As they rounded up their idyllic day, in simple acts of ordinary rebellion. Wining and dining, just the both of them, she wished everyday would be the same.
That tomorrow, he would not slip his mask back on till further notice.
"Do you regret this?" she couldn't help but ask. She didn't mean the day, but the larger thing that floated above them all the time like a chandelier, beautiful, heavy, always ready to drop.
"Which part?" he said, because he was meticulous and honest, sometimes infuriatingly unambiguous .
"The part where you asked me to marry you and I said yes."
He turned his head and looked at her as if he were memorizing not to forget, but to keep. "No," he said. "Not a minute. Not for a second."
"Even when it's a PR disaster?"She asked again.
"Especially then," When he turned, the corners of his mouth told her he meant it.
She was relieved.
He ordered dinner without asking because he remembered what she liked, when she was tired. She let him because remembering was a form of devotion and she was learning to take those without apologizing.
Everything felt so surreal. How he remembered the tiny details about her even though they barely saw each other as proper couples, amazed her.
This was a fairy tale with the man she didn't mind loving, if only he wasn't the Blackwood billionaire.
The food arrived, and so did a small envelope from the desk downstairs. The kind that always looked like a gift, you didn't want to open. He set the envelope aside without comment.
They ate on the bed again, because the silent unspoken theme of the day was breaking rules.
After, they'd put the plates away. He turned his phone over, unlocked it, and set it on the duvet between them like a witness.
"You asked me earlier," he said. " About who was calling.
It was my ex."The word hung there. Not heavy, exactly. Not light, either. Real.
"She sent a text first," he added. "Something between an apology, a request and a provocation. I didn't read past the preview. I didn't pick up." Ashley nodded, as her chest heaved in relief.
"Thank you for telling me." His mouth did that brief, private tilt she had learned meant relief. "There's more," he said. "And it's the part I owe you without hedging."
He pulled up an email chain, then a neat, brutal report, IP trace summary, timestamps, a column of addresses, as he slid the phone closer, so she could see."We traced the leak," he said. "The License leak."
She felt the old heat of that weekend flare in her bones. The glitter and tequila breath and the way her ring had rolled to a stop like a dare.
And then the days after, the bright ugly lies of the headlines that sold their intimacy to the public as utility.
"The IP belongs to Charles," he said. Controlled anger, not dramatics.
"Our Attorney."She stared at the line that had been a suspicion and was now a fact. Something about the clarity made her vision steady instead of wild.
"And you're sure?"
"Neville is sure," he said. "Our private investigator is also sure.
The server logs are unambiguous.
The transfer happened at his office, on a machine assigned to him. We're still checking whether the physical action was his or someone who used his credentials. But the system says, "Charles."
"Why?" she asked. It wasn't rhetorical. She wanted an answer that would make sense.
"Money, power, greed,grudge, the list is endless, who knows," he said. Then, after a beat, because he refused to be lazy even with the truth .
"And pressure. May be he's in debt. There's a sick relative he pays for, or an old mistake he's cleaning with interest. They dangled a number and a leash."
"Who is 'they'?" Ashley asked.His gaze held hers, steady and unafraid of not knowing. "We don't have the face," he said.
"We have a hand.It's complicated to explain, but there are digital footprints,soon we would know."
"And Charles?" she asked again, because humanity deserved to be weaved back through the mess.
"What do we do with him?"
"We would confront him with Neville present," Julian said.
"We protect the asset . We decide whether he's salvageable as a witness or rot as a liability. We do not blow this up, because I want to throw a chair.
"She looked at him, at the precision he wore when he was holding himself together for two people, not one.
"You want to throw a chair?""Desperately," he said, and gave her a smile that only existed for her in this room.
"But I also want out of this with our interests intact, and throwing chairs seldom fix things."
"True," she said softly. He reached for her hand again, his thumb finding the same place on her wrist like a map they'd both memorized.
"I need you to know I'm not hiding this," he said. "I'm not hiding anything. If you want the rest of the emails, the raw logs, the investigator's affidavits, I'll give you all of it. If you want to go at him yourself, I'll put you in the room."
She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath, until that last line knocked the air out of her in a sound that was almost a laugh. "I don't need to be with him in the room," she said. "I need you to keep doing this. The telling. The showing. At least I know we are making heads way."
"I can do that," he said. "I will do that."
They sat in the soft lamp light with the ugly facts lit between them. She felt the architecture of what they had built settle on its foundations. Not because it was romantic. Because it was an adult thing to do, telling each other the hard truth.
The house made a small satisfied noise somewhere, the way expensive houses do when no one is watching. She leaned her head to his shoulder. He rested his cheek on her hair. For a handful of minutes they let the silence knit.
Then Ashley said, "What did your ex text?""A half-apology," he said. "A half-threat wrapped in nostalgia and demands. It read like a person who wanted me to remember things only she could sell me."
"And you don't," Ashley said. It was a question."I don't," he replied.
"I remember enough to know what not to buy."She nodded, and let that be.
The shape of what was coming had edges, they would bleed on them tomorrow.
Tonight they could choose softness without lying about the blades.
She kept waiting for him to bring up the small simple envelope that had come with their food. He wouldn't bulge. She couldn't ask without sounding nosey and insecure.
So she kept quiet, telling herself she would bid her time quietly while she searched his study room, whenever he wasn't home. Simply because what you don't know these days can and will kill you