28. Imogen
Imogen
Ishow up at Ashton’s office an hour before they vote on whether he gets to keep the company he built, wearing the one blazer I own that doesn’t have a coffee stain on the cuff.
It’s the first time I’ve come here instead of the penthouse.
Glass on three sides, the whole city dropping away under it, a reception desk bigger than my bedroom with nobody behind it this early.
Ashton’s at the far end of a conference room when I walk in, sleeves shoved up to the forearm, no jacket on yet, and my stomach does a slow flip at the sight of him.
“You came,” he says, sounding relieved.
“Don’t sound so surprised. I told you I’d make the call, so here I am to make it.” I drop my bag on a chair. His eyes go down the blazer once, then back up, and with them, heat climbs my neck before I can stop it. “Eyes up, Fraser. We’ve got a board to ruin.”
“I wasn’t looking anywhere.”
“You were one hundred percent looking somewhere. You think the suit makes you smooth, but it doesn’t.”
His mouth twitches, and Lola, beside him with a folder open and a pen behind her ear, clears her throat like she’d really love it if the grown-ups could focus.
“Three options,” she says, turning the folder to face me.
Ashton promised he wouldn’t make the call for me, and apparently that goes for the sales pitch too, because he leans back against the window and lets her do the talking.
“Each one’s built so you walk away protected, whichever you go with.
” She turns to the first page. “An NDA. You sign it, the story dies, the company puts out a denial, and the press has nothing left to chase. In return, enough money to cover your degree, your loans, and a long while after that.” She says the number out loud.
I count the zeros twice. “That’s a lot of money to make me boring.”
I’ve been turning down my dad’s money since I was eighteen.
Every birthday check, every “let me just take care of this, sweetheart.” A fortune from Ashton’s lawyer is the same check with a different name on the top.
The only reason I’ve got a life that’s actually mine is that I never cashed a single one of them.
“Two.” She turns the page like I didn’t say anything. “A settlement spread over five years, plus relocation. New city, clean slate, no reporters camped on your doorstep. Legal already pulled three options outside New York.”
“Relocation.” I sit with the word a second. “So, a van. You want to load me into a van and drive me somewhere quiet.”
“For your safety,” Lola says, not missing a beat. “It’s easier to step out of the picture now than to get scrubbed out of it later.”
I get halfway down the third page and stop, because all three say the same thing once you strip the wrapping off.
Every one of them ends with me gone. A check, a signature, a moving truck, and the problem named Imogen tidied out of the picture before nine in the morning.
They’ve dressed it up as my degree, my safety, my fresh start, and it’s enough money to choke on.
Underneath all of it, though, it’s the exact thing my dad’s done my whole life, the same thing the man over by the window did the night he hired me.
People deciding what’s best for me, and what’s best always turns out to be me vanishing.
“This is really good work,” I tell Lola, and I mean it. “It’s also three different doors that all open onto a parking lot with my stuff in boxes.”
“I did say each one keeps you protected,” Lola says.
“You did. You’re thorough, I’ll give you that.” I shut the folder. “So where’s the page where I stay? The one where I keep my name and my job and the kid I’m not willing to walk out on. I read all three, and that page isn’t in here.”
Lola looks at Ashton. Ashton looks at me.
“There isn’t one,” Lola says. “Not from us. That one’s yours to write.”
Ashton comes off the window. “It’s not in there because I’m not the one selling it to you. If staying’s what you want, we rip the rest of this up and do it your way.”
“My way puts my real name in a real headline. My way blows up your whole IPO.”
“I know exactly what your way does.” He’s close now, close enough that I have to tip my head back to hold his eyes, close enough that I catch cedar and clean cotton under the coffee and glass smell of the room, and my whole body decides to replay last night without checking with me first. His gaze drops to my mouth and comes back up, and he knows I caught it, because the muscle in his jaw jumps.
“Stop that,” I say.
“Stop what?”
“You know what. We’re an hour out from a hostile takeover and you’re over here doing the thing with your face.”
“You brought up my face first.”
“I said eyes. Don’t put words in my mouth, you’ve got enough problems today.”
The door opens before he can fire back, and I turn, expecting the board. It’s not the board. It’s Sophia in cream, hair down, the smile already loaded before she’s even through the door, and a step behind her, wearing a face I’ve spent twenty-six years learning to read, my dad.
“Imogen.” Harrison says my name like it’s an injury he’s nursing. “Get your coat. You’re coming with me, and we’ll sort this out somewhere that doesn’t have his name on the wall.”
“Morning, Dad. And no. I’ve spent eight years not taking a dime from you so I’d have one thing in my life you didn’t pay for. I’m not handing that back because some website ran a photo.”
“Isn’t this sweet,” Sophia says, drifting to the table, dragging one finger along the back of a chair.
Her eyes travel down me, the secondhand blazer, the worn-out shoes, and the smile sharpens on the way back up.
“The whole little family. Ashton, you should know that this is great ammo for the custody hearing. A father in bed with the help, a baby nobody planned for, a home falling apart across the front page. No judge gives a boy to that.”
“And the partnership comes apart the same hour,” Harrison adds. “I pull my stake, the offering collapses, and you’re left with a headline and nothing under it. End it now, Ashton. Cut her loose, settle it clean, and I’ll think about holding the line for you one more time.”
The two people in this city with the most reason to hate each other, standing side by side, telling him the same exact thing. End it. Make her disappear. Every face in the room swings to Ashton, waiting on him to do the smart thing.
He picks his jacket up off the chair and pulls it on, one arm then the other, and straightens the cuffs. Then he looks at me, only me, and one corner of his mouth lifts.
“You all came a long way to tell me what I’m going to do,” he says. “Come watch me not do it. Board’s in the next room.”
He walks, and we follow through the glass doors into a room where eight people in suits sit around a long table with the chair at the head. They go quiet when Ashton comes in with the rest of us trailing behind him.
He doesn’t sit. He stands at the foot of the table, hands loose at his sides.
“You called a vote to remove me,” he tells the chair.
“Put it away. I’m stepping aside as CEO, effective today, temporary, until the custody matter and the press settle.
” Eight people start talking at once, but he goes right over the top of them.
“The company holds. The IPO holds. You get the stable picture you wanted, just not the one with my name carved off the door for good.”
The chair opens his mouth, but Ashton turns to my father instead.
“Harrison. You taught me everything I know about handling people. Leverage is care. Control is competence.” He holds the old man’s eyes.
“I built my whole life on it. It wrecked my marriage, nearly took my son, and it’s why your daughter walked into my house under a name that wasn’t hers and couldn’t trust a word out of my mouth.
I’m done running your playbook. Pull your stake if it helps you sleep.
I’d rather lose the company than stay the man you made one more day. ”
My father’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out of it, which I haven’t seen happen once in twenty-six years.
Ashton turns to Sophia. “Do whatever you want. Drag me through every paper in this city. But you won’t get Luke, because I’ll spend every dollar I have left after today fighting you for him.”
Sophia’s smile finally, fully goes out.
Then he turns to me, and the whole room turns with me in the middle of it. I want to sink straight through the floor but won’t give a single person here the satisfaction.
“And I’m sorry,” he tells me. “I keep doing this in rooms full of people, which makes me a coward twice over. But I’m not going to stand here and call you my staff to save my own skin.
I lied to you. I managed you. I’d take back every piece of it if I could, but I can’t, so this is what I’ve got instead.
” His eyes don’t move off mine. “I’m in love with you, Imogen Spencer.
You’re angry, and you’ve earned it, and I’m not asking you to do a thing about any of this today.
I’ll give you all the time and all the room you need.
I just wanted to say it once where I couldn’t take it back. ”
The room’s dead silent, my father’s staring at him like the man’s grown a second head, and Sophia’s gone the color of her own blazer.
I stand there in my secondhand blazer in a room full of people who have been trying to make me disappear for weeks, and I think about a six-year-old who writes down the days I’m coming back in a notebook he keeps for important things.
Then I think about the man who just handed over the only thing he’s never once handed anyone.
Ashton chose me in the one room where it ruins him to do it.