Chapter 67 No More Wasting Time
Damien found proper tea from somewhere.
Nobody asked how. He simply reappeared twenty minutes after Odette made her request with a paper cup that smelled considerably better than the hospital version and handed it to her without comment. She accepted it with satisfaction.
“You can all go home,” she said.
“No,” Zael said.
“Zael…”
“We’re staying until the overnight results come back.” He said it the way he said things he had decided and was not revisiting. “Damien will go. Seraphine and I will stay.”
Odette looked at him.
Then at me.
Then she drank her tea and said nothing which was as close to acceptance as she got when she disagreed with a decision but recognized she wasn’t going to win it.
Damien left at ten.
The hospital settled into its overnight quiet.
Odette fell asleep at eleven.
Her breathing was even. The monitor beside her beeped in its steady rhythm. The nurse had been in twice and both times left satisfied with what she saw.
Zael and I moved to the small family waiting area at the end of the corridor… two chairs, a window overlooking a car park, the stripped-down intimacy of a space that existed purely for people who had nowhere else to be.
We sat.
For a while neither of us said anything.
Then Zael said: “She told you to make it safe.”
I looked at him.
“I heard through the door,” he said. “Before I came in.” He held my gaze. “She told you there was a difference between waiting for me to say it and making it safe to say.”
“Yes.”
“She’s right.” He looked at the window. “I’ve known for a while that the problem wasn’t the words… it was the ground under them.” He turned back to me. “I’ve spent a long time making sure no one could take anything from me by keeping everything at a distance. It worked. For years it worked.” A pause. “Then you walked into my office and started closing distances I hadn’t noticed were open.”
“I wasn’t trying to,” I said.
“I know. That’s what made it impossible to manage.” He held my gaze steadily. “You didn’t want anything from me. You weren’t performing. You just… were. Completely. In every room you walked into.” He exhaled. “Do you know how rare that is?”
“Zael…”
“I’m not finished.” He said it quietly. “You asked me what I was going to say earlier. In the kitchen. The part I stopped at.” He met my eyes directly. “I was going to say… it was always yours. The estate. The company. Your name on documents that should have carried it. All of it.” He paused. “And I was going to say… so am I. For a while now. I just didn’t know how to say it in a way that wasn’t… enormous.”
The waiting area was completely silent.
“Enormous,” I said.
“That’s the word.” He didn’t look away. “It felt enormous. Like saying it would change the weight of everything and I wasn’t sure if that was safe.” He held my gaze. “Turns out spending months almost saying it is considerably more exhausting than just saying it.”
I looked at him.
This man.
Who had been built to keep things at distance and had been quietly choosing proximity since the first week…. coffee on a desk, a door held open, a body placed between me and every threat that came through every door.
“Zael.”
“Yes.”
“I know.” I held his gaze. “I’ve known for a while. I was waiting for you to catch up.”
Something moved across his face. Fast. Then a breath.
“You were waiting,” he said.
“Patiently,” I said. “Mostly.”
“Mostly.”
“The almost-saying-it was getting slightly annoying by month two,” I said.
He looked at me for a moment.
Then he laughed.
Short. Real. The laugh I had heard exactly once before and had not forgotten.
It lasted three seconds.
Then he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked at me from close range with the open unguarded expression that had been appearing more frequently and retreating less completely each time.
“I love you,” he said.
Simple and direct.
Like a man who had been holding something heavy for a long time and had finally put it down in exactly the right place.
The words landed with the full weight of everything they had been building toward since a civil ceremony office and two people who hadn’t looked at each other properly.
I held his gaze.
“I know,” I said.
“Seraphine.”
“I love you too,” I said. “I have for a while. Longer than was probably strategically sensible given the circumstances.”
“Nothing about us has been strategically sensible,” he said.
“No,” I agreed. “It really hasn’t.”
He reached across and took my hand
I held it.
We sat in a hospital waiting area at eleven-thirty at night with Odette sleeping down the corridor and the city quiet outside the window and the full weight of something finally said properly between us.
It was not how I had imagined this moment.
It was better.
My phone rang at midnight.
Claire.
I looked at Zael. He nodded.
I answered. “Tell me it’s good news.”
“It’s complicated news,” she said. Her voice was tight. “Gerald’s lawyers in Portugal filed a procedural challenge to the extradition request three hours ago. They’re arguing a technical violation in how the Interpol flag was processed… something connected to the bilateral treaty language.” A pause. “If the Portuguese court accepts the challenge the extradition proceedings are suspended pending review.”
“How long does that take?” I asked.
“Months,” she said. “Potentially six. Possibly longer depending on which judge gets the case.” Another beat. “Gerald’s team timed this deliberately. They waited until the estate case was largely resolved and then filed, knowing that the criminal extradition is the last thing standing between him and whatever life he’s trying to build in Portugal.”
“He’s not finished,” I murmured.
“He was never going to be finished quietly,” Claire said. “I’m already drafting a counter-filing. But I need you available tomorrow morning. Early.”
“I’ll be there.”
I ended the call.
Zael was already watching my face.
“Gerald,” he said.
“His lawyers found a loophole in the extradition treaty language.” I held his gaze. “He could delay proceedings by six months. Maybe more.”
Zael was quiet for a moment.
“Then we close the loophole,” he said.
“Claire’s working on it.”
“Good.” He squeezed my hand once. “Tonight we stay. Tomorrow we fight.” He met my eyes. “In that order.”
I looked at him.
Six months.
Gerald in Portugal buying himself time with procedural language while Pennick’s testimony waited, David’s evidence sat filed and ready, and the last thread of justice for my father hung on a Portuguese court’s reading of a bilateral treaty clause.
“He’s not going to win this.”
“No,” Zael answered. “He isn’t.”
He held my hand. We sat with the monitor beeping down the corridor and everything we had just said settling into something permanent.