Seraphine & Caelan POV
I decide at noon.
Tonight. I'm telling him tonight.
Not the empire. Not Lumière. Not the hostile takeover or Damien's warning or the two years of shadow-work I've been doing to keep his company standing. Just the baby. Just the one true, simple, undeniable thing that belongs to both of us equally and can't be managed or postponed or filed away for a better moment.
There is no better moment. I've been waiting for one for three years and I'm done waiting.
I cook the meal he loves the one he mentioned once, eighteen months ago, that his housekeeper used to make when he was a child. He said it casually, the way people mention things they don't expect anyone to remember. I remembered. I've made it twice since then on bad days, and both times he ate it and didn't say anything and I didn't tell him I made it on purpose.
Tonight I set the table properly. Candles. The good wine he keeps for occasions and opens maybe four times a year. I put on the simple dress he told me once looked nice another casual comment, another thing I catalogued without letting him know I did.
I sit down at the table at seven o'clock and wait.
At seven-forty I blow out one of the candles because the wax is dripping.
At eight-fifteen I hear his key in the door.
He smells of a restaurant I recognize a specific expensive place near his office, the kind with white tablecloths and a sommelier who knows regulars by name. He's been there tonight. Not at the office. At a dinner he didn't mention this morning.
"Sorry," he says, dropping his bag. "Meeting ran over."
He doesn't say which meeting. I don't ask.
He sits down and serves himself and looks at the food with what I can tell is genuine appreciation, even through whatever has him distracted tonight. "This is " He pauses. "Did you make this from scratch?"
"Yes."
"You didn't have to do all this."
"I wanted to," I say. Which is true. Which is the whole problem, really I keep wanting to and he keeps not noticing what the wanting costs.
He eats. He checks his phone once, then again five minutes later. Each time he turns it face-down after, which is a thing people do when they are trying to be polite but can't quite manage it.
I open my mouth.
Close it.
The candles are too romantic suddenly. The wine feels like pressure. The whole carefully constructed evening feels like a stage set for a scene that isn't going to go the way I planned it, and I have planned it so carefully, rehearsed the words in the car and the kitchen and the ten minutes I stood in the bathroom looking at my own face before he came home.
I have something to tell you. We're going to have a baby.
Simple. True. Eight words.
I cannot find them.
"How was your day?" I ask instead.
He looks up. "Fine. Busy. The Nordex merger is moving faster than expected the other party wants to close before Q2, which means we're compressing the due diligence window." He pauses, fork halfway to his plate. "Yours?"
"Fine," I say.
The word lands between us on the table like something heavy. We both hear it. Neither of us picks it up.
He nods and goes back to his food. I look at the candle I didn't blow out and watch the flame move in the air from the heating vent and think: this is not the right container. That's the only way I can describe it the moment has the wrong shape for what I need to put inside it. He is ninety minutes late and smells of someone else's dinner reservation and his phone is face-down on the table between us like a wall, and I am not going to tell my child, someday, that I announced their existence into that.
So I don't.
I eat. I ask about Nordex. He talks about Nordex genuinely, with the focused energy he brings to things he cares about, and for a few minutes he is just Caelan and I am just Sera and we are two people having dinner and talking about something real. This is the version of us I fell in love with. This is the version that still exists, in moments, between all the other versions.
I hold onto it for as long as it lasts.
It lasts until his phone lights up. He sees the preview and turns it over faster than he did the other times. His jaw does a small thing a tightening, almost invisible. Then he smooths it out and finishes his wine and folds his napkin.
"I have a call I need to take," he says. "Work thing. Won't be long."
"Of course," I say.
He disappears into his office. The door doesn't fully close old habit, or carelessness. I clear the table. I run hot water for the dishes and I listen, without meaning to, to the low sound of his voice through the wall. I can't hear words. Just tone. And the tone is warm and easy and once, briefly laughing.
That particular laugh.
The one I counted three times at the gala.
The old landline on the kitchen wall rings once. I pick it up without thinking pure reflex, we've had it for two years and it only ever rings for the wrong number, and my hand moves before my brain does.
One second of audio.
One second is enough.
Nadia's voice, warm and certain: "I've missed you, you know. More than I expected to."
And then Caelan, the laugh still in his voice, unhurried and unguarded:
"Yeah. Me too."
I set the receiver down.
Gently. Carefully. The way you put something fragile back on a shelf when you've picked it up and realized it isn't yours.
I turn back to the sink.
The water is still running. Hot, almost too hot, the way I like it. I pick up a dish and wash it and put it in the rack. Then the next one. Then the next.
I am very calm. This is the thing about me that most people don't understand I don't fall apart when things break. I get quiet. I get precise. I get very, very clear about what I know and what I need to know and what I am going to do next.
What I know: my husband just told another woman he misses her. Past tense becoming present. A feeling that has been sitting in him quietly, growing, while I waited and cooked and said fine and watched candles burn down.
What I need to know: how long. How deep. And who who inside my world gave the Geneva faction the access they have.
What I am going to do next
The office door opens. Caelan comes out looking lighter than he did at dinner. "Sorry about that," he says. "All done. Do you want to watch something?"
I dry my hands on the dish towel.
I turn around. I smile.
"Sure," I say. "Whatever you want."
And I think: not yet. But soon. And when I move I won't miss.