All Chapters of Mr. CEO, You Lost Me Too Late: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

46 Chapters

One Coffee

CHAPTER ELEVENOne CoffeeAria's POVI didn't tell Nina.I know. I know that was wrong. Nina would have had seventeen very reasonable things to say about it and every single one of them would have been correct and I still would have gone anyway, so I decided to save us both the argument.I told her I was stepping out to get some air after work. Which was technically true. The coffee shop Vivienne had suggested was only three streets from the studio. I got air on the way there.It was a small place. The kind that takes its coffee seriously and doesn't apologize for the prices. I arrived five minutes early and sat at a table near the window because I wanted to see her walk in. I wanted a moment to look at her before she could look at me.She arrived exactly on time.In person she was exactly what I remembered from that hotel, and also completely different. The elegance was still there. But she looked tired in a way that careful makeup couldn't entirely hide. There were things behind her

The Truth Has A Name

CHAPTER TWELVEThe Truth Has A NameAlex's POVVivienne walked into his office looking like someone who had already decided that whatever happened next, she was not leaving until she had said everything.He had known her long enough to recognize that expression. She got it rarely. When she did, it meant something serious was coming and there was no point trying to redirect her."Sit down," he said."I'd rather stand." She set her bag on the chair across from him and looked at him directly. "I just came from meeting Aria."The air in the room changed."You met Aria," he repeated."I reached out to her yesterday. She agreed to meet me today." She paused. "I told her things she needed to know. And now I'm going to tell you the same things because you need to know them too."He leaned back in his chair slowly. "Vivienne.""Don't." Her voice was firm. "Don't do the thing where you go cold and shut me out before I've even started. Just listen. For once in your life, Alex, just listen."Some

The Space Between Us

CHAPTER THIRTEENThe Space Between UsAria's POVI almost cancelled three times.The first time was Wednesday night, lying in the dark staring at the ceiling, when I picked up my phone and typed out a message to David Osei saying I had changed my mind. I stared at it for four minutes. Then I deleted it.The second time was Thursday morning when Nina found out.I had told her over breakfast, casually, the way you tell someone something when you want them to think it isn't a big deal because you are still convincing yourself of the same thing. She had set her mug down very carefully and looked at me."You're going," she said."I'm considering it.""Aria.""I have the evidence. Sandra said to document everything and control what information gets out and when. Meeting him while I have something he doesn't know I have is actually strategically smart."Nina stared at me for a long moment. "Is that why you're going? Strategy?"I looked down at my toast.She didn't push it. She just picked he

The Woman In The Car

CHAPTER FOURTEENThe Woman In The CarAria's POVI didn't move.I just stood there on that pavement with my phone in my hand and looked at her through the tinted glass of that black car and she looked back at me. Neither of us blinked. Neither of us looked away.Margaret Cavendish had a way of sitting that made every chair look like a throne. Even now, in the back of a car parked on an ordinary street, she had that posture. Spine straight. Hands folded. The expression of a woman who had never once in her life felt she was in the wrong room.My heart was hammering.But my feet didn't move.That was new too.There was a version of me, the version from six months ago, who would have looked away first. Who would have dropped her eyes and walked quickly in the other direction and cried about it later in a bathroom with the tap running so no one could hear.I looked at her for another long moment.Then I put my phone in my bag, turned around, and walked away.Not running. Walking. There is

Heartbeat

CHAPTER FIFTEENHeartbeatAria's POVI hadn't replied to David Osei's message.Not that night and not the next morning. I had read it four more times, put my phone down, picked it up again, read it a fifth time, and then placed it face down on the nightstand and told myself I would decide in the morning.Morning came. I still hadn't decided.I confronted Nina over breakfast."You told him," I said.She was spreading butter on her bread with complete concentration, the way she does when she is preparing to be unapologetic about something. "I don't know what you're talking about.""Nina.""The butter is very cold this morning. It's not spreading properly.""Nina Ade."She put the knife down and looked at me. "He called me. Yesterday afternoon. He asked if you were okay and I said yes and he asked if there was anything coming up that he should know about and I may have mentioned Friday.""You may have mentioned Friday.""In passing.""It was a prenatal appointment, Nina. Not a coffee sho

Her Vision

CHAPTER SIXTEENHer VersionAria's POVThe morning had been a good one.That was the thing I kept coming back to afterward. It had genuinely been a good morning. The heartbeat. The walk. Alex falling into step beside me without being asked and not making it into something it wasn't. I had arrived at the studio feeling something abit settled and Marcus had immediately put me to work on a problem with the third look that swallowed the next three hours whole.I had not thought about Margaret Cavendish once.Which was probably why the afternoon hit the way it did.Kofi found it first. He had been scrolling his phone during the lunch break, the way he always did, and I heard him go quiet in a particular way that made me look up from my desk."What?" I said.He looked at me. Then at his phone. Then back at me. "It's nothing.""Kofi."He turned the phone slowly toward me.It was a gossip blog. The kind with a red banner across the top and headlines designed to make your stomach drop before y

Maison Elara

CHAPTER SEVENTEENMaison ElaraAria's POVI almost talked myself out of it on the way there.Not because I wasn't interested. I was so interested it was embarrassing. Maison Elara was the kind of name I used to write in the margins of my sketchbooks at twenty two when I still believed that wanting something hard enough counted for something. I had circled it and underlined it and drawn little stars around it like a teenager with a crush.But that was before. Before I became someone's wife and forgot, slowly and completely, that I had ever wanted anything that big.I told Marcus first thing that morning.He was at his desk with his pen already moving when I knocked. He looked up and I told him straight. Jerome Saka. Maison Elara. A meeting this afternoon. He put his pen down and looked at me for a moment in that way he had, like he was reading something slightly behind your face."Go," he said."Marcus, I want to be upfront with you. You gave me a chance when I had nothing to show for

What Clara Knows

CHAPTER EIGHTEENWhat Clara KnowsAria's POVI didn't reply that night.I put the phone down and I sat with Nina and we didn't talk about it anymore because there was nothing useful to say at eleven o'clock at night about a message from a woman who had publicly humiliated me two weeks ago and was now asking for my trust.Nina made tea. I drank it. We watched something on television that neither of us followed and went to bed.But I lay awake for a long time.The thing was, I knew Clara. Not well, not the way you know someone you have chosen, but the way you know someone you have been in the same rooms with for three years whether you wanted to be or not. I knew how she laughed. I knew the particular cruelty she reached for when she wanted to wound someone. I knew that she had her mother's sharpness and her brother's coldness but without the discipline that made either of those things bearable in Alex.I also knew that she had never once in three years asked me for anything.Not even s

Seven O'Clock

CHAPTER NINETEENSeven O'ClockAlex's POVClara arrived exactly at seven.He heard the car pull up from the study and he stayed where he was until he heard Emeka, the housekeeper, open the front door and the familiar sound of his sister's heels crossing the entrance hall. Then her footsteps slowed in a way they never usually did in this house and he understood she was taking her time because she needed it.He went to meet her.She was standing in the hallway still in her coat, looking at the house the way you look at a place you grew up in when something has shifted and you are seeing it properly for the first time. She looked tired. More than tired. She looked like someone who had been carrying something heavy for long enough that her posture had changed around it."Come in," he said.They sat in the sitting room. He had asked Emeka to bring tea and leave it and go, which Emeka had done without commentary, which was one of the things Alex had always valued about him.Clara wrapped bo

The First Day

CHAPTER TWENTYThe First DayAria's POVI called Jerome on Monday morning.He picked up before the second ring which told me he had been expecting it and had probably been sitting with his phone close. I said yes and he said good and then immediately started talking about the timeline and I had to ask him to slow down twice which he did without apology and I liked that about him.I called Marcus after.That one was harder.He listened without interrupting, which was his way, and when I finished there was a pause that went on long enough that I started to feel it."Marcus," I said."I knew," he said. "When Jerome called me last week I knew. I just wanted to hear it from you directly.""I'm sorry. You gave me a door back in when I had nothing to show for three years and I—""Aria." His voice was dry but not unkind. "Go and make something extraordinary. That is the only apology I want from you."I let out a breath. "The sleeve on the third look. I have some notes. Can I send them over?"

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