I almost laughed.
Because after everything that had happened, he asked me.
Not Alexander.
Not his lawyers.
Me.
“I don’t know.”
He looked at the folder that Alexander had left behind.
“Hayes will destroy everything.”
I studied him.
“You’re still worried about the company.”
He did not deny it.
This honesty was almost worse.
“My employees rely on me.”
There it was.
The thing he always hid behind.
Responsibility.
Fear.
Duty.
Perhaps some of it was real.
Perhaps part of it was just an excuse.
“I hope you can save what can still be saved,” I said.
He looked up.
“But I will not allow you to take advantage of me for that.”
The words felt heavier than I had expected.
Because I realized that I had been waiting for years to speak them.
My father nodded slowly.
“You are not the same anymore.”
“NO.”
I glanced towards the front door, where Alexander was waiting.
“That’s not me.”
When I stepped outside, the rain had stopped.
Alexander opened the passenger door for me.
I hesitated briefly before getting in.
The house behind me still held every painful memory I had tried to escape.
But for the first time, it seemed smaller.
Not because it had changed.
Because I had it.
As we drove away from my parents’ house, I could no longer hear the rain.
For years I had imagined leaving this place.
I imagined anger.
I imagined myself screaming.
I imagined myself finally speaking out about all the horrible things I had swallowed.
But when the moment actually came, all I felt was exhaustion.
Alexander drove with one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting near the center console.
He did not fill the silence.
That was one of the things I gradually began to understand about him.
He did not remain silent because he had nothing to say.
He was silent because he respected the personal space that other people needed.
My phone vibrated several times before I looked at it.
The screen was full of messages.
Some came from relatives.
Some came from people I barely spoke to.
Some were from numbers I didn’t recognize.
The family group chat had exploded.
I opened it once.
Then I closed it.
I was not prepared for strangers to discuss my pain as if it were a topic at a dinner party.
“You don’t have to read them,” said Alexander.
I looked over.
“How did you know that?”
“You made the same facial expression that people always make when they want to open something they’d rather not see.”
I frowned.
“Which face?”
He smiled slightly.
“The one where you pretend you’re not nervous.”
I looked out the window.
“That’s annoying.”
“That’s correct.”
I wanted to argue.
Instead, I laughed quietly.
It was strange how easily he could make me forget that the entire foundation of my life had changed in a single evening.
The restaurant Alexander took me to was not what I had expected.
It was not a place with white tablecloths or where celebrities were gossiped about.
It was a small Italian restaurant located between two shops on a quiet street.
The owner greeted him by name.
Not because he was famous.
Because he often went there.
That surprised me.
I expected someone like Alexander Hayes to live in luxury.
Instead, he knew that the waitress’s daughter had started university and asked about the broken oven in the kitchen.
He noticed everyday things.
This made him feel less like a billionaire and more like a human being.
We were sitting in a corner alcove.
We chatted for a few minutes about trivial things.
The food.
The horrible Christmas music playing near the entrance.
The fact that the restaurant had run out of one of its most popular desserts.
It felt almost normal.
Fast.
Then Alexander put down his glass.
“You should know something.”
I looked at him.
“About what?”
“The folder.”
My stomach cramped up.
I had tried not to think about it the entire journey.
“I don’t know if I want to know that.”
“That’s fair.”
He paused.
“But you deserve it.”
I waited.
“I did not investigate your family because of the company.”
I looked at his face.
“Why then?”
He looked down for a moment.
This hesitation was unusual.
Alexander Hayes did not seem to have any difficulty answering questions.
“Because of you.”
The words were meant to sound romantic.
Instead, they made me nervous.
“Why?”
He leaned back.
“Do you remember when you reviewed the merger documents for Hayes Financial three months ago?”
I searched through my memory.
My work involved hundreds of reports.
Thousands of pages.
“I have reviewed many documents.”
“They have discovered an accounting error.”
I frowned.
“That was part of my job.”
“NO.”
His voice was calm.
“That was what made the difference.”
I waited.
“Everyone else only saw the numbers.”
He tapped the table lightly with his finger.
“You could see the person who was affected by the numbers.”
I didn’t know how to react.
At work, I did the same as always.
I was paying attention.
I looked more closely.
I questioned things that didn’t make sense.
It was the same habit that had earned me punishments from my family.
Apparently, it had drawn someone else’s attention to me.
“I have asked my team to check your background,” Alexander continued.
My facial expression changed.
“They investigated me?”
“Yes.”
I was surprised by their honesty.
Most people would have softened the word.
They said they had done research.
Checked.
Checked.
He investigated.
“I know that sounds terrible.”
“It does.”
“I wasn’t trying to control you.”
“What did you want to achieve then?”
He looked directly at me.
“I don’t understand why someone with so much talent still felt she had to apologize for taking up space.”
The answer hit me harder than expected.
I looked away.
No one had ever described me so accurately before.
Not even me.
“How long have you known about my family?”
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