Chapter 6 The First Misunderstanding
The rest of that afternoon passed without incident.
Zael went back to his desk like nothing had happened.
No follow-up questions. No lingering looks in my direction. Just that same focused composure he wore the way other people wore jackets… naturally, without thinking about it.
I went back to mine and did the same.
But underneath everything I was running a quiet calculation.
He had been standing behind me in that corridor. Close enough to have heard at minimum the tail end of my conversation with Odette.
The specific part I had been careful about — the part where I’d confirmed the arrangement existed and promised to keep it from him.
If he’d heard that he would have questions.
And if Zael Morrow had questions he struck me as exactly the kind of man who went looking for answers himself rather than waiting for them to arrive.
I needed to be prepared for that.
The three-thirty wrapped up without complications.
By five-fifteen the floor had thinned considerably. Zael’s door remained closed. Ms. Hana had already left for the day. I finished my remaining tasks, organized my desk and gathered my things with the same unhurried energy I’d maintained since morning.
Consistency mattered. People remembered the version of you they saw most often and I needed the version of me this office remembered to be calm, capable and completely unremarkable.
I was almost at the elevator when my phone vibrated.
Lena.
You weren’t in class today. Is everything okay?
I stared at the message for a moment. Lena had been my closest friend since our first year of university… sharp, warm, the kind of person who noticed absences before you had the chance to explain them.
Long day. Tell you everything tomorrow.
I sent it and stepped into the elevator.
On the ride down I thought about Odette’s warning.
Not a colleague. Not a friend. Not your mother.
Especially not Zael.
The next morning arrived grey and close.
I dressed carefully, ate breakfast under Gerald’s watchful indifference and arrived at Morrow Enterprises at eight fifty-four. Six minutes early this time.
The building had already started to feel familiar in the way that spaces did when you paid close attention to them. The particular echo of the lobby, the way the thirty-second floor settled into its own quiet the moment the elevator doors opened.
Ms. Hana was already at her desk. She looked up when I came in and gave her usual short nod.
Zael’s door was closed.
I sat down and started working.
An hour passed. Then two.
The door stayed closed longer than yesterday and when it finally opened just before ten Zael moved through the floor with the particular focused energy of a man who had already been thinking hard about something for several hours and hadn’t finished yet.
He dropped a file on my desk without stopping.
“Callum.”
“Mr. Morrow.”
“The Hargrove contract. Cross-reference clauses seven through twelve against the standard liability terms we used in the Brennan deal last quarter. Flag anything that doesn’t align.”
“I’ll have it before lunch.”
He was already halfway back to his office.
I opened the file and got to work.
Lunch came and went at my desk.
The Hargrove cross-reference took most of the morning but I had it flagged, annotated and waiting outside his door before twelve-thirty. He picked it up without comment. Forty minutes later it came back with two of my flagged items circled and a single word written beside each one.
Correct.
That was apparently what approval looked like from Zael Morrow.
I filed it away and moved on.
The afternoon was quieter than the day before. Two calls. One rescheduled meeting. A courier delivery that needed signing for. Normal unremarkable work that kept my hands busy while my mind stayed on the quiet problem running underneath everything.
Gerald had placed me here for a reason.
Odette had warned me Gerald was planning something from both sides.
And Zael had been standing in that corridor long enough to have heard something he wasn’t supposed to.
I was still turning all three pieces over when my phone buzzed on my desk.
Unknown number.
The ground shifted under my feet before I even read it.
I know you were given this number. I’d like to meet. Name a time.
No greeting. No name. No explanation of how he’d connected my number to whatever he was investigating.
But I knew exactly who it was.
Zael had my number from the ceremony. And whatever he’d heard in that corridor yesterday had been enough to make him start pulling threads.
I stared at the message.
Across the floor his door was closed.
I put my phone face down on the desk and kept working. I needed to think before I responded to that and thinking clearly required not letting the pressure of it show on my face while I was still sitting twenty feet from his office.
By four o’clock I still hadn’t replied.
By four forty-five my phone buzzed again.
This time it wasn’t the unknown number.
It was Lena.
Can I ask you something weird? That address Gerald arranged for you… the one you were registered at before you moved into the house properly. Is anyone still using it?
I frowned at the screen.
That address was my old university accommodation — a flat I’d been registered at officially during my first two years before Gerald had insisted I move back under his roof. My former flatmate Bria still lived there. We weren’t close anymore but the flat was technically still connected to my name in a few old records.
Why? I typed back.
Because there was a man outside it this afternoon asking questions about you. Tall. Dark suit. Bria said he stood outside for a while then left without knocking.
The hair on the back of my neck rose slowly.
Tall. Dark suit.
I kept my face completely neutral.
Zael had gone looking for answers.
And the address connected to my name had led him directly to Bria’s flat — not mine. He hadn’t knocked.
Which meant he’d either heard something through the door or seen something that had given him an impression before he ever introduced himself.
Bria was many things. Loud was the primary one.
Whatever Zael had heard or seen outside that flat had nothing to do with me and everything to do with a flatmate whose personal life had always been spectacularly uninhibited.
This was not good.
I was still processing exactly how not good it was when my phone buzzed for the third time that afternoon.
Not Lena. Not the unknown number.
A new message from the number Odette had originally given me for the arrangement.
Zael’s number.
Four words.
I want a divorce.
No context. No explanation. No indication of what specifically had pushed him to this. Just four words delivered with the clean finality of a man who had seen something, decided what it meant and acted on that decision before the hour was out.
My teeth pressed together.
He had gone to that address, heard something through the door, assumed it belonged to me and drawn the worst possible conclusion without once considering he might have the wrong picture entirely.
And now he wanted out of a marriage that was the only thing standing between me and Gerald’s plan.
I was still staring at those four words trying to decide exactly how to respond when movement near the elevator caught my eye.
I looked up.
Everything in me went cold.
Vivienne was walking through the office doors.
Dressed perfectly. Composed and deliberate. Her eyes moved across the floor with the practiced ease of a woman who had thought carefully about exactly where she was going before she arrived.
She stopped at Ms. Hana’s desk, said something I couldn’t hear from across the floor and smiled the particular smile she reserved for people she needed something from.
Ms. Hana picked up her phone.
Vivienne’s gaze drifted across the floor while she waited.
It landed on me for exactly one second — cool, unreadable, telling me absolutely nothing.
Then she looked away like I wasn’t there at all.
My phone was still in my hand with Zael’s four words on the screen.
My stepsister had just walked into my husband’s office.
And I had no idea how long she’d known exactly where to find him.