Chapter 14 The Investigator
Addie stayed at the apartment above the bakery for three nights, telling herself, each morning, that she'd go back to Calloway House once she'd had enough distance to think clearly, and finding, each evening, that the distance itself had become its own kind of clarity, one she wasn't yet ready to abandon.
The apartment felt strange after a month away, smaller than she remembered, the specific smell of bread and cinnamon from the ovens below arriving at the same hours it always had, a reminder of a life that had felt, three weeks ago, like it belonged to someone she used to be.
Weston called every evening, and every evening Addie answered, because whatever else had fractured between them, she wasn't interested in punishing him with silence, only in giving herself the room Harold's office hadn't allowed for, the room to sit with what she'd learned rather than let his instinct to fix things override her own need to feel the full weight of it first.
"I struck the clause," Weston told her, on the second night, his voice carrying an exhaustion that had nothing to do with the board fight.
"Harold filed the amendment this afternoon.
Your firm is entirely yours again, no right of first refusal, no conditions, nothing except the original terms we actually discussed at my kitchen table. "
"Thank you," Addie said, and meant it, even as she recognized that the fixed clause hadn't fixed the underlying thing, the specific pattern of a man who still, three weeks into a marriage built on finally choosing honesty, had defaulted to deciding for her rather than with her the moment the stakes felt high enough to frighten him.
"I keep thinking about what you said in Harold's office," Weston continued, when she didn't offer anything further.
"About my father. About the exact pattern I told you I was terrified of repeating.
I've spent the last two nights unable to sleep, going back through every decision I've made since the wedding, trying to understand how many other small moments looked, from where you were standing, like exactly that pattern, even when I told myself each one was protection rather than control. "
"I don't want you to spiral into cataloging every mistake," Addie said. "That's not what I need from you right now."
"Then tell me what you do need," Weston said, "because I want to give it to you, and I'm terrified of guessing wrong again."
Addie sat with the question for a long moment, looking out at the harbor lights through the window she'd fallen asleep beside a hundred times in her old life, before this entire strange, transformative month had upended everything she thought she understood about her own capacity for risk.
"I need to know that you actually understand the difference between protecting me and controlling me," she said finally.
"Not intellectually. Not as a concept you can explain back to me articulately in a phone call.
I need to see it, over time, in the actual decisions you make, before I can fully trust that the man who put that clause in my settlement isn't going to resurface the next time something frightens you badly enough. "
"I understand," Weston said. "I'm not going to ask you to come back before you're ready. I just need you to know I'm not going anywhere either, whatever timeline you need."
It was on the third day, walking to her workshop in the pale early light before the harbor district had fully woken, that Addie first noticed the car parked across the street, a nondescript sedan she'd seen twice before without fully registering it, and felt the specific prickle of unease that came from understanding, all at once, that she was being watched.
She didn't confront the car directly. Instead, she called Weston from inside the workshop, keeping her voice steady despite the unease coiling in her chest. "I think someone's been following me," she said.
"A gray sedan. I've seen it outside the apartment twice this week, and it's parked across from the workshop right now. "
Weston's response was immediate and sharp. "Don't go outside. I'm calling Harold's investigator, the one we hired to counter Griffin's surveillance, and I'm coming to you myself. Stay inside, lock the door, and text me if anything changes."
He arrived within twenty minutes, considerably faster than the drive from Calloway House should have allowed, and Addie watched through the workshop window as he approached the gray sedan directly, without hesitation, and rapped sharply on the driver's side glass.
The window lowered slowly, revealing a heavyset man in his fifties whose expression carried the specific practiced blankness of someone accustomed to being caught and unbothered by it.
"Marcus Deveraux," Weston said, loud enough that Addie could hear it clearly through the workshop door she'd cracked open to listen.
"I know who you are. I know who's paying you.
And I know that surveillance conducted this closely to a private residence, without any court order authorizing it, is considerably more legally exposed than whatever Griffin's told you to expect. "
"I'm not doing anything illegal, Mr. Calloway," Deveraux said, his voice carrying an unbothered drawl. "Public street. Public sidewalk. A man can sit in his car."
"For three consecutive days, following the same woman between two specific addresses," Weston said, "that starts to look considerably less like coincidence and considerably more like stalking, which I'm confident a judge would agree with, especially given the active civil proceeding you're apparently gathering evidence for.
I'd strongly recommend you find a different way to earn my cousin's money, because if I see this car outside either address again, I'm filing a restraining order and a formal complaint with your licensing board, and I have considerably more resources to make that complaint stick than you have to survive it. "
Deveraux studied him for a long moment, something calculating shifting behind his eyes, and then, without further comment, rolled up his window and pulled away from the curb, the gray sedan disappearing around the corner with an unhurried ease that told Addie the confrontation had cost him nothing beyond mild inconvenience.
Weston came inside the workshop, and Addie watched him take in the space, the blueprints, the tools, the same room where this entire strange month had started, and something in his expression carried a weight she hadn't expected, not just concern for her safety, but something closer to grief.
"I hate that this is what my family's name has become," he said quietly. "Something that puts a man in a car outside your workshop for three days because my cousin decided a two-hundred-year-old inheritance mattered more than basic decency."
"It's not your family's name," Addie said. "It's Griffin specifically. Don't let him make you responsible for the specific cruelty he's chosen."
"I know," Weston said. "I still hate it.
" He looked at her directly, and Addie recognized, in his expression, the same careful restraint he'd shown all week, giving her the distance she'd asked for even now, even with genuine fear for her safety pulling at him visibly.
"I'm not going to ask you to come back to the house because of this.
I want that to be clear. I hired additional security for the workshop and the apartment regardless, starting today, discreet, nothing that will make you feel watched by people on our side instead of Griffin's.
But the timeline for when you're ready to come home is still entirely yours. "
Addie felt something in her chest loosen slightly at the specific restraint of that offer, the fact that even faced with a legitimate safety concern, he hadn't used it as leverage to pull her back before she was ready, and she recognized, in that restraint, the first real evidence that the lesson from Harold's office had actually landed somewhere deeper than an apology.
"I appreciate that," she said. "I think I'm getting closer to ready. I'm not there yet, but I wanted you to know that."
"Take whatever time you need," Weston said, and left without pressing further, and Addie stood alone in her workshop afterward, watching through the window as his car pulled away, feeling the specific weight of a trust slowly, carefully, rebuilding itself in the space he was deliberately leaving open for her.
The board vote was scheduled for the following Monday, five days away, and Addie spent the intervening time in a rhythm that felt, for the first time since the charter clause had upended everything, genuinely her own again, mornings at the workshop catching up on the restoration contracts that had piled up during the chaos of the past month, evenings spent, increasingly, at Calloway House rather than the apartment, not fully moved back but no longer entirely separate either, dinner with Weston most nights, conversations that had started, slowly, to carry the same easy warmth they'd shared before Harold's office had cracked something open between them.
It was Friday evening, two days before the vote, when Harold called with news that shattered whatever fragile equilibrium the week had built.
"Griffin's attorneys have filed a supplemental brief," Harold said, his voice carrying none of its usual measured calm.
"They've obtained a copy of the original settlement, before the amendment striking the right of first refusal clause.
I don't yet know how, given the confidentiality provisions, but they have it, and they're arguing that the original clause proves the marriage was structured as a business transaction rather than a genuine relationship, and that the subsequent amendment was a deliberate attempt to conceal that fact once litigation began. "
Addie felt the ground shift beneath her again, the specific vertigo of understanding that the mistake she'd finally, painfully, started to move past was about to become public, weaponized, presented to the entire board as evidence that everything real between her and Weston had been performance after all.
"When does this go before the board," she asked.
"Monday," Harold said grimly. "Alongside the succession vote itself. Griffin's timed it deliberately, I have no doubt, to ensure the board sees the worst possible version of that clause at the exact moment they're deciding whether to formally reject his claim to the chairmanship."