Chapter 228

• My fingers curled into tight fists in my lap as I fought to keep myself together. My chest constricted, and my breath hitched slightly. I turned my face just enough to hide the tears gathering in my eyes. I had trained myself to never cry in front of others especially not in rooms like this, where power could turn on a single expression of vulnerability.
• Anthony noticed, and for the first time since arriving, I could tell he questioned whether coming in person had been the right decision. Maybe this wasn’t the time. Maybe neither of our families were ready to face each other after everything that had happened.
• He had negotiated hostile takeovers, pulled billion-dollar deals from the edge of collapse, but nothing had prepared him for this: the quiet grief of a woman barely out of her twenties, sitting alone in a Manhattan penthouse, carrying the weight of an empire lost and rebuilt.