Chapter 4

The morning moved faster than Mia expected.

She had prepared herself for awkwardness, for the stares, the whispers, the careful curiosity of people encountering the Scott daughter who had spent years making herself scarce. What she had not prepared for was how natural it felt to walk through those doors beside Mason.

The Scott Group headquarters was everything she had imagined and more. Made of glass and steel every floor they toured told a chapter of her family’s story. Finance. Asset management. Banking. Departments that ran like clockwork under people who had given their careers to a name she had been running from.

Eyes followed her everywhere. Nobody murmured. Nobody dared.

Mason introduced her to staff with the easy confidence of a man entirely at home in his inheritance. Her father’s oldest staff looked at her like he was seeing a ghost and recovered quickly enough to call her the image of her mother.

Then there was Uncle Charles.

He stood at the entrance of the third floor conference room and looked at her the way her father looked at unexpected developments with the particular stillness of a man recalibrating. He said nothing for a moment. Just looked.

“You came,” he said finally.

“I came,” Mia said simply.

Something shifted in his expression. Not warmth exactly. But acknowledgment. 

Her office was on the fourth floor with a view of Dorcount city that made years of chosen smallness feel suddenly absurd. Lily from the finance team was already waiting young, efficient, with the organized energy of someone who took their job seriously and expected the same in return.

“I’ll be bringing you up to speed on our current portfolio structure,” Lily said. “There’s a lot to cover but we’ll take it at whatever pace works for you.”

“Whatever pace gets me functional fastest,” Mia said.

Lily smiled. They were going to get along fine.

She was midway through her second file when her phone rang. An unknown number with her old neighborhood code.

Her neighbor’s voice was careful. The voice of someone delivering news they weren’t sure would be welcome.

Allie had slept outside her apartment door the entire night. She was still there. Noah had come looking twice. Her neighbor had turned him away both times but wanted Mia to know.

Mia sat with that image for a moment Allie on the floor outside her door, the same floor they had sat on together during countless late nights, the same door Allie had knocked on a hundred times over their years of friendship.

“Thank you,” Mia said. “Please ignore them both.”

She hung up.

Mia hid her real identity so well she didn’t even tell Allie. She was waiting for the perfect time.

She had a dinner to attend and had booked a spa session so she had to leave the office early.

She booked two hours. Came out feeling like herself again, or at least a version of herself she recognized. The Scott daughter, if that was who she was choosing to be now.

The card had given a time. The car arrived minutes earlier.

The restaurant was on the other side of town the kind of establishment that didn’t advertise because its clientele didn’t need to be told where to find it. The car pulled up and two guards appeared at the entrance, falling into position with the practiced ease of men who did this regularly.

The waiter led her through the main floor to a private dining room upstairs. The restaurant was empty. Not closed, the staff were present, attentive, perfectly arranged. But every other table sat unoccupied.

He had booked the entire restaurant.

She wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or unsettled. She was both.

“Mr. Ethan?”

He turned.

Mia stopped walking.

Tall. Broad shoulders. A sharp jawline. Perfectly crafted body. He was without question the most attractive man she had ever been in a room with.

Amidst admiring his physique, his face was familiar.

Then it hit her, the bar. The corridor. The suit.

Oh no.

The recognition arrived on his face at the same moment it arrived on hers. His eyes moved over her with an expression she could only describe as pointed. The silence stretched between them.

He gestured to the seat across from him.

“Please sit.”

She sat. 

“I owe you an explanation,” she said. 

Something moved briefly at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. “That isn’t how you normally behave, I assume.”

“It isn’t.” She met his gaze directly. “Four year relationship. It was our anniversary and my ex had just cheated on me” A pause. “I don’t normally drink like that. I’ve never done that before in my life.”

Ethan looked at her for a moment in the way people look when they are deciding how much weight to give what they’ve just been told. Then he reached for the menu.

“If this alliance is to work,” he said, “there will be rules.”

“What rules?”

“They’ll be sent to you in writing.” He glanced up briefly. “For now, shall we eat?”

They ate. Course after course from a kitchen that was clearly performing at its best.

There was silence between them as they ate.

“Did you enjoy the meal?” Ethan asked when the last course was cleared.

“Very much,” Mia said honestly. “The chef is exceptional.”

A guard appeared at his shoulder before he could reply. Bent low. Murmured something directly into Ethan’s ear that nobody else in the room could hear. She watched his expression change.

He set his napkin on the table.

“Miss Scott.” His voice was perfectly even. “Something urgent requires my attention. He stood. “You’ll receive full details of the alliance proposal within the week.”

He left before she could respond. 

The dining room felt larger with just her in it.

She sat for a moment in the expensive quiet he had left behind and turned the evening over in her mind. The rules he had mentioned but not explained. The way he had looked at her when she mentioned Noah, not with sympathy exactly, but with the careful attention of someone filing information. The fact that he had stayed for the dinner despite what she did at the club.

She thought about her father. About what a rejection from the Brooks would mean, not just for her but for the position she had just walked back into. She had returned to the Scott name with nothing to offer except herself and a finance degree she had spent years applying elsewhere. She could not afford to make enemies of the first family her father placed in front of her.

Don’t ruin this, Mia.