2026-01-05 16:36:07The Hartley estate sat on the north side of Meridian City, surrounded by high walls and wrought iron gates. Vincent's car idled at the curb.
"Last chance," Vincent said from the driver's seat. "Let me come with you. The Hartleys are traditional, having someone of my status vouch for you would—"
"No." Kai opened the door. "I'm here to break off an engagement, not propose. The fewer people involved, the better."
Vincent frowned. "Break it off? Kai, the Hartley family's daughters are what half the men in Meridian City dream of. And you want to walk away?"
"Yes."
"At least think about it. Settle down before building your career. You need someone to take care of your life. A good wife—"
"Vincent." Kai's tone left no room for argument. "I'll handle this myself."
He stepped out and closed the door. Vincent watched him for a moment, then sighed and drove away.
Kai stood alone on the quiet street, staring at the iron gates.
He just hoped his fiancée wasn't Lila's sister. Sleeping with your sister-in-law wasn't something to be proud of. Maybe this mystery fiancée was a cousin. Or a distant relative. Anyone but—
"What are you doing here?"
Kai's blood turned to ice. He turned slowly.
Lila Hartley stood three feet away, shopping bags in hand, staring at him with clear suspicion.
Kai forced a smile that felt more like a grimace. Speak of the devil.
"You." Lila's eyes narrowed. "Did you follow me here?"
"No, I—"
"Don't lie to me." Her voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. "I told you what would happen if you came near me again. Are you here to cause trouble at my home?"
"It's not what you think—"
"Leave. Now." She pointed down the street. "Before I call the police."
Kai opened his mouth to explain, then closed it. What could he say? I'm here to see my fiancée? I came to ask your family for money? Either way, he'd sound like a scumbag.
They stood in silence, locked in a stalemate.
The iron gates behind them groaned open.
"Lila!" A white-haired old man stepped through, his face stern. "What are you doing arguing with someone at the entrance? We have an important guest arriving any moment. Show some dignity!"
Lila's grandfather was tall despite his age, with sharp eyes and the bearing of someone used to authority. He wore traditional robes and carried himself with old-world formality.
Then his gaze landed on Kai.
The old man froze. His eyes went wide. Then, to Lila's complete shock, he bowed.
"Young Master Walker! Forgive me—I didn't realize you'd already arrived." He straightened, his face breaking into a warm smile. "Please, come inside. Welcome to our home."
Lila stared. "Grandfather, what are you—"
"Lila, don't be rude." The old man's tone turned sharp. "Go inform your parents immediately. Tell them to prepare the main hall. We have an honored guest."
"But Grandfather, he's—"
"Now, Lila."
She didn't move, still staring at Kai like he'd grown a second head.
The old man sighed and turned to Kai with an apologetic smile. "Forgive my granddaughter's manners. She doesn't know who you are." He gestured toward the open gates. "Please, come in. We've been expecting you."
Kai hesitated. This was his chance to explain, to clarify the misunderstanding, to politely decline and leave.
But Lila's grandfather was already guiding him forward, one hand hovering respectfully near Kai's shoulder without quite touching.
"Master Donovan spoke so highly of you," the old man continued as they walked. "When he contacted us about the engagement, we were honored beyond words. To think our family would be connected to his prized disciple—"
Lila's gasp cut through the air. "Engagement?"
They'd reached the courtyard now, a beautifully landscaped space with a central fountain. The old man finally seemed to realize his mistake.
"Ah." He stopped, turning between Kai and Lila. "I haven't introduced you properly, have I?"
He pulled Lila forward, despite her resistance. She looked ready to bolt.
"Young Master Walker, this is my eldest granddaughter, Lila. She's intelligent, well-educated, and comes from a good family. Strong-willed, perhaps a bit headstrong at times, but she has a kind heart." His smile widened. "And she's your fiancée."
The words hung in the air like a bomb.
Lila's face went through several emotions—confusion, disbelief, understanding, then pure rage.
Her grandfather continued, oblivious. "Lila, this is Kai Walker, Master Donovan's disciple. Your future husband. Please exchange contact information. Your mother will want to begin planning—"
"No."
The word came out flat and absolute.
The old man blinked. "What?"
Lila stepped back, her hands clenched into fists. When she spoke, her voice shook with barely controlled fury.
"I will never marry him. I want absolutely nothing to do with him.”
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Chapter 278
Marcus was nine now, tall enough to reach the low branch of the tree outside the kitchen window without being lifted, something Kai still hadn’t quite adjusted to, the sight of his son reaching for a branch that used to require a boost. They were raking the same leaves that fell every year from the same tree, a job neither of them particularly loved and both of them did anyway, every October, without much discussion about whether it needed doing.Lila had gone inside twenty minutes earlier to start dinner, leaving them to it the way she usually did, and the yard had settled into the particular quiet of two people working side by side without needing to fill every minute with talk. Kai liked that about raking with him now. Marcus had stopped needing constant conversation to feel comfortable in the silence, had grown into the kind of quiet that didn’t need managing.“Dad,” Marcus said, not looking up from his own pile, rake dragging steady across the grass. “What was the proposal.”“Wha
Chapter 277
Constance had told him, on the bench outside the hospital, that there would be something coming to him eventually, not soon, not on any schedule she’d name, and that he should let it come in its own time instead of asking her about it again. He’d agreed to that, mostly because arguing with her about timing had never once worked in his favor. He hadn’t meant to count the weeks. For the first month he genuinely didn’t, busy enough with Priya’s rollout and the last of the season’s harvest that the promise sat quietly in the back of his mind without demanding attention.By week seven he’d started counting without quite admitting to himself that he was doing it.The package arrived on a Tuesday, plain padded envelope, no return address, his name in handwriting he recognized instantly even though he’d only seen it a handful of times, on margin notes in old documents, on the single page she’d signed for him once before. Eleven weeks exactly, though he only did the math after he’d already ope
Chapter 276
Constance announced her retirement in an email three sentences long, sent to a distribution list of exactly four people, no subject line flourish, no preamble, just the fact of it stated as plainly as she stated everything else that mattered.Kai read it twice at his desk before he fully absorbed what it actually said, and immediately began, in his head, planning something larger, a proper send off, the board room, catered food, a chance for the whole Institute to say what her thirty years had actually meant to the place. He called her within the hour to start arranging it.She cut him off before he’d gotten more than two sentences into the idea.“No.”“You haven’t even heard what I’m proposing.”“I don’t need to hear it. I already know the shape of it, and the answer is no.” Her voice carried none of the frailty of the hospital months earlier, sharp and entirely certain, the version of her he’d first met eighteen months ago. “I want a Tuesday afternoon in Archives. Coffee. Nothing el
Chapter 275
A year and a half in, Dahl still ran his corner of the Materials Lab exactly the way he’d run it from the beginning, technically compliant, spiritually untouched. Kai stopped by that October mostly out of habit, not expecting anything to have shifted, and found what he always found, review documentation filled out completely, correctly, on time, with all the warmth of a man filing paperwork he considered beneath him.“Everything’s in order,” Dahl said, not looking up from his bench.“I can see that.”“Then I assume you’re not here to lecture me.”“I’m not here to lecture you,” Kai said. “I stopped doing that about a year ago. I noticed it wasn’t working.”Dahl glanced up at that, something almost like amusement crossing his face before it disappeared again. “Took you long enough.”“You do the review. You do it correctly. You’ve never once missed a deadline or fudged a number.”“So what’s the complaint.”“There isn’t one,” Kai said, and meant it more than he expected to when he said it
Chapter 274
The flight out was quiet, Priya running through note cards she’d clearly written and rewritten a dozen times, Kai reading in the seat beside her and doing his best not to look like he was watching her do it.“You don’t have to sit in the back,” she said, somewhere over Ohio, not looking up from the cards. “You could sit up front. It would probably look more supportive.”“I’m not here to look supportive,” Kai said. “I’m here to be the person you can’t quite forget is in the room and also can’t lean on. Those are different jobs. The back does both better than the front.”“That’s a strange kind of support.”“It’s the only kind that’s actually useful today.”The room, when they got there, was smaller than the consortium’s glass conference room, a department library at one of the five institutions, maybe twenty people arranged around a long table with the slightly skeptical posture of people who’d been told about a framework and hadn’t yet decided whether to believe in it. Kai took a seat
Chapter 273
Lila had the folding tables set up before Kai had even finished his coffee, dragging them out from the garage while the morning was still cool enough to make the work easy.“You could’ve waited for me,” Kai said, coming out to grab the other end of the second table.“You were slow,” she said. “The tomatoes weren’t going to wait for you either.”Marcus was already at the end of the driveway when they got the tables positioned, arranging baskets in rows with the same seriousness he brought to everything in the garden these days. He’d grown a full head since the frost, since the row he’d insisted on choosing himself the winter before, and something about the way he stood now, steady, sure of his own hands, made Kai stop for a second just to watch him work.“What’s the sign say,” Kai asked, though he could already read it from where he stood.“FREE, TAKE WHAT YOU NEED,” Marcus said, holding it up like he expected an argument.“Lila mentioned you two had a discussion about a donation jar.”
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