Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Emilia “Em” Rivera
The helicopter banked over Lake Michigan, and I pressed my forehead against the cold glass like a kid on her first flight.
Below us, Chicago’s skyline shrank into a collection of glittering toys, the lake stretching out in endless gray-blue until it swallowed the horizon.
The rotor’s thrum filled the cabin, and I felt the vibration through the glass against my forehead and thought about how completely absurd my life had become in the past several weeks.
“You’re smiling.”
Sebastian’s voice cut through the noise, and I turned to find him watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Something soft underneath the usual intensity. Something that looked almost like relief — like he’d been waiting to see me smile and hadn’t been sure he’d get to.
“I’ve never been in a helicopter before.
” The admission felt small given everything we’d been through — corruption scandals, death threats, the specific catastrophe of falling for someone I’d been hired to expose.
But somehow this moment, suspended between earth and sky with nothing but money and physics keeping us aloft, felt like the most surreal of all of it.
“I know.” Of course he did. Sebastian Laurent probably had a file documenting every mode of transportation I’d ever taken. The thought should have irritated me.
Instead I found myself fighting a grin.
“Creepy,” I said.
“Thorough.” His knee brushed mine, even through the fabric of my jeans, and I felt the contact like a current. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there, though?”
His mouth curved. “You’re the investigative journalist. You tell me.”
I turned back to the window as we cleared the city limits, watching suburban sprawl give way to farmland and then forest. The world below simplified into patches of green and brown, dotted with the occasional glint of water.
Sebastian had told me to pack nothing — that everything would be handled.
I’d pushed back on principle and then, because I’d been running on three hours of sleep and the particular exhaustion of a week that had felt like several lifetimes, I’d let him handle it.
That was new. I was still getting used to it.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere quiet.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
Two weeks ago I would have pushed harder.
Would have needed the information as a matter of principle, a small tactical victory in the endless negotiation of our dynamic.
But two weeks ago I hadn’t watched Sebastian Laurent stand in front of a press conference and announce that he might resign from his own company rather than compromise his integrity.
Hadn’t heard him admit that he’d spent twenty years building walls and didn’t know who he was without them.
So I let it go. For now.
The helicopter began its descent over a property that made his Chicago penthouse look restrained.
Dense forest surrounded a sprawling estate — clean architectural lines, floor-to-ceiling windows that caught the afternoon light like mirrors.
A lake glittered at the edge of the property.
A private dock. Gardens that had clearly been tended for decades.
“This is yours?”
“Family property.” His voice had gone flat in the way it always did when his past crept too close to the surface. “My mother used to bring me here before…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.
I reached over and took his hand. His fingers laced through mine immediately, and I felt some of the tension drain from his shoulders — the specific release of someone who’d been braced for a reaction and hadn’t gotten the one they feared.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. And meant it.
The helicopter touched down on a manicured lawn, and Sebastian helped me out with a hand at my elbow.
A security team materialized from the tree line — discreet, professional, numerous enough to remind me that the threats against us were still real even here, even in this place that existed on no official record.
“Expecting trouble?”
“Always.” His hand found the small of my back. “But not here. This place is completely off grid. The advance team swept everything this morning. We’re alone for the next forty-eight hours.”
Forty-eight hours. No phone calls. No threats. No Victor Corsetti lurking in the margins of every decision we made.
Just us.
The realization landed quietly, like something I’d been waiting for without knowing I was waiting.
Sebastian had arranged all of this — the property, the security, the escape from the city — not to control the situation but to give us space to exist outside of it. To find out what we were when nothing was actively trying to destroy us.
Inside, the house opened into a vast living area dominated by a stone fireplace and views of the lake.
Someone had lit the fire before we arrived.
The smell of woodsmoke mixed with something that might have been dinner in the kitchen, and I stood in the entrance taking it in — this space that was somehow both immaculate and warm, nothing like the penthouse.
A garment bag hung on a hook near the entryway. My name written on a card attached to it in Daniel’s precise hand.
“You had someone pack for me,” I said.
“I had someone buy for you.” Sebastian appeared beside me. “Daniel consulted Jenna.”
I opened the bag. Inside: a soft cashmere sweater in deep burgundy, comfortable trousers, a dress for evening, a silk sleep set, and at the bottom, folded carefully, one of Sebastian’s own shirts.
“The last one was my addition,” he said, not quite managing neutral.
I looked at him. He looked back. Something moved between us that didn’t need words.
“Your staff?” I managed.
“Left an hour ago. We’re alone.”
The words had hung between us charged with possibility, and we’d spent the first hour doing something I hadn’t expected: talking.
Not about the investigation or the board or Victor Corsetti.
Just talking — the kind of conversation that happened when two people finally had enough space around them to say the things they’d been saying in fragments.
Now I stood at the window while the afternoon light shifted over the lake, wearing the cashmere sweater and feeling, improbably, like I was somewhere I was supposed to be.
Sebastian moved through the space behind me, shedding his jacket, rolling his sleeves to the elbows, loosening his tie with the deliberate care of a man who’d learned to perform relaxation and was slowly, genuinely, starting to feel it.
“The national outlet called again,” I said. “They want me to anchor a segment on corporate corruption. Weekly feature, full editorial control.”
He was quiet for a moment. No immediate response. No strategic assessment offered without invitation. “And?”
“It would mean traveling. A lot.” I turned to watch his face — looking, as I always did, for the tell. The tightening. The calculation beginning. “New York mostly. Sometimes overseas.”
But Sebastian just nodded, his expression open. “When do they need an answer?”
“Next week.”
“And what do you want?”
The question caught me somewhere vulnerable. Not what was strategic, not what would be best for my career, not what would keep me safe within his reach. What I wanted.
“I don’t know yet.” The honesty felt like removing armor I’d been wearing so long I’d forgotten it was there. “Part of me wants to take it. Prove that everything we’ve been through hasn’t derailed what I’ve worked for. But part of me—”
“Part of you?”
“Isn’t ready to figure out what we are from a thousand miles away.”
He crossed to me then, unhurried, stopping close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. Cedar and leather. That scent I’d cataloged somewhere around our second confrontation and never been able to forget since.
“Can I say something without it sounding like I’m trying to manage the outcome?”
“Try.”
“Take the job.” His voice was low, certain. “Not because I want you to go — I don’t, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But because you’ve been building toward something like this your entire career, and I would never forgive myself if I became the reason you held back from it.”
I looked at him for a long moment. “That’s either very evolved or a very sophisticated form of reverse psychology.”
“Probably both.” The corner of his mouth moved. “I’m a work in progress.”
I rose up on my toes and kissed him.
It was different from the other times. Slower. Less desperate. His mouth moved against mine with a tenderness that made my throat ache, one hand coming up to cradle the back of my head with a gentleness that had nothing to do with restraint and everything to do with care.
When I pulled back, his eyes had gone dark.
“Emilia.”
“Don’t talk.” I slid my hands up his chest, feeling the warmth of him through the white linen. “Not yet.”
He caught my wrists. “Are you sure?”
“Sebastian.” I held his gaze. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
Something broke open in his expression — the last of the careful management dissolving into something I’d been watching build since a service corridor in November.
He kissed me again, and this time there was heat behind the tenderness, his hands finding my waist and pulling me against him until I could feel the hard press of him against my stomach.
“The fireplace,” he said against my mouth. “I want to see you properly.”
He undressed me slowly, which was its own kind of torment.
Each layer removed with the focused attention he brought to everything that mattered to him — my sweater lifted carefully over my head, his lips finding the curve of my shoulder the moment it was bare.
The clasp of my bra undone with one hand while the other stayed warm against my ribs, steadying me.
My jeans worked down my hips with a deliberation that made me grip his shoulders for balance.