Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
Emma
Her eyes burned.
Ice slid down my spine—
but I lifted my chin
and met her fury.
"Yes."
Surprise flickered across her face before turning back to stone.
"I want to start by saying I'm sorry," I said, taking my seat in front of her.
Her gaze narrowed, but I continued. "You've been my friend for years and I owed you more than what I gave you."
She leaned back, crossing her hands in her lap. Waiting.
"Do you remember..." I hesitated, the words catching. "A while back, I mentioned I'd been talking to someone. A guy."
Jennifer angled her head. "The one I had to drag out of you?"
A weak laugh escaped me. "That's the one." My eyes closed as I took in what might be my last breath, and released it in one cool stream. "It was Damien Holt."
Her face went slack.
"I'm in a relationship with him," I continued before I could lose my nerve. "I have been for quite a while."
"How long?" she asked.
I offered an apologetic smile. "Since before the merger was finalized."
"No," she breathed, eyes widening. "Is that why—"
"Part of it," I admitted. "But things get more complicated than that."
"More complicated." Jennifer's voice was flat. Dangerous. "Explain."
So I did.
Everything.
The dating app. Read.
Months of messages before I ever knew his real name.
The merger—carefully set in motion,
not to trap me,
but because he'd already fallen
for a woman he had never met.
The dinner. The reveal.
The betrayal. The silence.
And then… us.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Finding our way back.
Jennifer didn't interrupt. Her expression shifted—shock, anger, disbelief, even a flash of grudging respect.
"That's..." She shook her head. "That's insane, Emma. You know that, right? The whole thing is absolutely insane."
"I know."
"A fake dating profile. Months of catfishing. And then he just happened to acquire your company?" She laughed—sharp and incredulous. "If you pitched this as a movie, I'd say it was too unbelievable."
"And yet."
"And yet." She studied me, her gaze turning clinical. Calculating. "That explains the relationship. It doesn't explain the audit."
"The Davidson breach," she continued, leaning forward. "The documents that leaked—I saw them, Emma. I compared them to our internal files. They matched. Every number, every projection, every line item." Her voice hardened. "Those weren't doctored. They were real."
"And Damien stood in front of everyone and said Davidson had manipulated the data to tank the merger." Her gaze bored into mine. "That was a lie."
"Yes," I said, teeth pressed together until my jaw throbbed.
Jennifer's face went pale. "Jesus Christ."
"The real numbers would have killed the deal. Falkirk's board was already skeptical—if they'd seen the actual projections, they would have walked. Damien made a call."
"The actual projections?" she balked.
I winced.
"He presented falsified numbers to Falkirk's board to gain their approval of Elion's contract and secure the continuation of the merger."
She shoved from her desk, glaring down at me. "You can't be fucking serious."
"He committed fraud, Emma. He lied to his own board. He used Davidson as a scapegoat to cover up—" she stopped, pressing her fingers to her temples. "Does anyone else know?"
"Nathan suspects. He's been pushing on the discrepancies for weeks. Every mentorship session, he circles back to it. He doesn't have proof, but he knows something's off."
Jennifer spun around. "Nathan Bell has been sniffing around falsified audit documents, and you didn't think to mention this sooner?"
"I couldn't tell you without telling you everything else. And I wasn't—" I stopped, swallowing hard. "I wasn't ready."
"Ready." She laughed—no humor. "Emma, I've spent months thinking I was losing my mind.
I looked at those leaked documents and I knew they were real.
But everyone kept saying they were doctored, and I started wondering if I'd missed something, if I'd made a mistake, if I was—" She broke off, eyes shining. "You let me feel crazy."
"I'm sorry."
A tear traced down one of her cheeks. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
"I should have told you," I continued. "From the beginning. You deserved better than what I gave you, and I was too scared to—" The admission tore from deep inside me, my eyes blurred, a single tear falling onto my skirt. Soaking into the fabric.
The words hung in the air between us.
"Tell me about him," she said quietly.
I blinked. "What?"
"Damien. The real him." A hint of softness in her voice now. "Not the CEO. Him."
"He's amazing," I admitted, lowering my gaze, surprised to see the wet tear mark from earlier already drying. "He's kind. And sweet. And funny."
Jennifer made a skeptical sound.
"I know how it sounds." I shook my head.
"Damien Holt, sweet. But he is. He remembers everything I've ever told him—every throwaway comment, every small thing I mentioned in passing months ago.
My favorite takeout order. What kind of soap I like.
" A small smile curved my lips. "He pays attention in a way no one ever has. "
"And when I have a bad day—a really bad day, when my brain won't stop and everything feels too sharp—he talks me through the worst of it without making me feel broken." My voice cracked slightly. "Do you know how rare that is? Someone who doesn't flinch when you show them the ugly parts?"
I laughed softly. "He eats cereal at midnight and argues with me about which Die Hard is the best one and gets genuinely excited about terrible reality TV.
He's not—" I paused, voice dropping. "He's not the person everyone thinks he is.
The cold CEO, the corporate shark. That's the mask.
Underneath, he's just... a man who's terrified of losing the people he loves. "
"And he loves you?"
"He hasn't said it yet," I admitted, the smile fading.
"Not out loud. But I feel it. In everything he does.
" I finally looked up, meeting her eyes.
"I know this looks insane from the outside.
I know the circumstances are a disaster.
But Jennifer—when I'm with him, I feel like myself.
The real me. Not the version I perform for everyone else. "
Jennifer studied me, her expression thawing by the second.
"So what now?" Jennifer asked. "What's the plan?"
I shook my head. "I don't know. Nathan's been sniffing around, insinuated today that there was something between—"
"That isn't good."
I huffed a dry laugh. "No shit."
She nodded, slow—thinking.
The hurt was still there.
In the tightness at her eyes.
In the line of her jaw.
But Jennifer had always known how to divide herself.
Emotion in one box.
Strategy in another.
"You need to control the narrative," she said at last. "If you don't…"
She tilted her head, mouth pursed. "At best they'll think you slept your way into Falkirk. At worst they'll put the pieces together just like Nathan is beginning to."
"And then we're fucked," I said quietly.
"Royally," she agreed.
"So what do we do?"
"A rollout. Controlled. Gradual." She took her seat in the chair beside me in front of her desk, ticking off points on her fingers.
"Start letting the walls down. Slowly. A lingering look here.
Coffee together in the break room there.
Nothing overt—just enough that when the official announcement comes, it feels like a natural progression.
Something that developed over time." She paused. "Not a bombshell."
"You want us to fake-flirt in public?"
"I want you to stop hiding." Her eyes met mine. "There's a difference."
It was brilliant. Manipulative and calculated and absolutely brilliant.
"You should have been a PR strategist."
The ghost of a smile crossed her face. "I should have been a lot of things. Instead I'm here. Cleaning up your messes. As usual."
"Jennifer—"
"I'm still angry," she cut in. "That's not going to disappear overnight. You lied to me. You let me doubt myself." She sucked in a breath. "But you're my friend, Emma. And that matters more than the rest of it."
I swallowed past the knot. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. We have work to do."
She rose—shoulders squared, spine straight—
command sliding back into place.
The Jennifer I knew.
Chaos into color.
Panic into plan.
"Nathan's a problem. The audit's a bigger one. And if you're going public with Damien, we need to make sure there are no loose threads for anyone to pull."
"There's one more thing."
She paused mid-step. "Of course there is."
"Damien wants to meet with you. Officially. He wants you on our side—not just as my friend, but as someone who understands the full picture. Someone we can trust."
Jennifer crossed her arms, considering.
I pressed my palms together in plea.
"Fine," she relented. "Call him."
"Really?"
"Call him. Now." She moved back toward her desk, pulling out her phone to check her calendar. "I have two hours before my next meeting."
"Jennifer, you don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to." She looked up, gaze sharp.
"But if I walk out of this room and go home and have a glass of wine and sleep on it, I'm going to talk myself out of this.
I'm going to remember every red flag, every lie, every reason I should hate him—you.
" She set her phone down. "Right now, I can still see the way your face changes when you talk about him.
I'd rather meet him while that's fresh than after I've had time to build a case against him in my head. "
I stared at her. "That's... surprisingly self-aware."
"I'm a strategist, Emma. I know how my own brain works." She gestured impatiently toward my phone. "Call him before I change my mind."
I pulled out my phone, heart hammering, and tapped his name.
He answered on the second ring.
"Emma." His voice was warm but cautious. "How did it go?"
"She agreed to talk to you."
A shaky exhale came through the line. "How bad is it?"