation conclude?”
She was quiet for a moment — the specific quiet of someone choosing words carefully because the words matter.
“That you’re a complicated man who made difficult choices.
That you’ve done things you’re not proud of to build something you believed in.
That underneath all that control is someone terrified of being powerless again. ”
I couldn’t breathe.
No one had ever seen me so clearly. No one had ever bothered to look past the suits and the wealth and the carefully constructed persona to find out whether there was anything underneath worth seeing.
“The article will cost me millions,” I said, because I didn’t know how to respond to the rest without it costing me something I wasn’t sure I could afford to lose. “Stock prices are already dropping. Investors are panicking.”
“Does that matter?”
“It should.”
“But does it?”
I reached out and tucked a strand of still-damp hair behind her ear. Her breath caught at the contact — the same small catch I’d memorized on a balcony in November, in a car on Lake Shore Drive, in a kitchen in the gray morning light. “You know what matters to me.”
“Sebastian—”
“You did it.” My voice came out rougher than intended. “You took down the people trying to destroy us both. On your terms, with your integrity intact. And I’m not angry.”
“You should be. I went behind your back.”
“You protected your work. You couldn’t publish a story about corruption while letting the subject of that story shape the narrative. I understand that.” I held her gaze. “I’m trying to.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Do you? Really?”
“More than I expected to.” I let my hand fall to her shoulder, feeling the tension still coiled in her muscles. “This is new for me, Emilia. Trusting someone else’s judgment. Letting go of control.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to be good at it.”
“I know that too.”
The corner of her mouth curved upward, and something cracked open in my chest with a warmth I’d stopped trying to categorize.
“The press is going to be brutal today,” she said. “Your board is probably in open revolt. Victor will retaliate once he realizes how exposed he is.”
“I know.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Face it.” I pulled her slightly closer, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off her. “All of it. The board, the press, whatever Victor throws at us.” A breath. “Together, if you’ll let me.”
Her hands found my chest — not pushing away, not pulling closer. Holding the moment in suspension.
“I’m still a journalist, Sebastian. My job is to pursue the truth even when it’s inconvenient.”
“I’m not asking you to stop. I’m asking you to let me stand beside you while you do it.”
“Even if the truth turns against you?”
“Even then.”
She studied me for a long moment. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because she finally let out a breath and the last of the tension left her body.
“You mean that.”
“I mean everything I say to you.”
Her fingers curled into my shirt. “This is insane. Three weeks ago you were my investigation target and I was threatening to expose your company.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know what we are.” But she was smiling as she said it — the real smile, the one that reached her eyes. “Partners, I suppose. Whatever this is.”
“I can work with that.”
She laughed — bright and unexpected, the laugh that meant something had genuinely surprised her. “You’re insufferable.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The press conference started at noon.
I’d spent the morning preparing for it the way I prepared for everything that mattered — methodically, without leaving room for doubt to find purchase. The statement was written. Legal had reviewed it. Daniel had positioned himself at the back of the room to field whatever came after.
What I hadn’t prepared for was how it would feel to stand at that podium.
The room was packed — cameras, reporters, the particular electric anticipation of people who had come expecting either a cover-up or a collapse and weren’t sure which they’d get. I stepped to the microphones and the sound settled into silence the way silence always did when I entered a room.
For a moment, I thought about Emilia in my office. The careful way she’d said complicated man who made difficult choices. The way she’d looked at me like the complications didn’t disqualify the man.
I drew a slow breath and began.
“Good afternoon. I’ll be brief, and then I’ll take your questions.”