Ch: 9 The Vane Standard.

Nerissa's POV

Four months had passed since I walked out of the Blackwood mansion, and my body had changed in ways that no longer fit neatly under a tailored blazer. I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my private office suite, smoothing my hands over the curve of my stomach beneath a structured black dress that had been altered twice already this month, and I felt none of the fear I once associated with this pregnancy. There was no shame here, no husband waiting in the next room to remind me that I had trapped him. There was only the quiet, steady thrum of a life I had built entirely on my own terms.

"Miss Vane, the Hendricks Group is on line two, and Lucien says the Fouchard situation needs your signature before noon," my assistant, Priya, said through the intercom, her voice clipped with the particular urgency that came from working for me.

"Tell Hendricks I'll call back in ten minutes, and send Lucien in," I replied, lowering myself carefully into my chair. My back had started to ache by mid-morning these days, but I refused to let it show in front of anyone who wasn't already inside my inner circle.

Lucien walked in a moment later, a folder tucked under his arm, his expression already carrying the faint amusement he reserved for whenever he had good news he wanted to savor before delivering it.

"You look like a woman who is about to fire someone," I said, not looking up from my screen.

"I look like a man who has been vindicated," he corrected, dropping the folder onto my desk. "Fouchard tendered his resignation this morning. Quietly, of course. He's telling the press it's for 'personal reasons,' but we both know it's because he finally understood that voting against you three times in four months was not a survivable strategy."

"Good." I flipped the folder open, scanning the resignation letter with the same detachment I gave every piece of paperwork that crossed my desk. Few months ago, Fouchard had called me a girl playing house. Now he couldn't look me in the eye during board meetings. I felt no triumph in it, only the cold satisfaction of a problem correctly solved. "Send Lemont in after lunch. If he wants to keep his seat, he can start by seconding the Hendricks acquisition instead of stalling it for the third time."

"You've turned this board into a very obedient room, Nerissa," Lucien said, settling into the chair across from me, his silver eyes studying me, equal parts respect and something else I chose not to examine too closely. "They thought you were a placeholder heiress riding your grandfather's name. Now half of them are afraid to schedule meetings without checking your calendar first."

"They should be afraid," I said simply. "Fear keeps people honest. Respect is earned slower, and I don't have the patience to wait for it from men who spent five years underestimating me before I even walked through the door."

He laughed, low and genuine. "Spoken like a true Vane."

Lucien rose, but he paused at the door, looking back at me with an expression that had softened into something closer to concern. "You've been in this office since six this morning, Nerissa. The doctor said"

"The doctor said to avoid stress, not avoid working," I cut in, though not unkindly. "I built this company back up in four months, Lucien. I'm not going to hand it back to men like Fouchard because I'm uncomfortable in my own chair."

"No one is asking you to hand anything back," he said gently. "I'm only asking you to remember that you're allowed to sit down occasionally without the world ending."

I looked at him for a long moment, softened despite myself by the rare sincerity in his voice, so different from the sharp, transactional warmth I'd grown used to from the man I used to call my husband. "Noted," I said finally. "Now go deal with Lemont before he convinces himself he still has leverage."

He left with a small bow of his head, and I sat alone in the quiet of my office, one hand resting instinctively against the curve of my stomach. The twins I'd learned three weeks ago, in an appointment I'd attended completely alone, that there were two heartbeats instead of one moved beneath my palm, a small, insistent flutter that had become the only thing in my life that felt entirely, uncomplicatedly good.

"You're going to inherit an empire," I murmured to the quiet room, "and neither of you will ever have to earn your place in it by disappearing into a corner and hoping someone notices you."

Outside my window, the Geneva skyline stretched gray and gold in the late afternoon light, a city that had never once asked me to shrink myself to be loved. I turned back to my desk, pulled the Hendricks file toward me, and picked up the phone to call the man on line two, because grief, I had discovered, made an excellent employee when you gave it somewhere to put its hands.