Chapter 5
Ivy leaned over and kissed Wyatt’s cheek. “Don’t do any more saving until I get back.”
“I’ll try.”
Vivien entered thirty seconds after they left.
She looked nothing like the woman from the stage.
Her hair had fallen loose. Her makeup was gone. Her navy suit was wrinkled and stained with his blood. She stood in the doorway as if afraid he might vanish if she moved too fast.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“Apparently harder to kill than expected.”
Her face crumpled.
She crossed the room and sat in the chair beside him, hands twisting in her lap.
“The doctor said you’ll recover. Physical therapy. Light duty. No permanent damage.”
“Good. Permanent damage sounds expensive.”
“Wyatt.”
He looked at her.
She was crying.
“You could have died.”
“So could you.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“Wasn’t trying to be comforting. Just accurate.”
A broken laugh escaped her.
Then she stood and paced the small room. “I keep seeing it. The cable. You running. The way you threw yourself at me without thinking.”
“There wasn’t time to think.”
“Exactly.” She turned back to him. “That means it was instinct. Your instinct was to put yourself between me and death.”
“I’m a single dad,” he said. “Putting someone else first has been my job for six years.”
Vivien covered her mouth.
“They caught him,” she said after a moment. “The man at the rig. He gave up Derek before the FBI finished the first interview.”
Wyatt stared at her.
“Derek had been embezzling for years. Shell vendors, fake consulting contracts, offshore transfers. My transparency audit would have exposed him within weeks. The electrical sabotage was supposed to kill me in a fire. When you fixed it, he planned something public.”
“The chandelier.”
She nodded. “He wanted maximum chaos. Maximum press coverage. He had board allies ready to name him interim CEO before my body was cold.”
Wyatt closed his eyes.
“Hey,” Vivien said, suddenly closer. “Stay with me.”
“I’m here.”
“I keep thinking,” she whispered, “if I hadn’t asked you to stay that morning, if I hadn’t pulled you into this, you wouldn’t be in this bed.”
“If you hadn’t asked me to stay, you’d be dead.”
Her tears fell silently.
“That’s not on you,” he said. “Derek did this. Not you.”
“I’m resigning.”
The words hit him harder than the fall.
“What?”
“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be the reason people around me get hurt. I’ll appoint an interim CEO, clean house, cooperate with the investigation, and step down.”
“No.”
Her eyes flashed. “Excuse me?”
“No.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“Apparently I do when you’re making panic decisions in a hospital room.”
She stared at him, furious and devastated.
“Derek didn’t try to kill you because you failed,” Wyatt said. “He tried because you were about to catch him. Because you were making the company stronger. Because you were doing the job right.”
“I almost got you killed.”
“And I would do it again.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I would,” he said, voice rough but steady. “Because you matter, Vivien. Not because you’re rich. Not because your name is on the building. Because you’re you. And that technology you were talking about before the chandelier dropped? That matters too. Rural clinics. Emergency rooms. Kids who get diagnosed in time because somebody built the right tool. You don’t get to walk away from all of that because one corrupt man tried to stop you.”
Vivien sank back into the chair.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“Good.”
She looked up.
“Means you understand the stakes,” Wyatt said. “But being scared doesn’t mean you quit. It means you stop standing alone.”
For a long time, the only sound was the hospital monitor.
Then Vivien reached for his good hand.
“If I stay,” she said, “everything changes.”
“Okay.”
“I build a real team. People I trust. People who tell me when I’m wrong. People who remember numbers on a spreadsheet are human beings with rent and kids and sick days.”
“That sounds like a good start.”
“I want you on that team.”
Wyatt blinked. “Vivien.”
“Not maintenance. Not anymore. Chief of staff, operations advisor, whatever title HR invents after panicking for three hours. Triple your salary. Full health coverage for you and Ivy. Flexible schedule. Real time off. A signing bonus big enough to make your debt disappear.”
He stared at her.
“You don’t have to answer now,” she said quickly. “I know it’s a lot. I know our lives make no sense on paper. But you see things other people miss. You see people. I need that near me.”
Wyatt looked toward the door where Ivy had disappeared.
“What about Ivy?”
“She comes first,” Vivien said. “Always. That’s nonnegotiable.”
His throat tightened.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
Her shoulders loosened. “That’s all I’m asking.”
