Chapter 45 - Julian
“Your father went after Lucy. She left Julian; she's gone.”
For a second, my brain refuses to translate the words into meaning.
They land in my ear like a foreign language, as something said through glass. I stare at the wall of my hotel room, neutral art, neutral carpet, neutral everything, and my body doesn’t react the way it should. No panic. No movement.
Just… blank.
Then something in my chest caves in.
“What?” My voice is wrong. Too flat. Too quiet. Like my throat has forgotten how to work. “Julian... are you hearing me?”
A beat of silence crackles through the speaker.
“I’m hearing you,” I respond.
My lungs finally remember what they’re for and pull in a harsh breath.
“What the fuck happened?”
I’m already moving before the question finishes. My hands go to the dresser, the chair, the floor. I am gathering my things without much thought, but I know I need to move, I need to fix this.
I remember only one thing clearly, like it’s carved into my skull:
Lucy pressed close to me like I was all she ever needed.
Her voice was soft, exhausted, and real.
I love you, Julian.
And the way I tensed like she’d hit a nerve I didn’t know existed.
Rowan’s voice drags me back. “I came into your penthouse because Claire called me. Said you weren’t answering, said Lucy wasn’t responding, said something felt off.”
My fingers fumble with my belt. I yank it free. Drop it. I’m stripping out of yesterday’s clothes like it’s contaminated.
Rowan continues, “When I got there, your father was in your home office.”
The word home makes me sick.
My home.
Our home.
“How,” I snap, already reaching for a clean shirt. “How the hell was he in my penthouse?”
“Security didn’t stop him.” Rowan’s voice darkens. “He was already inside when I arrived. And Lucy...”
My hands freeze on the buttons.
“Lucy was standing by your desk,” Rowan says. “Tears streaming down her face. Not quiet tears, Julian. Not the kind she could pretend weren’t happening.”
My stomach turns hard.
“She was shaking,” he adds. “Like she was trying to hold herself together and failing.”
I swallow once. It doesn’t help.
“What did he say to her?”
“I didn’t hear the start of it.” Rowan pauses. I can hear him exhale through his nose, like he’s choosing his words carefully. “But I heard the end. She screamed at him. Told him to get out.”
I’m changing out of my own dress pants now, hands jerky, angry. The movements are all wrong, too fast, too rough, like speed will fix what I broke.
“And when I stepped in,” Rowan says, “she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at your desk.”
My heart stutters. I ask the question, I know I don't want to hear the answer, too, but I need to hear it.
“What was on my desk?”
Rowan goes quiet again.
I slam my palm against the dresser hard enough to rattle the lamp. “Rowan.”
There’s a beat, then: “A pile of documents. Pictures. A black folder.”
My blood goes cold so fast I can feel it.
The black folder.
I’m suddenly not in this hotel room. I’m in my office months ago, my father across from me like a goddamn king, at the restaurant with Theo and Richards speech about Legacy... his stupid superior smile.
A selection, Julian. Options. You’ll thank me later.
I’d locked it away. Not because I was tempted, but because I wasn't interested. Because the entire thing felt like a violation.
“Why the hell did you keep it?” Rowan asks, flat.
“I didn’t,” I snap. “I don’t even know how it got into my home office. That folder was locked at Northwell. In my desk. I barely looked at it when he gave it to me, and I haven't thought about it since.”
Rowan’s silence this time is heavier.
I shove socks on and then my shoes. My hands are shaking. Not with fear.
With rage.
“I opened it once,” I admit, voice tight. “Once. To confirm it was exactly what I thought it was. Then I locked it away because I didn’t want it in my life, near my company, near my...” I choke on the word. “Near Lucy.”
Rowan makes a sound, barely there. Disgust. Pity. Something sharp. “Well,” he says, “it was.”
Rowan’s voice lowers. “Julian… he also had Lucy’s folder.”
My movement stops so abruptly that my knee bumps the chair.
“What?”
“It was there,” Rowan says. “On the desk. Open. Like he gathered evidence. Like he was painting a picture for Lucy.”
My vision tunnels.
That file, Lucy’s file, had been locked too. Different safe. Different office. Different location. And it wasn’t even mine in the first place. It was security. It was a goddamn precaution that was supposed to stay buried and untouched.
“How...” The word comes out strangled. “How the fuck did he get that?”
“I don’t know yet,” Rowan says. “But I will. I promise you that.”
My hands curl into fists. I can feel my pulse in my wrists, my throat, behind my eyes.
Rowan adds, carefully, “That’s not all.”
A laugh scrapes out of me. It’s ugly. “Seriously? What else did he show her? How can it get worse?”
Rowan exhales. “Pictures.”
I close my eyes for half a second and see Lucy’s face when she walked away from me at the office. I see the way her mouth tightened, the way she didn’t dignify me with words because words would’ve given me something to argue with.
She’d just… left.
“Pictures of what?” I ask, too calm.
Rowan hesitates, like he wants to soften the blow. Like he thinks it’ll matter.
“Just say it.”
“They were spread out,” Rowan says. “Over the profiles. Over her file. Like a collage. Like a statement. Photos of you and Simone.”
My body reacts like I’ve been hit.
The room tilts. The hotel air feels thick. Wrong.
“Over the entire course of this acquisition,” Rowan continues. “Angles. Context. Moments captured to look like something they weren’t. But it looks bad, Julian.”
I grab the glass on the nightstand and hurl it at the wall.
It shatters. The sound is sharp, violent, satisfying for half a second.
Then it’s gone, and I’m still drowning.
“I never touched her,” I say, voice hoarse. “I never even... I never looked at her like that. I would never cheat on Lucy.”
“I know,” Rowan says. “But Lucy...”
My gut twists.
“She saw them,” I whisper, even though it isn’t a question.
Rowan’s answer is a tired exhale. “Yes.”
My throat closes.
I picture her standing there, staring at those images. Her brain is trying to make sense of them. Her heart, scarred, trusting, stupidly brave, taking hit after hit after hit.
And I did this. Not Richard. Not Simone.
Me.
Because I left her alone long enough for my father to get his hands on her. I put distance between us. I gave her silence and froze her out.
“She was staring at them,” Rowan says quietly. “And whatever your father said… it wasn’t just the pictures. He said something that broke the last piece of her belief.”
Rowan doesn't have to clarify which belief. My actions, my inactions, paired with Richard’s attack... it broke her belief in us.
I press my palm to my forehead hard enough to hurt.
Why.
Why does he care? Why does he want to destroy it? Why does he want to take the one thing that makes me...
My mind stutters.
Happy.
The word feels unfamiliar in my head, like I’m not allowed to use it.
I swallow. “Rowan… she knows I wouldn’t.”
A beat.
Then Rowan’s voice cuts like a blade. “Does she?”
Silence.
He doesn’t have to say the rest. The rest is written in the last weeks. The way I vanished. How I let Claire become a gatekeeper to my marriage. I spoke to Lucy as if she were a scheduling conflict rather than a person. Instead of my wife.
Rowan says it anyway, because he’s never been one to let me hide behind my own bullshit.
“You’ve been a class-A dick,” he says. “And now she believes whatever your father told her.”
I breathe once. Twice.
“Okay,” I say, and my voice changes. It drops into something colder. “Okay. Then I fix it.”
Rowan’s tone shifts, too. Like he hears it. Like he understands what I’m about to do.
“I need you to do three things,” I say, pacing now, phone pressed tight to my ear. “One: find out how Richard got into my penthouse. Two: find out how he got documents out of Northwell. I want names. I want key logs. I want camera footage. I want everything.”
“I’m already on it,” Rowan says.
“Three,” I continue, voice hardening, “find Lucy.”
Rowan doesn’t hesitate. “We’re trying. Theos headed to the treatment facility now. If she went anywhere, she would go there. Or Emily would know where she is.”
Theo.
God. Theo had tried to warn me. I’d shoved him away like he was the enemy.
I grip the phone tighter. “If Theo finds her first...”
“He won’t push,” Rowan says. “He’ll protect. He knows her. He’s not you.”
The words sting because they’re true.
Rowan adds, “We’ll cover the facility. We’ll cover her office. We’ll cover anything that makes sense.”
I stop pacing. “What are you going to do?” Rowan asks, and it’s not curiosity. It’s an assessment.
I stare out the hotel window at a city I don’t give a damn about. The lights blurred by the rain. Reflections in glass. A life that suddenly feels miles away from what matters.
“I’m going to end this,” I say.
Rowan’s voice goes low. “Good.”
“It could tank the deal,” I say, because Northwell isn't just my company.
Rowan doesn’t even pause. “We don’t care.”
The words hit hard. We.
And then, in a tone I’ve never heard from Rowan, something rawer, something personal, he adds, “None of us had a good example of what relationships should look like. Of what family is. We thought because we stuck together at school, because we built something together… that was enough.”
My entire body locks up.
“But Lucy,” Rowan says quietly, “she showed us. How she cares for her mother. For her sister. How she cares for you, even when you are an asshole and don’t deserve it.”
The line goes silent for a beat.
And then Rowan says, steady as steel, “We’re behind you. One hundred percent. Calebs on the jet now, headed your way. We’ve got your back.”
The call ends.
For a second, I just stand there.
Phone in my hand.
Heartbeat in my throat.
The weight of what I’ve done pressing down on me like a punishment.
Then I move.
I call Lucy.
Straight to voicemail.
I call again.
Voicemail.
My hands shake as I type out a message.
Me: Lucy. Please. I just spoke to Rowan. I know what my father did. I didn’t touch Simone. I didn’t cheat. I swear to you. I’m coming home. Please tell me where you are.
No response, it stays unread.
I call again.
Voicemail.
My heart squeezes so hard it’s a physical pain.
I scroll to a number I only used once, Emily.
I hesitate, just a fraction, because this is crossing a line. Because she’s her sister, and she’ll hear the panic in my voice, and she’ll hate me for hurting Lucy.
Then I think about everything Rowan just said, and I hit call.
Because whatever pride I have left can burn.
The call goes to voicemail. I send her a quick message.
Me: Please, Emily, I need to know she is safe.
I grab my suit jacket. My Luggage and passport. The documents for this acquisition, papers I suddenly want to tear in half with my bare hands.
I text Caleb.
Me: Where are you? How far out?
Then I look at the shattered glass on the floor, the wreck of the room, and I feel something settle. Not calm, resolve.
My father started this.
But I’m going to finish it.
And I’m going to find my wife.
Not as an arrangement.
Not as a contract.
As the woman I love. The woman I should have protected.
The woman I will not lose.