Chapter 122 Montgomery Tech

Chapter 122 Montgomery Tech
Lara's POV

I went back to work six weeks after Catherine was born.

Not full time immediately. Three days a week to start, which was a compromise I had negotiated with myself rather than with anyone else, because nobody at Montgomery Tech had told me to come back or suggested a timeline or put any pressure on me whatsoever, which was a reflection of the team I had built and also possibly of the fact that they had watched me hold a press conference about a stalker while eight weeks pregnant and had collectively decided that making any demands of me ever again was not something they were going to attempt.

The morning I went back I fed Catherine at five thirty, handed her to Damien who was awake and ready in the particular way he had been awake and ready for everything since she arrived, and got dressed in actual work clothes for the first time in six weeks.

I stood in front of the mirror for a moment.

Different. I looked different from before all of this. Not dramatically different. Not in ways anyone else would necessarily notice. Just in the small ways that a year of significant things left on a person, something around the eyes, something in the way I held myself, something that was less about how I looked and more about what I had been through and what had come out the other side of it.

I looked like a woman who had survived things and built things and was still here.

I thought that was probably okay.

Damien appeared in the doorway with Catherine against his shoulder.

"You look good," he said.

"I look different," I said.

"Good different," he said.

Catherine made a sound that was either agreement or complaint, it was still difficult to tell with her, and I crossed the room and kissed her forehead and then kissed Damien and went downstairs.

Ethan was in the kitchen already, which was unusual for a school morning, and he looked up when I came in.

"You're going back today," he said.

"Three days a week," I said. "To start."

He nodded.

"The company is fine," he said, in the tone of someone who had been monitoring something and wanted to report that it was fine. "I checked the news."

I looked at my son.

"You've been checking the news about Montgomery Tech?" I said.

"I check a lot of things," he said, without apology. "It's a habit."

"From the cameras," I said.

"From general vigilance," he said.

I put my hand on the side of his face briefly.

"Thank you for looking out for us," I said.

He looked slightly embarrassed, the way he looked when I said something direct and affectionate before he had fully prepared himself for it.

"Go to work Mom," he said.

I went to work.

The office felt different when I walked in.

Not different in any physical way, everything was exactly where it had always been, my desk, my chair, the view from the window that I had looked out of through so many difficult phone calls over the past year. Just different in the way places felt different when you came back to them after something significant had changed.

My assistant appeared immediately, professional and warm, with coffee and a brief summary of what had happened while I was away that she had clearly been preparing for some time.

I took the coffee and sat down and listened.

The company had kept running. Of course it had. I had built it to keep running, that was the entire point, not to be dependent on any single person including me. The team had handled everything with the competence that had made me proud of them for years. The Nairobi partnership was progressing. The Lagos office had brought in two new clients. The government contract was being implemented on schedule.

Life had gone on.

I found that more comforting than I expected.

Not because I had doubted it exactly. But because there was something reassuring about seeing that the thing you had built could survive your absence, that it didn't require your constant presence to exist properly, that you had built something real enough to stand on its own.

My father would have understood that feeling.

He had built something real too.

I spent the morning going through everything, catching up, reorienting myself to the rhythm of the work, and by eleven o'clock I felt exactly like myself in a way that surprised me with how complete it was.

Not the self I had been six months ago, the self who had been managing fear alongside everything else, who had been running a company while simultaneously managing a security situation and a pregnancy and a marriage and two children and all the rest of it.

Just myself. Clean and present and genuinely glad to be there.

At lunch I sat at my desk and called Damien.

"How is she?" I asked.

"Asleep," he said. "Has been for an hour. I've been reading."

"Reading what?"

"A novel," he said, with the slight defensiveness of a man who felt he needed to justify leisure.

"Which one?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'm just asking."

"It's one of those ones you recommended six months ago that I kept putting off," he said.

"Which one?" I said again.

A pause.

"The one about the chef," he said.

"I knew you'd like that one," I said.

"I haven't said I like it," he said.

"You're reading it voluntarily during a nap window instead of doing emails," I said. "You like it."

A longer pause.

"It's not bad," he said.

I laughed.

"Go back to your book," I said. "I'll be home by five."

"We'll be here," he said.

I put the phone down and sat for a moment looking out the window at the city below.

Twelve floors up. The view I had looked at on the morning I got the call about Lucas's escape. The view I had looked at from the underground car park when I called Detective Ade for the first time. The view I had looked at on the afternoon I bought three pregnancy tests from a boy who didn't look up from his phone.

All of those mornings had happened outside this window and I had kept coming back to this desk and this view and this work.

That continuity meant something to me.

In the afternoon I had a meeting with my head of strategy about the next phase of the international expansion. It was a good meeting, the kind where the ideas moved fast and everyone in the room was thinking properly and the hour passed without anyone noticing because the work itself was interesting enough.

Afterward my head of strategy paused at the door.

"It's good to have you back," she said.

"It's good to be back," I said, and meant it completely.

At three o'clock my assistant knocked and put her head around the door.

"There's someone here to see you," she said. "He doesn't have an appointment but he says you know him."

I looked up.

Behind her, visible through the glass wall of my office, was Bode.

I waved him in.

He came in and sat across from me and looked around the office with the particular assessment he applied to every space he entered, checking things without making it obvious he was checking things.

"Everything looks secure," he said.

"It is secure," I said. "You made it secure. Six months ago."

"I like to check," he said.

"How did you even know I was back today?" I asked.

He looked at me with the expression of a man who considered that question to have an obvious answer that he was too polite to say out loud.

"Right," I said. "You know everything."

"Not everything," he said. "Most things."

I leaned back in my chair.

"Is this a professional visit or a personal one?" I asked.

"Both," he said. "Professionally, everything is clean. The prosecutions are moving forward. Victor Cole's case goes to trial in three months. The third funder's case is slightly more complex but progressing. Lucas's death closed that specific threat permanently." He paused. "You don't need private security anymore. I said that six weeks ago and I'm saying it again now so you hear it properly."

"I heard it properly the first time," I said.

"Good," he said. "Personally." He reached into the bag he had brought with him and produced a small wrapped package and put it on the desk between us.

I looked at it.

"For the baby," he said, with the slight awkwardness of a man who was very comfortable in professional contexts and slightly less comfortable in personal ones. "I didn't know what was appropriate. My wife chose it."

I picked it up.

"You have a wife," I said.

"Did you think I appeared from nowhere?" he said.

"I genuinely didn't think about your personal life at all," I said honestly. "Which is probably something I should apologise for."

"It isn't," he said. "It's appropriate professional distance."

I opened the package.

Inside was a small soft toy. A lion, well made, the kind that would last. Simple and good.

"It's perfect," I said.

He nodded once, satisfied.

"How is she?" he asked. "The baby."

"She has opinions about everything," I said. "She communicates them at volume. She has her father's frown and apparently my mouth according to everyone who has seen her."

"She sounds like her mother," he said.

"Everyone keeps saying that," I said.

"Everyone keeps being right," he said.

He stood up to leave and I stood up too and on an impulse I came around the desk and hugged him, which he received with the slight surprise of someone who had not anticipated it and the warmth of someone who didn't mind.

"Thank you," I said. "For everything. For all of it."

"It was a job," he said, which was what he always said.

"It was more than that," I said, which was what I always said back.

He almost smiled.

Then he left.

I stood at my office window for a moment after he went, looking out at the city, holding the small lion he had brought for my daughter, and I thought about all the people who had shown up this year in various capacities and done what needed doing and been what needed being.

Bode and his quiet competence.

Detective Ade and his careful honesty.

Chidi making tea in my kitchen at two in the morning.

Marcus driving four hours without stopping.

Sarah saying whatever you need, just call me.

Ethan on the floor watching cameras.

Damien in the hallway.

All of them.

I put the lion on my desk beside the photographs.

Three photographs. Ethan and Richie from Christmas. Damien and me from our wedding. All four of us from Richie's last birthday.

I needed to add a new one.

All five of us.

I made a note to arrange it and went back to work.