Too Late To Claim His Hidden Heir

Three years away, and the first thing my hometown gave me was a camera flash in the face.

"Ms. Sauvage! Over here! Is it true Sauvage Capital is moving its headquarters back to the city?"

I smiled for the lens and kept walking. "It's true I'm back. The rest you'll read in the press release."

"Just one more! Are you here to invest or to shop?"

"Both," I said. "Shopping for talent."

The reporter laughed like I'd handed him a gift. I hadn't. I'd handed him nothing.

The Grand Meridian ballroom was packed with old money and new ambition. Crystal glasses, black ties, bad champagne in good bottles. Somewhere in this room were founders with ideas worth betting on. That was why I'd come.

That was the only reason I'd come.

My associate, Tobin Okafor, fell into step beside me with a tablet hugged to his chest. "Okay, three targets tonight. The biotech kid by the bar. The two women from the logistics startup. And a guy who keeps calling his app 'Uber for grief.'"

"Cross off the grief guy."

"Already did." He glanced up. "You good? You've been chewing the inside of your cheek since the car."

"I'm fine."

"You said that in the car too."

"Then it's still true."

A young man in a rented tux nearly collided with us, hand already out. "Ms. Sauvage? Dev Ramaswamy, Lumen Bio. I've been trying to get a meeting with your fund for six months."

"Six months?" I shook his hand. "I've only been back three days."

"I emailed you in Lisbon. And Singapore. And, uh, Reykjavik."

Tobin snorted. I liked the kid already.

"Persistence is cheap, Mr. Ramaswamy. What's your burn rate?"

He blinked, then answered without stumbling. Good sign. I asked about his patents. He answered that too. I was just reaching for my card when the room shifted.

You feel it before you see it. A ripple. A dozen heads turning the same direction, the way grass bends when something big walks through it.

"Oh," Tobin murmured. "Heavy hitter."

I looked up.

Roark Thibault stood near the center of the ballroom like he'd been built there. Head of the Thibault Group. Shipping, real estate, half the skyline outside these windows. Three years hadn't softened him. If anything, they'd sharpened every edge.

And draped against his side, one manicured hand flat on his chest, was Zoriana Melentie.

Socialite. Heiress. The face on every charity poster in the city.

She was laughing at something he'd said. He was smiling down at her.

He used to smile at me like that.

"Ms. Sauvage?" Dev's voice sounded far away. "Are you—should I come back?"

"No." I pressed my card into his palm without looking. "Call my office Monday. Ten a.m. Don't be late."

"I won't! Thank you!"

He bolted. Tobin didn't.

"You know him," he said quietly. Not a question.

"Everyone knows him."

"That's not what I meant, and you know that's not what I meant."

I lifted my glass and drank. The champagne tasted like metal.

Across the room, Roark tilted his head toward a senator, nodding, bored. His gaze drifted over the crowd the way it always did, measuring, dismissing.

Then it landed on me.

And stopped.

The smile didn't fade. It broke. Just snapped off his face like a light switch, and what was left underneath was something I'd never seen on him. Not in two years of loving him. Not even that last night.

"Mairenn," Tobin whispered. "He's staring at you."

"I noticed."

"Like, really staring."

"I noticed, Tobin."

Roark moved.

He didn't ease away from Zoriana. He pulled his arm free so hard she stumbled sideways on her stilettos, her champagne sloshing down the front of her silver gown.

"Roark!" Her voice cracked high across the ballroom. "What are you doing?"

He didn't answer her. He didn't even look back.

The room gasped as one. Phones came up. Somebody's laugh died halfway out. The string quartet in the corner kept playing, oblivious, which somehow made it worse.

He was cutting straight through the crowd. People scrambled out of his path like he was on fire.

Rain.

That was what I remembered first. Always the rain, hammering the windshield of his car, the wipers losing the fight.

*"My family won't survive a scandal, Mairenn. I won't be the man who destroys the Thibault name. So I'm giving you up."*

His voice had been so calm. Like reading terms off a contract.

*"Look at me and say that,"* I'd begged.

He had. That was the worst part. He'd looked right at me and said it again.

My fingers clamped around the stem of my glass.

"Tobin," I said. "Where's the nearest exit?"

"What? You just got here. We have the logistics women at nine—"

"Side door. Where is it?"

He pointed with his tablet, eyes wide. "Past the dessert table. Behind the ice swan."

"Reschedule the logistics women."

"Mairenn—"

I set my glass on a passing waiter's tray and walked. Not fast. Fast would look like running, and I hadn't spent three years building a name from nothing to be photographed fleeing a man.

But I wasn't slow either.

The ice swan dripped onto its silver platter. Beyond it, a plain gray door with a brass push bar. Ten steps. Eight.

Behind me, the murmurs were growing teeth.

"Who is she?"

"Isn't that the Sauvage woman? The one from Europe?"

"Did he just shove Zoriana Melentie in front of the whole city?"

Five steps.

A hand didn't grab me. He was smarter than that. He simply stepped in front of the door, one broad shoulder planted against the frame, and the brass bar disappeared behind his body.

I stopped so short my heel skidded on the marble.

Up close, he looked worse. Shadows under his eyes. A small scar through his left eyebrow that hadn't been there before. His tie was crooked, like he'd yanked it on the way over.

He was breathing hard. Roark Thibault, who never hurried for anything.

"Move," I said.

"No."

"There are two hundred people watching you, Mr. Thibault."

"Let them watch." His voice came out rough, low. "Three years. You disappeared for three years, and you walk back in here like it's nothing?"

I laughed. I hadn't planned to. It just came out, short and bright and ugly, and his jaw locked like I'd struck him.

"Disappeared?" I said. "That's a funny word for being thrown away."

Behind him, the brass bar gleamed. Behind me, Zoriana's heels were coming fast across the marble.

Roark leaned in until only I could hear him.

"You don't know what happened that night," he said. "And you're not leaving this room until you do."