Chapter 12 - The Unwritten Page
By July, the heat over the city had turned heavy and humid, baking the asphalt of Manhattan and sending residents rushing toward the shade of Prospect Park.
Clare was eight months pregnant.
Her dark hair was tied back with a simple red ribbon, and she wore a loose linen dress as she sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by three different federal policy briefs, an open laptop, and a half-eaten bag of pretzels.
Nathaniel walked in from the grocery store carrying two heavy canvas bags filled with fresh vegetables, whole-wheat bread, and organic coffee beans—none of which cost forty dollars or came with the word "deconstructed" attached to them.
“You’re working too hard,” Nathaniel said, setting the bags on the counter and walking over to place his hands gently on her shoulders.
“I’m not working hard, I’m trying to finish the reimbursement restructuring brief before the baby decides to arrive two weeks early and turn our living room into a neonatal ward,” she muttered without looking up from her screen.
“If the baby arrives early, we handle it the way we handle everything else,” Nathaniel said, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. “We recalculate the model.”
Clare finally looked up, her brown eyes softening as she reached out and pulled him down into the chair beside her.
“You know,” she said softly, resting her hand on his cheek, “when I met you at the Alden Mir rooftop bar, I honestly thought you were just another bored finance guy hiding from his corporate obligations.”
“And what do you think I am now?”
“An expensive project that actually turned out to have a solid underlying asset,” she teased, smiling.
May you like
They sat together in the quiet warmth of the apartment while the afternoon sunlight streamed through the open windows, catching the dust motes dancing in the air. The trial of Douglas Ashcroft was set to begin in October, and the legal battles over the remnants of Ashcroft Holdings would likely drag on for years. But none of that mattered here, inside these four walls.
For the first time in his life, Nathaniel Ashcroft didn't need a corporate charter to know who he was.
