And Jasper?
As the Astors’ lawyer, he remains frustratingly diplomatic. Half the time, his advice doesn’t steer me in any direction at all.
The decision rests entirely on my shoulders.
For weeks now, I’ve felt like I’m drowning. The risk assessments. The contingency plans. The mitigation strategies for what might be the most dangerous move of my career—and for the company with over five thousand employees.
But I can’t get rid of the nightmarish possibilities. They’ve kept me awake through every hour of every night.
Not that sleep would come easily anyway. Because exhaustion has given me a front-row seat to Cece’s pathologically insane sleep schedule.
Even when I go to bed, she’s never beside me.
And when I wake up, she’s usually stumbling back toward the bedroom, bleary-eyed and distant, looking so exhausted that I no longer have the heart to question her.
Over the past few days, she’s started working fromhome again.
Wentworth Group was more than happy to have her back after her “vacation”, but now she works from sometime in the afternoon until well past midnight.
It’s almost as though she’s avoiding me.
At this point, we’re barely roommates who happen to share the same apartment and occasionally cross paths.
How the hell did it only take a month for everything to fall apart so completely?
How is our relationship—our love—eroding this quickly when neither of us can seem to catch a break?
Every time another article appears online, she drops whatever she’s doing to read it. And every single time, my heart sinks when I see the practiced blankness she forces onto her face whenever something hurts her.
She’s lost weight now, too. And the difference is stark against her shorter hair. The adorable pixie that she religiously maintained has been cut back into that sharp style, tapering down to almost a buzz along the sides.
Every time I look at it, I want to cry.
Not because she isn’t beautiful.
She is. She always will be.
The haircut itself is tasteful. Elegant, even.
But the reason behind it lodges itself so deep inside my chest that it settles right beside the guilt already living there.
I’m the reason her life spun into this tailspin. I’m the reason she abandoned the routines that once kept her grounded.
Her carefully crafted life is dismantling itself rightin front of us, and all I can do is watch while she slowly wrecks herself from the inside out.
A few days ago, I brought up her portfolio again.
This time, though, she didn’t roll her eyes or snap at me. Instead, she simply shrugged. “I rearranged my funds from the incorporation I own with Sebastian.”
I blinked. “What?”
“He helped me remain anonymous when I sold my SaaS model after my MBA,” she explained flatly. “So I balanced my personal portfolio and added twenty million to it.”
I stared at her, completely stunned.
Was she talking about the program she built for her thesis?
Wait. She had a separate corporation? Was that even possible without affecting her personal portfolio?
