Chapter 11
T here are days that test your competence, and then there are days that expose its limits. This one has done both with ruthless precision, turning my morning into a procession of delays, complications, and losses I can’t afford—professional or otherwise.
First, one of the banks backing a deal I’d spent months putting together decided they wanted “additional reassurances,” which was corporate-speak for we’re about to waste your fucking time.
Then Legal flagged a problem with one of our proposals, triggering three conference calls, two revised drafts, and a migraine throbbing behind my left eye.
By four, news leaked that one of our biggest positions was tied to a widening regulatory investigation, and the numbers on my screen started dropping so fast they barely looked real.
Running a global investment firm means living inside leverage, risk, and other people’s expectations.
Crisis management isn’t optional. It’s the job.
Usually, a mess like this would command my full attention.
It should. But every dip in the market, every new problem landing on my desk, only brings me back to the one thought I’ve been trying—and failing—to outrun since morning.
Yara. Because no matter how badly things are going at the office, it still isn’t the part of my life closest to collapse.
My whole life is a fucking mess, and for the first time in years, I have no idea where to begin cleaning it up.
I know how to manage losses, close gaps, contain fallout, force bad situations back under control.
But Yara isn’t a balance sheet, and what happened between us left me with the fear that I’ve finally pushed her too far.
That she’s done with me. And if that’s true, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
Everything else in my life can fall apart, and I’ll still know how to put it back together. Yara is the only loss I don’t know how to survive.
Last night, I thought we had finally found some peace after weeks of misery. I finally had the chance to tell her the truth. Then the past I’d tried so hard to keep buried broke loose at the worst possible time, and I did what I always do when it shows up where it shouldn’t. I let it in.
“Xavier.”
Adrian, my CFO, cuts through the noise in my head.
I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose before I look up.
It does nothing for the pounding behind my eyes.
The screens at the front of the conference room are awash in red; the tension around the table thick enough to choke on.
Legal is on my left. Risk is on my right.
Compliance is dialed in. No one speaks unless they have to.
Adrian sets his tablet on the table. “We need a decision on exposure before the close.”
That’s how this works. The second things start bleeding, everyone looks at me to decide how much of the hit we’re willing to take.
I straighten in my chair and force my attention back where it belongs. “Walk me through it.”
He glances at the screen showing our plummeting position before returning his gaze to me.
“The name is down nine percent and still sliding. Compliance is reviewing whether the leak crosses the line into material nonpublic information. If it does, the name goes restricted and we’re done trading it today.
If it doesn’t, we still have a window before the bell.
We can trim exposure now and take the hit, or hedge the downside and hold overnight while Legal gets in front of it. ”
My thumb finds the edge of my watch—pure habit. I barely notice I’m doing it until the metal of the bezel presses cool against my skin. “How much room do we have before this gets uglier?”
“Not much,” Adrian says. “If the sell-off accelerates into the close, tomorrow gets harder. If Compliance restricts the name, we lose the option to move at all.”
“Then nobody touches the name until Compliance clears it,” I say. “Risk, give me worst-case projections by the close and again before the open. Legal, get in front of the board. Have hedge options ready the second we’re clear.”
A few heads nod. Adrian is already tapping out messages, issuing follow-ups before I’ve even finished speaking. Someone on the speakerphone asks about liquidity. Someone else answers. Numbers. Timelines. Exposure. The room keeps moving.
I don’t.
All I hear is her.
That question.
That brutal, taunting question still carving through me from last night.
Tell me, Xavier—was it also part of your plan to kill me for good measure?
The knot of my tie bites into my throat. I drag in a breath and get almost none of it.
Now I can’t stop thinking you want me dead, Xavier. That you want me out of the way so you can be with the woman you’ve always loved.
Fuck.
I hook a finger under my tie and yank it loose. It makes no difference. I still can’t drag in a full fucking breath.
My wife thinks I want her dead. Thinks I don’t love her. Because of me, she had to put her fists up again. Because of me, she cried.
I shut my eyes for a beat.
The whole thing keeps replaying like a punishment I earned and can’t outrun.
I can still see the faint sheen on the surface of the bisque I pushed toward her. The look on her face. The exact moment confusion tightens her features, the way her gaze flicks from the bowl to my face, searching for sense where there is none.
For seven years, I have guarded that allergy like it’s my own goddamn lifeline. I have snatched plates away, interrogated chefs about cross-contamination, carried an EpiPen in every jacket I own. I know how quickly it can go bad. I know how little time there is once it starts. I know better.
And still, last night, I pushed that bowl toward my wife without checking what was in it.
I looked her in the eye and told her I forgot.
I didn’t forget.
I was too busy drowning in my own shit to notice what was right in front of me.
For weeks now, guilt has been eating through me from the inside out, tearing open everything I’ve spent years trying to bury. I haven’t been able to think straight.
It was there when I told her we had to cancel our anniversary trip because of work.
It was there when I lied and said I was with my cousin instead of telling her where I’d really been.
It was there when I lay in bed pretending to sleep while she locked herself in the bathroom and ran the faucet so I wouldn’t hear her cry after yet another negative test. I heard every broken sound anyway and stayed where I was, like a fucking coward—letting it gut me because some twisted part of me thought I deserved it.
When morning came, it was still there. I stayed glued to my phone, pretending I didn’t feel her eyes on me. It followed us out of the house. Sat between us in the car. Clung to me even when she gave me a way back to her—and I was selfish enough to hope maybe we’d be okay.
Dinner was where it all went to hell. Isabel walked in. Yara went still beside me. My mother wouldn’t shut up.
By the time my phone lit up under the table, I was already losing my grip. One look at that message—at the receipts of what I’d done—and whatever control I had left gave way. After that, the noise in my head drowned out the woman sitting right in front of me .
The moment I understood what I’d done, I started torturing myself with every detail.
The tension in Yara’s shoulders. The way she picked at her food and barely managed a bite.
How she kept looking at me while I found every reason not to look back—because pretending to care about anything else was easier than facing my wife after everything I’d done.
◆◆◆
Last night, Navarro Estate.
A hush settles over the dining room, broken only by the slam of the double doors as my wife walks out.
My heart plummets. I stand there a second too long, guilt and panic clamping around my throat hard enough to leave me damn near useless.
Go after her.
She knows I lied.
Move, you fucking idiot.
I force my legs to move.
“Xavier.”
My mother’s voice knifes across the room. Every instinct in me screams to ignore her, go after my wife, make sure she is okay. But one word from Mamá still has the power to stop me in my tracks.
I turn toward the head of the table, jaw locked so tight it aches. My mother lifts one perfect brow and dabs at her red lipstick with a linen napkin. “Sit down.”
Heat flares behind my eyes. “What did you just say?”
She sets her napkin beside her plate with that same infuriating composure and meets my gaze with a placid smile, as if my wife has not just walked out because of her. “I said let her go. If that is all it takes to send her running, then perhaps she never belonged here to begin with.”
Anger licks up my spine. I should walk out. Ignore her. Every second I waste here is another second my wife is alone, hurting. But I know that look. She is not finished.
“Careful, Mamá.”
Conversation falters. A few heads turn. Whispers break loose and die just as quickly. No one here has ever heard me speak to my mother that way. Not once. Not even when I should have, years ago.
But this is Yara. My wife. I have already let this go too far. That ends now.
“You are one sentence away from making a mistake you won’t recover from.”
Her brown eyes narrow a fraction. “Why? Because I mentioned Isabel? Or because your wife is so fragile she cannot bear being reminded that another woman could give you everything she cannot?”
Rage hits so hard it burns straight through reason.
Isabel shifts beside my mother, lifting a hand as if to stop her, but Mamá keeps going.
“Look at what that girl has reduced you to. Snapping at your own mother over a little reminder of reality.”
“Reality?” I brace my palms on the table and lean forward. “Then let’s talk about reality. You want to bring up Isabel? Fine. Tell them why the whole city was so obsessed with Xavier Navarro and Isabela Ortega. Tell them how I ended up with her in the first place.”
Unease ripples through the table. My mother’s smile tightens.