Chapter 28 Sebastian
Sebastian
The weather matched my mood. Dreary. Mom had vetoed the first two nurses I'd chosen, and I didn't like the third one, but she did.
I'd spent a good part of the day arguing with the agency before they agreed to send more out Friday morning.
The sixth one we finally agreed on, but not soon enough for me to get on a plane Friday evening unless I wanted to fly coach, which I really didn't. It wasn't that I was above it, well maybe I was.
"How was your trip, Mr. Reid?" Oliver, our driver, asked. We had a company we used when needed, and he was our preferred driver. I honestly preferred driving myself, but when it came to coming and going from places like the airport, and even Sanctum from time to time, we used this company.
"Not wet."
He chuckled. It was the only thing Arizona had going for it. It had been raining the last few weeks, so it had been nice to see the sky, even though it had been cold.
Victor had taken the program live, so now we just waited, and I didn’t like waiting. No one wanted to talk about the elephant in the room. What would happen if they didn’t take the bait? What if they knew they were made?
I couldn’t think like that. This had to work or we’d be ruined.
“Oliver, take this next exit, please.”
“Headed to the office, Sir?”
“No, I need to drop by Millie’s for some pastries and then a friend’s place.”
I didn’t miss his raised brow. Other than Elijah and Victor, I didn’t have friends. I had clients. I was too much into my work which had always served me well.
“Of course, Sir. The missus would love some of her turnovers.”
He pulled up to the curb in front of a well-known cafe. Not famous in the sense she didn’t have money to market herself, but anyone who had been there always came back, and she had quite the social media following, or so I was told.
“I’ll grab you a dozen, my treat? And a bear claw, right?” I smiled, which wasn’t normal for me by the look on his face.
“That’s right, Sir.”
Ethan had picked him up a few over the years, and for all of my flaws, my memory wasn’t one of them.
Millie panicked when I got to the front of the line. “Mr. Reid, I had your order down for next week.”
“Yes, that’s right, this is more of a personal visit.”
Her sigh of relief was audible. And I couldn’t help but grin. “I wanted to get a dozen apple turnovers for my driver’s wife and a bear claw for him.”
We had four local Seattle businesses we rotated through each week to supply our staff with treats.
The day of the week changed too depending on if we knew we had a few hard days coming up, sometimes it was the day we started with a this is going to suck we believe in you, and sometimes it was a job well done.
Bastian’s did a lunch spread once a month, and Millie’s did pastries which was indeed next week.
She quickly boxed those up and set them on the top of the case. “Anything else?”
“Recommendations for someone who’s had a rough week?”
She cocked her head, studying me. “Allergies?”
My eyes widened. “I don’t know.” I shook my head when it hit me.
I did know her. Everything about her. What made her tick.
Made her squirm. Her favorite tea. What made her scream.
And on Millie’s days she always went for the ham and Swiss croissant with the pear-turn over.
It had been weird when she started handling the orders a few weeks ago, the order had changed.
No one liked pear, or so I’d thought, but when I handed it to her, I’d told her to order whatever she’d liked, and that had been the adjustment.
“Ham and cheese croissant, warmed, pear turnover the same, and a green tea, hot.”
“I’ll have that out in a minute, Mr. Reid.
” She flashed me a smile. I forgot the different attention I got when I wasn’t in a suit.
While I still looked nice, the dark blue dress shirt worn untucked from my dark blue jeans pulled together with my brown leather boots, seemed to put people at ease that the custom suits did not.
I wiped my sweaty palm on my jeans, wondering when I started getting nervous around this simple boring girl. But I knew first hand how not simple and not borrowing she was.
Millie returned a moment later with two bags. “This one is for Ollie. Tell him I said hi.” She winked. “This is the rest of the order. Don’t put them together.”
I chuckled. Wouldn’t want to heat up the one or cool down the other. “Got it.”
I pulled my billfold out and handed her a hundred-dollar bill before taking the bags.
“Let me get your change.”
Shaking my head, I said, “Keep it.”
She lit up, thanked me, and went on to help the next customer. I wasn’t the complete hard-ass people thought I was. I just didn’t like people.
When I reached the car, I placed Oliver’s bag on the front seat and handed him a post it note with an address on it.
He nodded, and I slipped into the back seat. Ten minutes later, we pulled up to Mira’s apartment building.
“Can I text you when I’m done here? It might be five minutes or I’m not sure.”
He raised his brow, but didn’t question. He’d seen some things in his years that he’d been working with us, especially with Victor.
“Will do, Sir.”
I grabbed the bag and headed to do something I wasn’t sure I’d ever done before—ask a girl out—again.
When she answered the door everything in me screamed to pull her to my arms, pick her up, and take her to the safety of my house. I didn't know what was wrong but something wasn't right.
She rubbed her eyes. "You're going to have to get your own coffee this morning." She huffed and started to push the door closed.
I put my foot in the doorway so that she couldn't close the door, and she growled.
"What the hell do you want?" She bit out as she stepped back, obviously too tired to fight me.
"Mira, what's wrong?" I glanced around the apartment and knew this wasn't how she kept things. Since I’d been keeping tabs on her, I’d noticed that nothing on her desk was ever out of place—ever.
But here, her laptop sat in the middle of the coffee table, empty coffee cups and take out containers on the floor because papers littered the rest of the table.
It was a disaster here. The dark circles under her eyes told me that she hadn’t slept. So she had lied to me when we ended our phone call last night when she said she was headed to bed. From the state of her living room it looked like she had worked well into the morning hours.
"What have you been working on?" I asked her.
"Whatever everybody else has been working on, the same as you."
"We all do that enough at work. Why are you bringing it home?" It was one thing for my workers to stay late but I didn’t want them to take it home. They needed a balance, whether I had one or not.
“Like you and Mr. Cross and Mr. Hale don't take your work home with you.”
“Don't make me spend the morning explaining to you why that is different.”
“See that's where you're wrong. If the company fails we all fail.”
I held up the bag and the cup of tea. “I brought breakfast."
She cocked her head and gave me a small smile.
“Can I pull you away from your mountain of papers and codes and make sure that you have a proper meal?”
“Is that from Millie’s?” She lit up. The first spark I’d seen since I’d arrived.
I stepped past her before she could decide whether to stop me. The door closed behind us with a soft click that sounded far louder than it should have.
She turned slowly.
“You don’t get to just walk in here.”
“I know.” I shrugged. That seemed to irritate her more than an argument would have. She crossed her arms, shoulders tight, chin lifting like she was bracing for impact.
“Then why are you in my living room?”
I set the bag and the cup of tea down on the counter. “Because you didn’t sleep. Because you lied about it. And because whatever you dragged home last night followed you here.”
Her jaw clenched. “You don’t know that.”
I glanced at the coffee table again, at the laptop still open, the mess she never allowed herself. “You don’t leave things like this ever.”
That did it.
She stared at me, something flickering behind her eyes. Not fear. Calculation. “Have you been keeping tabs on me now? This is my home, I can do as I wish. Maybe I’m messy. You never know, I could be a slob.” She settled her hand on her hip in a stance of defiance.
“I pay attention.” I met her gaze, steady. “And you are precise.”
She looked away first.
It wasn’t dramatic. Just a slight turn of her head, as if she were deciding which fight was worth having this early in the morning. She exhaled slowly, then gestured vaguely toward the door.
“You’ve said your peace,” she said. “Now you can leave.”
I didn’t move.
Instead, I reached into the bag and pulled out the sandwich before grabbing the cup of tea. I gestured to the couch.
“Sit,” I said. Not sharp. Not loud. Just matter of factly.
Her eyes snapped back to mine. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. Not here.”
“I get to tell you what’s going to happen next.”
That earned me a humorless laugh. “Oh, do you?”
“You’re going to eat,” I said. “Then you’re going to tell me what you found. And then we’re going to decide whether this stays a work problem or becomes something else.”
Her fingers flexed at her sides. “And if I don’t?”
I held her gaze. Let the silence stretch long enough that we could hear the refrigerator hum, the city outside waking up.
“Then I stay anyway,” I said. “And we have this conversation when you’re not shaking from hunger and exhaustion.”
Her mouth opened, then closed again. She looked past me, toward the door. Toward the option she wasn’t taking.
“You’re unbelievable,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.
I gritted my teeth, knowing I’d work that into what I had planned for her tonight. Eye rolling called for correction, discipline and I could hardly wait.
“Sit,” I repeated, gesturing to the couch.
She hesitated, then stepped around the coffee table and dropped onto the couch, shoulders slumping the moment she did. Not defeated. Just tired.
I offered her the food and cup of tea as I sat in the arm chair nearby. “Eat.”
She stared at it for a long second before finally unwrapping it. “You’re not my boss in my house.”
“No,” I agreed. “I’m worse.”
That got her attention.
She looked up slowly, eyes narrowing. “How exactly is that worse?”
“Because here,” I said, leaning a hand on the table, just close enough that she felt the shift in air between us, “you don’t get to pretend this isn’t personal.”
She stared at me for another second, then looked away again, clenching her jaw. She curled slightly, like her body had already decided it was done arguing even if her mouth hadn’t caught up yet.
I set the food on the coffee table, then changing my mind, picked it up again before she could reach for it.
She shot me a look. “Seriously?”
“You can feed yourself,” I said evenly. “Or I can feed you. Your choice.”
Her lips parted, then pressed together. For a moment I thought she’d tell me to go to hell just on principle. Instead, she muttered, “You’re impossible,” and leaned back against the cushions.
I held the food out. She hesitated, then took a bite.
Good. I shot her a smile and handed her the croissant. “Can I look through your notes?”
She hesitated for a second but the food won out and she reached over and turned the laptop my way.
I shifted closer and didn’t comment when my knee brushed the edge of hers. She noticed but she didn’t move away as she took the sandwich from my hands before taking another bite.
I opened another folder. Then another. Not because I expected to find anything new, but because instinct told me to keep going.
When I glanced sideways, her head rested on the arm of the couch, her eyes closed now, her beautiful lashes resting against her cheeks.
I wanted to reach for her, to tuck her hair back from her face.
I didn’t. I pulled the blanket from the back of the couch and covered her instead, then turned back to the laptop.
That’s when I saw it.
Not hidden. Not encrypted. Just… there, open in the background.
An outgoing email. Scheduled.
I didn’t open it at first, recognizing the recipient’s email. I simply stared at the subject line long enough that if she’d woken up, even the great Sebastian Reid wouldn’t have had an explanation.
A thank you.
I clicked.
It was careful. Measured. Mira to her core.
She thanked him for his time. For his patience. For the training. Said she would always be grateful for what he’d taught her, for the structure, the discipline, the trust.
Then the twist.
She explained that it was time for her to explore other opportunities. That tonight would be the last time she saw him. That this wasn’t regret, but growth. That she hoped he understood.
The email was scheduled to send later that night. After their session.
I read it twice. Slowly.
There was no panic in it. No hesitation. No doubt.
This wasn’t something that had kept her up all night.
This was something she’d already decided.
I glanced at her again. Had she decided this because she wanted to say yes to my date invitation or was it something else. Could I go into tonight not knowing? Did I have a choice?
She was curled into the couch now, one hand slack against the blanket I’d pulled over her. Peaceful in a way she hadn’t been when I arrived.
She was planning on ending it with her master. With me.
And she hadn’t told him when she’d accepted earlier this morning. The email her master had sent right before I’d shown up at her door. The one that had told me she was awake.
I closed the email without canceling it. Without changing a word. Just let it sit there, ticking quietly toward its appointed hour.
Then I shut the laptop and set it aside.
I leaned back, eyes on her, letting the implications settle. Not jealousy. Not anger.
Just assessment.
She wasn’t running from him.
She was clearing space.
I reached for the blanket when she shifted, tucking it more securely around her shoulders. She sighed, settling deeper into sleep.
Tonight was supposed to be her last time.
I stayed where I was, watching her breathe, already recalibrating everything I thought I knew about what came next. She'd scheduled the email to send about the time our session would normally end so there would be no changing her mind.
Whatever she thought she was ending…she hadn’t yet decided what came next.
And that, I realized, was where I came in. Sebastian Reid CEO, not the man she met in the shadows, but the man she met in the day light.