CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Two weeks after the nightmare on Platform Three, Nova was finally starting to feel like herself again.
Or maybe that wasn’t entirely true. The woman who had returned to Salt Lake City wasn’t quite the same one who had left.
The past two weeks had been a blur of medical appointments, interviews with federal investigators, and more phone calls than she cared to count.
In between all of that, she, Sophia, Rob, and Wallace had been quietly working behind the scenes to untangle the mess their father had created.
There had been documents to review, meetings with accountants and attorneys, and more than one late-night conversation that ended with one of them asking how in the hell their family had gotten this screwed up.
Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, Rick had joined them.
Which was how Nova found herself standing beside her ex-boyfriend outside the conference room at Hart and Associates, about to deliver one final surprise to both of their families.
She looked over at him. “Ready?”
Rick grinned. “I've been looking forward to this all morning.”
“That’s slightly disturbing.”
“Says the woman carrying the folder that’s about to ruin your father’s day.”
“Fair point.”
Rick reached for the door. “Shall we?”
Nova drew in a breath and nodded.
The conversation inside stopped almost immediately when they entered. Her parents were seated near the head of the conference table, with Merrick and his wife across from them. Sophia, Rob, and Wallace had claimed seats farther down, all three insisting they weren’t missing this for anything.
Her father’s reaction was exactly what Nova had expected.
Leonard smiled. Not one that said he was happy to see his daughter after she had nearly died two weeks earlier. Not that he even knew about that. No, the smug satisfaction on his face came entirely from seeing her walk into the room beside Rick.
“Well.” He leaned back in his chair. “It appears the two of you finally came to your senses.”
Rick glanced sideways at Nova.
She ignored him before he made her laugh.
Leonard motioned toward the empty chairs. “Let’s make this quick. I’ve already wasted enough time on this nonsense, and I have better things to do.”
There was the father she knew.
Nova sat across from him and placed the folder she had been carrying onto the table. Rick took the chair beside her, looking far too relaxed for a man whose parents were about to discover that absolutely nothing was going according to plan.
“Don’t worry, Dad. This won’t take long.”
“Good.”
Nova slid the folder across the table.
Leonard frowned at it. “What’s this?”
“Open it.”
“Nova, if this is another attempt to—”
“Just open the folder.”
Something in her voice finally got through to him. His mouth tightened, but he flipped it open and began reading.
Nova watched the smugness slowly disappear from his face.
He looked at the first page, then the second, before going back to the first as if the words might rearrange themselves into something he liked better if he read them twice.
“What the hell is this?”
“A termination letter.”
“I can see what it says.” He slapped the page against the table. “Why is my name on it?”
Nova blinked at him. “Generally, that’s how termination letters work.”
Rob made a choking sound from farther down the table.
“You can’t fire me.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is my firm!”
There it was. The opening Nova was waiting for.
She leaned back in her chair and looked at him. “Is it?”
His anger faltered. Only for a second, but she saw it.
Nova continued before he could recover. “Because according to the paperwork you filed not too long ago, I was listed as the sole owner of Hart and Associates.”
The room went silent. Her mother’s head snapped toward Leonard. Merrick was frowning.
Leonard stared at Nova now, and for the first time since she had walked into the room, he looked genuinely rattled.
“How do you know about that?”
Nova laughed softly. “That’s your question?”
“Answer me.”
“No.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter how I found out.
What matters is that you transferred ownership to me.
You did it because it benefited you, and I’m sure you never considered the possibility that I would actually do something with it.
Well, until I married Rick and gave him half of it so it could cover your debt to Merrick. ”
Leonard shoved his chair backward and stood, but Nova didn’t flinch. Two weeks ago, maybe she would have. She would have immediately started thinking about how to calm him down or what she could say to keep the argument from getting worse. She didn't feel that urge anymore.
“Also, as of tomorrow morning,” she continued, “I’ll no longer have any ties to Hart and Associates.”
Her father’s face went blank. “What?”
Nova glanced at Rick. He gave her the smallest nod.
She turned back to Leonard. “I sold it.”
“To whom?”
“To me,” a man said as he walked through the door.
For a moment, Leonard didn’t react at all. But then, when it registered who the man was, the color drained from his face.
“You did what?”
Nova smirked. “Mr. Zern and his brother presented me with a very generous offer. It was too good to pass on. The sale will be finalized tomorrow morning.”
Mr. Zern and his brother were Nova’s dad’s biggest competitors in Salt Lake City. This was a huge blow to her dad’s ego.
Her mother immediately demanded to know why Nova would do something so reckless. Merrick began firing questions at Rick, who calmly reminded his father that he had nothing to do with Nova’s business decisions. Leonard was talking over all of them, demanding that Nova undo the sale.
The only people who weren’t shocked were sitting farther down the table.
Sophia looked delighted. Wallace wasn’t even pretending not to smile anymore, and Rob leaned back in his chair with his arms folded, looking like he could happily stay there all afternoon and watch their father lose his mind.
There was one other secret nobody in the room knew. Rick was a silent partner in the purchase.
That had been his contribution to their little rebellion, and Nova had to admit it was a damn good one.
Rick wanted the investment, but he didn’t want his parents knowing anything about it, particularly when their habit of involving themselves in his finances was one of the many things he was finally putting an end to.
He also said that he would handle the engagement announcement debacle.
Well, the retraction statement would come from their parents admitting that they got ahead of themselves.
Leonard slapped his hand against the table. “You had no right to sell my firm!”
That finally got Nova’s attention. She looked at him for several seconds.
“You put it in my name, Dad. That’s the part you still don’t seem to understand. You were so sure you could control me that it never occurred to you I might stop letting you.”
Her mother stared at her. “Nova, you’re destroying this family.”
Nova felt the words hit, but they didn’t cut nearly as deeply as they once would have.
“No, Mom. I’m just done letting you and Dad destroy me.”
That was enough. She stood and picked up her purse.
Her father stared at her. “Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“We’re not finished here.”
Nova looked around the room, at her furious parents and Rick’s equally unhappy ones, then at her siblings. Sophia gave her a small smile.
“Yeah, Dad. We are.”
With those parting words, Nova walked out and closed the conference room door behind her.
She made it three steps before a familiar voice stopped her.
“So...I’m guessing that went well.”
Her head snapped up and found Snow leaning against the wall near the elevators.
She stared at him. He looked good. Really good.
There was still a faint mark near his temple from where Brett had hit him, and he hadn’t been cleared to return to active duty yet.
But compared to the last time she had seen him in person, lying in a hospital bed while complaining about nurses waking him up every twenty minutes, he looked pretty damn perfect to her.
“What are you doing here?”
His mouth curved into that smile she had missed far more than she wanted to admit. “Hello to you too.”
Nova was already moving. Snow barely had time to straighten before she reached him and wrapped her arms around his waist. His arms came around her immediately, pulling her close, and the second Nova breathed in the familiar scent of him, something inside her finally relaxed.
She had missed him so much.
FaceTime didn’t count. They had talked every night since she had returned to Salt Lake City, sometimes for hours, learning all the little things about each other that there hadn’t been time for on the rig or in the hospital. But a screen wasn’t this.
Gabe kissed her, slow and sweet, before pulling back.
“God, I’ve missed you.”
Nova smiled. “You’ve literally seen me every day.”
“Your face on my phone isn’t the same thing.”
“No,” she admitted. “It’s not.”
She touched the fading mark near his temple. “Seriously. Why are you here?”
His hands settled on her hips. “Sophia told me what was happening today. And I knew this might be tough, even if you were pretending it wasn’t.” He shrugged as if flying to Salt Lake City to wait outside a conference room was no big deal. “I figured you shouldn’t have to walk out of here alone.”
Nova stared at him. There were probably a dozen clever things she could have said. But instead she lifted up on her toes and kissed him.
Snow laughed against her mouth before kissing her back.
When they finally headed toward the elevators, he took her hand. “So what happens now?”
Nova smiled as she pressed the button. For the immediate future, she was moving in with Sophia while she figured out exactly where she wanted to land. Her sister was only about three and a half hours from Snow, which suddenly didn’t seem far at all.
Beyond that, Nova had deliberately left the page blank.
“Well, first I have a competition to get ready for.”
Snow groaned. “I should’ve known.”
“What?”
“I was hoping the near-death experience might’ve made you reconsider willingly letting people kick you.”
“It’s kickboxing.”
“I know what it is.”
Nova grinned as the elevator doors opened.
“Oh, Mom says hi,” Snow said.
Nova smiled as they stepped inside. She had met his parents over FaceTime while Snow was still in the hospital.
What was supposed to have been a quick introduction had somehow turned into Darcy interrogating Nova about herself while Snow repeatedly tried, and failed, to end the call.
His father had mostly sat in the background laughing at his son’s misery.
She liked them both already. Especially Darcy.
“Tell her I said hi.”
“You can tell her yourself. She wants to plan a trip to come out to Virginia Beach.”
“I can’t wait to meet her in person,” Nova said, resting her head against his shoulder as the elevator carried them toward the lobby.
A few weeks ago, she hadn’t known what her life would look like if she stopped being Leonard Hart’s daughter first and Nova second. She had spent so many years doing what was expected of her that walking away from the firm should have terrified her.
Instead, she felt lighter.
She was going to stay with her sister for a while. She was going to compete in that kickboxing competition. She was going to figure out what was next for her career. And she was going to see where things went with the Navy SEAL currently holding her hand.
For once, Nova didn’t have a five-year plan.
When the elevator doors opened, Snow squeezed her hand and nodded toward the lobby.
“Ready?”
Nova looked back once at the offices she had spent so much of her life trying to earn a place in, then turned toward him.
“Yeah.”
This time, she really was.