ANASTASIA
I led him upstairs. My cramped apartment versus his polished presence. The contrast was almost funny.
"Nice place," he said.
I glanced back at him. He was looking at my secondhand couch, the bookshelves groaning with legal texts, the tiny kitchen with its chipped countertops. He meant it, Damien always meant things, but I knew what he was seeing. A space that was clean but tired. Functional. Nothing extra. The apartment of someone who'd been scraping by for years and hadn't quite stopped.
"It's quiet," I said. "And the landlord fixes things when they break. Mostly." I headed to the kitchen. "Coffee?"
"Please."
I started the pot and leaned against the counter. Three years. I hadn't seen him in three years. Not since I started at the firm. He'd gone to Zurich for some consulting job and I'd buried myself in eighty-hour weeks. Texts on birthdays. A call here and there. Then the calls got shorter and the texts got further apart until we were basically strangers who used to know each other.
He'd never even seen this apartment. I'd moved in after we lost touch.
"Seriously, Damien. The car? The clothes?" I gestured at him. "You look like a completely different person. What happened to the guy who wore the same hoodie for three weeks straight?"
He laughed. "I still have that hoodie."
"Please tell me you don't."
"It's sentimental." He leaned against the doorframe. He'd been like that since the day we met in Contracts class. Deflecting with humor. Hiding real things behind jokes. It used to drive me crazy.
"Remember how I used to joke about my mysterious European origins?" he asked.
"How could I forget. Every time someone asked about your parents, you'd put on that terrible accent and say you were a deposed prince in hiding."
"And you'd roll your eyes and tell me to stop being dramatic."
"You were always dramatic."
"Turns out I wasn't that far off." He ran a hand through his hair. "My father is Alistair Windsor."
I paused, coffee pot halfway to the cup. "Windsor."
"Yeah."
"As in the royal family Windsor."
"The very one. The Queen's brother."
I set the pot down and turned to face him. "Your father is the Queen's brother."
"Apparently." He sighed. "DNA test. Private investigators. The whole ordeal. He tracked me down six months ago."
I knew the public facts. Duke Alistair, the Queen's older brother. His wife, the Duchess, had died years ago. A car accident, if I remembered right. They'd never had children. At least that was the official story.
"But the Duchess," I said slowly. "She passed away. And they never..."
"She wasn't my mother." His voice was flat. "My mother was someone else. Someone he was involved with before the marriage, apparently. The investigators found records of her checking me into an orphanage, but after that the trail goes cold."
An orphanage. I remembered the late nights in the library when he'd let things slip. The foster homes. The shuffling from family to family. He always joked about it, the way he joked about everything, but I knew it had left marks.
"Are they still looking for her?"
He shrugged. "Maybe she's out there. Maybe not. I'm not holding my breath."
He said it lightly, but I heard the old wound underneath. I'd spent law school angry at my mother's drinking and the string of men she brought home. Damien had spent it angry at ghosts he couldn't even name. We recognized that in each other early on. It was half the reason we became friends.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"It's fine. Or it's not. I'm still figuring that part out." He took the coffee I handed him. "What I do know is that I've been thrown into a world I don't understand. Trusts that date back centuries. Estate laws with more loopholes than a tax code. And everyone, everyone, has an angle."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It's terrifying." He met my eyes. "Which is why I'm here. I need you, Ana."
"Damien."
"Just hear me out. My father assembled a team. Lawyers. Strategists. Media people. They're all brilliant and they all report to him. I need someone who reports to me. Someone I trust completely."
"So hire a friend from Zurich. Or London. You must know people there by now."
"I don't want people. I want you."
The words hung in the air.
"You built the Pierson antitrust defense from scratch," he said. "I know your name wasn't on the final filing, I saw what that firm did to you, but that was your work. You see angles other people miss. You anticipate problems before they exist. I need that mind."
"Damien, my expertise is corporate litigation. Not royal politics."
"Same thing. Just with older money and worse manners."
I almost smiled. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not exactly in high demand right now. My career is over. Mark Caldwell made sure of that."
"I know."
"Then you know associating with me could be a liability. There are whispers."
"I know about the whispers." He set his coffee down. "Misconduct. Negligence. Unprofessional behavior. All of it lies, and all of it traceable back to one man who couldn't handle being told no."
"You've been checking up on me."
"Of course I have. I was planning to make this offer before I even got on the plane. The blacklisting just made it more urgent."
I didn't know what to say. This was Damien. The guy who'd pulled all-nighters with me during moot court prep. Who brought me soup when I got the flu during finals and couldn't get out of bed. Who sat with me in the library for hours, not because he needed help studying, but because he knew I hated being alone. The only person who'd never once looked at me like I was a prize to be won.
He pulled a leather folder from his jacket. "Executive Secretary and Strategist. Think Chief of Staff. You'll have your own team, full resources, and a salary that'll make whatever you were making in Seattle look like minimum wage. Relocation to London. Housing included."
"I can't just."
"You can." He stepped closer. "Ana, you weren't blacklisted because you failed. You were blacklisted because you stood up to a predator. That's not a liability to me. That's exactly what I need. I don't want someone who folds when powerful men apply pressure. I want the woman who said no and meant it."
I stared at the folder. It was real. The letterhead. The figures. The terms.
"Let them whisper in Seattle," he said. "We're playing on a different stage now. Your past doesn't define you. Your work does. And I know what your work looks like."
I thought about the hotel room. The ripped dress. The green eyes. The shame I'd been carrying since I woke up. Maybe I didn't deserve this. Maybe I was a fraud and a thief and a dozen other things.
But Damien was looking at me like I was the answer to a question he'd been asking for months.
"You'd really take that risk?"
"The only risk is not having you."
I let out a breath. It felt like the first real breath I'd taken all day.
"Okay."
His eyes widened. "Okay?"
"Okay, Damien. I'm in."
The grin that broke across his face was the first familiar thing I'd seen all morning. He pulled me into a hug, fierce and quick. It felt like a pact.
---
Later, over pizza, I told him everything. Not about Dominic. I still couldn't touch that. But about Mark Caldwell. The stolen credit on the Morrison case. The Henderson merger I'd built from nothing. The Friday night in his office when I'd said no for the last time. The Monday morning when my access card stopped working.
Damien listened without interrupting. His expression went cold in a way I'd never seen before.
"He's going to regret that," he said quietly.
"It's done."
"It's not done. One day, when we have the power, we'll make sure he knows exactly what he destroyed."
I didn't argue. I was too tired to argue.
---
The hour grew late. He stifled a yawn.
"Any chance I could crash here? That sofa looks suspiciously comfortable."
I looked at the sofa. Then at him. "The sofa's for show. The bed's a king. We've survived worse."
A beat. "Only if you're sure."
"I'm sure."
We brushed our teeth side by side in the small bathroom. Familiar. Easy. Like no time had passed.
I changed in the bathroom. When I came out in my pajamas, he was already under the covers, scrolling his phone. He glanced up. For half a second, his gaze flickered, something male and appreciative, before he masked it with a smile.
I slipped into my side, keeping distance. The dark was thick with things unsaid.
London. A Duke. A chance to build something from the ashes.
"Ana?" His voice was quiet.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For saying yes."
"You gave me a way out, Damien." My voice was barely a whisper in the dark. "You have no idea what that means."
"We're a team." He said it softly. "Always have been."
The word hung there, solid and safe. But as I closed my eyes, my body still aching from that night in Seattle, I felt the gap between who he thought I was and who I'd become.
I didn't sleep much.