Chapter 9 - The Resignation
Evelyn looked down at their intertwined fingers. She could still feel the phantom weight of Julian’s oversized coat on her shoulders—a symbol of the fear and manipulation that had brought them to this precipice.
She took a slow, deep breath and pulled an envelope from under the blanket, placing it on the table next to the deed.
Vincent’s brow furrowed. “What is this?”
“My formal resignation,” Evelyn said quietly.
Vincent stiffened, the warmth draining from his features as an old, familiar shadow flickered in his eyes. “You’re leaving? Because of what happened? Evelyn, I told you, Mercer is behind bars. You are safe. I will never lock you in this room again, I swear to you on my mother’s grave—”
“I’m not leaving because I’m afraid of you, Vincent,” she interrupted gently, placing her hand against his stubbled cheek.
Vincent stopped talking, his breath hitching at her touch.
“I cannot be your executive secretary anymore,” Evelyn whispered, looking directly into his soul. “I can’t spend forty hours a week organizing your calendar, standing on the other side of your desk, holding coffee cups and pretending that my heart doesn’t break every time you call me ‘Miss Hart.’ I can’t pretend that I belong to an office when all I want is to belong to you.”
Vincent stared at her, the realization dawning across his features like sunrise over the Manhattan skyline. The tension in his broad shoulders melted away entirely. A slow, breathtaking smile broke across his handsome face—the kind of smile he had never once shown the cutthroat boardrooms of Wall Street.
“You scared the life out of me,” Vincent breathed, laughing softly as he caught her waist with both hands, lifting her effortlessly into his lap.
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“You deserved it,” she whispered playfully, resting her arms over his broad shoulders. “Seventeen minutes late on a rainy Wednesday, remember?”
“The worst seventeen minutes of my life,” Vincent murmured, burying his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling the sweet scent of vanilla and rain. “And the best mistake I ever survived.”
