“The kind I’m managing.”
I look at him. He looks back. Outside his window, the city is doing its Tuesday, indifferent, loud, running at the pace of people who do not live inside corporate succession documents.
“Is it connected to the council?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
That’s an answer.
I reach into the folder I’m carrying. Pull out the printed copy of Alexei’s email. Set it on his desk between us.
He looks at it. Then at me.
“I asked you not to do anything with it yet,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You said okay.”
“Yes.”
The word sits there without apology or decoration. He says it the way he says everything he means, flatly, with no performance of regret. I have come to understand that about him. He doesn’t feel regret. He either has it or he doesn’t. Right now, I can’t tell which it is.
“Why?”
He’s quiet for a moment. Not avoiding the question. Deciding how much of the answer is mine to have. I recognize this process now. I’ve watched him do it enough times.
“The faction that reached Lena,” he says. “They’ve been running inquiries about you for two weeks. Someone inside this organization gave them information about your background.” He pauses. “An heir changes the political weight you carry inside the council. The protection that comes with formal recognition is not procedural. It’s structural. Every day that information sat unregistered was a day it could be used against you.”
I look at him. “You made that decision,” I say, “without telling me any of that.”
“Yes.”
“You knew someone had given my background to a rival faction. You knew there was a threat moving toward me. You sat across from me in this office and told me you were handling a threatand gave me nothing else.” My voice stays level. It costs me. “You let me walk around this building for a week not knowing.”
“I didn’t have the full picture.”
“You had enough.”
He looks at me. Something in his jaw shifts. Not away from the point. Into it.
“You’re right,” he says.
I was not expecting that.
I stand with the folder in my hand in the middle of his office. The succession document is on his desk between us. My name in the second sentence of the first paragraph. The mother of the incoming heir. I am twenty-six years old. I have been legally married to this man for two months. I did not agree to any of it.
I also sat across from him on a Saturday morning and told him something I had been carrying alone for days, and the first thing he asked was whether I was alright.
I hate that I keep coming back to that.
“The council dinner next week,” I say.
“Celine.”
“I’m not performing at a council dinner while a rival faction has my background and a threat is being managed in the background without my knowledge.” I hold his gaze. “That is not a negotiation.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. The phone on his desk is still face down. The city behind him has gone into its afternoon version, shifting light, the day tilting toward evening.
