Stay with me. What's your middle name? She looked at him like it was a strange question. Annette. Celeste.

Annette Monroe. Okay. Tell me something about your company. Tell me anything. We manage 11 billion in assets across.

She stopped, pressed her lips together, steadied across four verticals. Good. Keep talking. Why are you doing this? He glanced at her briefly.

Talking to you? Any of it? He didn't answer right away. The hospital was 3 minutes out. He could see the lights of the emergency bay already.

Because you needed help, he said finally. That's it. She didn't say anything after that. He wasn't sure she heard him. The emergency room at St.

Marcus General moved fast when a woman arrived pale and hemorrhaging. Nurses took Celeste from the passenger seat in a wheelchair before Dorian had fully stopped the car. He parked, followed them inside, and found himself standing at a counter he wasn't sure he belonged at. A woman in scrubs with a clipboard looked at him. Are you family?

I work with her. We need an emergency contact. We're looking at a possible perforated ulcer. She'll need to go into surgery. Is there anyone we should call?

Dorian picked up his phone. He tried the main number for Monroe Capital's executive office. No answer. He had Trevor Gaines's number from a departmentwide contact list. Trevor was Celeste's chief of staff, the person who should have been handling exactly this.

It rang four times and went to voicemail. He had no other numbers. Is there a spouse? The woman at the desk asked. No children.

No. Any family member we can reach tonight? He stood there with his phone in his hand and no answer to give her. The nurse's expression shifted. The professional kind of patient that meant we're going to have to ask you to step back.

She began to turn. That was when Celeste's hand appeared. She had been wheeled to just inside the treatment bay entrance, and she'd apparently been conscious enough to follow the exchange. Her hand came out and found the edge of the clipboard. She pulled it toward her with visible effort, took the pen clipped to the board and wrote.

Her handwriting was shaky but legible. Emergency contact: Dorian Brooks. Then she moved to the field below it. Relationship to patient. She wrote one word.

Husband. Dorian stared at it. Celeste. He kept his voice low. I'm not your husband.

She looked at him. Her eyes were unfocused at the edges, but the center of them was completely clear. Tonight, she said quietly. You are. She signed the bottom of the form.

Medical proxy, temporary authorization. And then her eyes closed and she did not open them again. The nurses took over immediately, voices switching to a faster register. the clipboard disappearing into the system. Someone handed Dorian a copy of the signed proxy form without explanation, as though they assumed he knew what to do with it. He stood in the waiting area with the paper in his hand and Jade's hoodie still draped over his arm from the back seat.

He didn't know what frightened him more, the fact that Celeste Monroe might not make it through surgery, or the fact that the most powerful woman he'd ever encountered had just told an entire hospital that he was her husband. Trevor Gaines arrived at St. Marcus General at 1:47 in the morning. Dorian recognized him immediately. The pressed shirt, the controlled expression, the way he moved through the waiting room like a man who had learned to treat every public space as a potential audience.

Trevor was 46, smooth in the way that people who managed powerful personalities often became smooth. He had worked for Celeste for 9 years. He knew where every body was buried, figuratively speaking, and he had always made sure none of those burial sites could be traced back to him. He spotted Dorian before he reached the desk. He did not say, "Is she alive?"

He did not say, "How bad is it?" The first thing Trevor Gaines said was, "Who knows she's here?" Dorian looked at him for a moment. The surgical team, me, now you. Trevor exhaled slowly, already calculating.

We need to move her. There's a private facility in Westchester, completely contained. No public admission records. I'll call the board in the morning. Let them know she's taking a brief medical leave.

Frame it as precautionary. She's in surgery. Trevor stopped. They won't release her, Dorian continued. Not tonight.

I have the medical proxy. Something shifted in Trevor's expression. A very precise kind of stillness. You have the what? Dorian held up the form without handing it over.

Trevor looked at it. Then he looked at Dorian with the particular attention of a man who has just realized he underestimated something. He reached out and took the clipboard from the counter beside Dorian, the intake copy, the one with the admission information. His eyes moved down the page and stopped. Relationship to patient, husband.

The silence lasted exactly 3 seconds. "What the hell did you do? I drove her here," Dorian said. She wrote that herself. "She was barely conscious."

"She was conscious enough to sign her name to it." Trevor set the clipboard down carefully, the way a person sets down something they want to throw. He turned and looked at the surgical bay doors, then back at Dorian, and Dorian could almost see the man restructuring his priorities in real time. The problem wasn't just optics. Dorian understood that much even then.