Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Emilia “Em” Rivera
The newsroom hummed with its familiar chaos — keyboards clacking, phones ringing, the low murmur of a dozen conversations layered over each other like white noise.
I stood in the center of it all, coffee growing cold in my hand, watching the organized pandemonium that had become my professional home.
Three weeks since the gala. Three weeks since I’d walked away from Sebastian Laurent and everything we’d been building together. Three weeks of silence from him, which meant three weeks of me pretending I didn’t check my phone every goddamn hour.
I wasn’t doing a very good job of the pretending.
“Rivera!” Marcus Chen waved from across the room, his grin splitting his face. “Nielsen wants the follow-up on the Corsetti arraignment by five. Can you make it happen?”
“Already sent it to her inbox.” I lifted my coffee in a mock toast. “Some of us don’t need deadlines to function, Chen.”
He laughed, shaking his head as he disappeared back into his cubicle.
The easy camaraderie felt good — earned, even.
After everything that had happened, the Tribune staff had rallied around me.
Not because of Sebastian’s influence or despite it, but because my work had spoken for itself, which was the only thing I’d ever wanted.
My syndication deal had gone through last week. Twelve major publications across the country would now carry my investigative pieces. The contract sat in my desk drawer, signed and official, representing everything I’d worked toward since journalism school.
So why did triumph taste so much like ash?
Jenna’s text buzzed through:
You’ve got that look again. The one where you’re winning but still managing to be miserable about it.
I glanced across the room to where she sat at her desk, watching me with raised eyebrows.
I typed back: I don’t have a look.
You absolutely have a look. Coffee break in five?
Before I could respond, the energy in the newsroom shifted. Conversations stuttered. Heads turned toward the entrance with the specific collective movement of a room that had recognized someone who didn’t belong in it.
I didn’t need to look up.
But I looked anyway.
Sebastian stood just inside the doorway, and the sight of him hit me somewhere I hadn’t finished protecting yet.
He wore a charcoal suit, no tie, the top button of his white shirt undone.
His dark hair was slightly disheveled, and there were shadows under his eyes that three weeks had carved rather than sleep.
He looked like a man who had been sitting with something heavy and hadn’t found anywhere to put it down.
He looked like hell.
He looked like Sebastian.
Our eyes met across thirty feet of cubicles and fluorescent lighting, and for one breathless moment, the entire newsroom ceased to exist. My heart slammed against my ribs with the force of something that had been waiting.
Then reality reasserted itself, and I remembered exactly why I’d walked away from him.
I turned back to my desk, forcing my hands to steady as I set down my coffee. His footsteps approached — measured, deliberate, giving me time to tell him to leave if I wanted to.
I didn’t tell him to leave.
That probably said something about my self-preservation instincts that I wasn’t ready to examine.
“Em.” His voice was lower than usual, rougher at the edges. “Can we talk?”
I kept my back to him for another beat, gathering the scattered pieces of my composure into something that could pass for professional. When I finally turned, I made sure my expression revealed nothing.
“This is my workplace, Sebastian. I’m not sure what kind of conversation you think we’re going to have here.”
“A private one. Please.”
The please caught me off guard. Sebastian Laurent didn’t say please — he commanded, persuaded, occasionally demanded. He didn’t ask.
Something in my chest cracked, just slightly.
“Conference room B is empty.” I grabbed my coffee and walked past him without waiting. Of course he followed. I could feel the weight of his attention between my shoulder blades like a physical touch.
The conference room was small and utilitarian — cheap table, plastic chairs, the lingering scent of dry-erase markers. A far cry from the mahogany and leather of his world. But it was private, and right now that mattered more than aesthetics.
I closed the door behind us and leaned against it, arms crossed over my chest. “You’ve got five minutes.”
Sebastian didn’t sit. He stood across from me, hands in his pockets, and for a long moment he just looked at me. Really looked, like he was cataloging every detail of my face, memorizing changes I couldn’t see in myself.
“I failed you,” he said.
Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. Not so baldly, without preamble or justification or the careful construction of a narrative designed to make himself look better.
“I know you believe I authorized that press release,” he continued.
“I know you think I used your work to protect my reputation at the expense of yours. And I understand why you came to that conclusion — the evidence pointed in that direction, and I’ve given you every reason over the months we’ve known each other to assume the worst about my methods. ”
“Sebastian—”
“Let me finish.” He ran a hand through his hair, and the gesture was so unlike his usual controlled movements that I fell silent.
“I didn’t authorize that release. Charles Preston did — with the help of someone on my legal team who has since been terminated.
They wanted to force a wedge between us because our partnership was working.
Because together, we were actually making a difference, and that threatened their interests. ”
I absorbed this, turning it over in my mind with the methodical precision I applied to everything. “Why didn’t you just tell me that at the gala?”
“Because I was too busy trying to control the situation instead of being honest with you.” A muscle jumped in his jaw.
“Because my first instinct, when everything started falling apart, was to manage you. Manage the narrative. Manage the damage. That’s what I do — I control things.
I’ve spent my entire adult life building systems that keep me in control because control felt like the only thing standing between me and everything I was afraid of. ”
His voice dropped, and I saw something in his eyes I’d cataloged before in fragments and was only now seeing whole — vulnerability, raw and unguarded, offered without the strategic calculation that usually accompanied anything Sebastian Laurent showed the world.
“But I can’t control you, Em. And I shouldn’t want to. I should want to stand beside you, not in front of you. I should have trusted you enough to let you handle your own battles while offering my support, not my management. I failed to do that, and I’m sorry.”
The words hung between us, heavy with meaning. I’d imagined this conversation a hundred times over the past three weeks — the accusations I’d hurl, the justifications he’d offer, the satisfying finality of walking away again.
I hadn’t imagined this.
“There’s something else,” he said. “While I was building the case against Thornton’s network, my team traced the funding behind several operations they’d run in the past year.” He paused. “Including Olivia Mercer’s production company.”
I went still.
“The registered agent connects to a law firm with direct ties to Thornton’s lobbying circle.
The company was launched eight months ago with capital that moved fast — too fast to be organic.
” His voice was even, factual. “Olivia may not have known she was being used. But the offer she made you wasn’t about journalism.
It was a mechanism to pull you away from the Tribune, away from Howard’s protection, away from everything that made your investigation credible — and into an environment Thornton’s people could influence. ”
I thought about the card in my wallet. The note in my phone. T&P Investigations — registered agent — Thornton connection? Verify.
My instinct had been right. I’d known something was wrong before I’d had the language to name it.
“I never called her back,” I said.
“I know.” Something moved in his expression. “Your instincts are better than anyone I’ve ever worked with.”
I set that aside to examine later and returned to the matter at hand.
“You hurt me,” I said quietly. “Not just at the gala. The whole time we were together, you were making decisions about my life without consulting me. Security details I didn’t ask for.
Media interventions I didn’t need. You treated me like a problem to be solved instead of a partner to work with. ”
“I know.” He took a step closer, then stopped himself.
“And I’m not going to stand here and tell you I’m fixed.
I’m not going to promise that my instinct won’t still be to protect you, to shield you, to solve problems you’re perfectly capable of solving yourself.
That’s decades of conditioning. It doesn’t disappear overnight. ”
“Then what are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you that I want to try. That I want to learn how to be the kind of partner you deserve — one who respects your autonomy, who trusts your judgment, who supports without smothering.
” He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was barely above a whisper.
“I’m telling you that the past three weeks have been the longest of my life.
That I read every article you’ve published since we parted, and each one reminded me of why I fell for you in the first place.
That I wake up reaching for you and the absence feels like a wound that won’t close. ”
My throat tightened. Damn him for saying exactly the things I needed to hear. Damn me for wanting to believe them.