She Wants My Fortune, Not My Heart

Old Clutter

TOM POV

My back still stings where Vivian’s nails raked into my shoulders, the scratches pulling tight against the crisp cotton of my dress shirt as I step out of the elevator onto the top floor of Brooks Systems.

It’s eight-fifty in the morning. The glass-walled corridor smells like roasted espresso and rain, and every junior engineer who passes me does a double take. I don’t blame them. For five years, the few times I was photographed behind Vivian at charity dinners, I was wearing faded jeans and whatever sweater was clean.

In a custom charcoal three-piece suit with my hair swept back, I don’t look like Vivian Baudelaire’s quiet househusband anymore.

In my pocket, my phone vibrates for the sixth time in twenty minutes.

I stop just outside the frosted double doors of the executive suite and pull it out.

Vivian.

A text message pops up right beneath the incoming call banner: Tom, where the hell are you? I woke up and the kitchen was cold. Pick up the phone right now.

I almost laughed. Even after last night, her first instinct upon waking up in a tangled bed wasn't to look for her husband—it was to wonder why breakfast wasn't waiting on the stove.

I swipe the green icon and lift the phone to my ear. "I’m busy, Vivian."

There’s a sharp, ragged inhale on the other end of the line, followed by the rustle of silk sheets. She sounds flustered, her voice hoarse and pitched an octave higher than usual, stripped of its boardroom polish.

"Where did you go?" she demands, and I can hear the defensive tremor underneath her anger. "It’s not even nine o'clock! You just—you left me in bed like that without a word, and my whole body hurts—"

"You wanted me to prove I didn't care about Matthew," I cut in smoothly, leaning one shoulder against the glass wall as an assistant hurried past. "Consider it proved."

Silence stretches for two beats. I can practically hear the gears turning in her head as humiliation wars with her pride. For five years, she held intimacy over my head like a crown jewel I wasn't worthy to touch. Waking up alone after finally giving it up wasn't part of her script.

"Don't talk to me in that tone," she snaps, scrambling to regain control. "Look, whatever point you were trying to make last night, it’s done. I have a ten o’clock strategy meeting with Matthew’s team at Vanguard to lock down our server bandwidth for the Apex Global tender. Bring the signed transfer deed for Patent 409-X to my office by nine-thirty."

"I’m not bringing you the patent, Vivian."

"Tom, I am not in the mood for your—"

"Check the trash bin under my desk in the study," I say evenly. "Have a nice meeting with Matthew."

I hang up before she can scream my name, open her contact card, and tap Block Caller.

"Remind me never to get on your bad side before coffee."

I turn my head.

Selene Brooks is standing in the open doorway of her corner office, holding two porcelain mugs. She’s wearing a tailored navy dress that hugs her waist, her dark hair falling in loose waves over her shoulders today instead of pinned up. In the bright morning light filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I can see a faint, mortified flush creeping up her neck the second her hazel eyes drop to my collar.

She remembers last night. Every tipsy word of it.

"You’re ten minutes early," she says, clearing her throat as she holds out one of the mugs to me. "Black. No sugar. If Walter at the patent bureau got your coffee order wrong too, I’m firing my whole intelligence team."

"He got it right." I take the mug, my fingers brushing hers.

Her skin is warm, and she doesn't pull her hand back right away. Instead, she steps aside to let me into her office, kicking the door shut behind us with the heel of her stiletto.

"Look, about last night at Mercer’s—" Selene starts, setting her cup on the edge of her glass desk and folding her arms across her chest. For a fearless CEO, she looks remarkably like a woman bracing for a firing squad. "That second bottle of Bordeaux was a mistake. I don't usually ambush men in restaurant booths or tell them their wives are blind idiots."

"You weren't wrong," I reply, setting my briefcase on the conference table and snapping the brass latches open.

"About any of it."

Selene blinks, her posture stiffening slightly as her gaze searches my face. "Did something happen after you went home?"

"Let’s just say I finally cleared out some old clutter," I say, offering her a crooked smile as I pull the licensing folder and the encrypted drive from my case. "Besides, I’m a lot more interested in how we’re going to spend our morning than how I spent my night."

A slow, genuine smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, easing the tension in her shoulders. She walks over to the table, standing close enough that I catch a faint trace of the same sandalwood-and-jasmine perfume that drove Vivian crazy eight hours ago.

"Fair enough," Selene says softly, picking up her fountain pen.

She doesn't even ask her legal team to review the royalty split. She flips straight to the last page of the cooperation contract, signs Selene Brooks in bold black ink beside my signature, and slides the paper back to me.

"Welcome to Brooks Systems, Tom." She offers her hand.

I take it, her narrow palm fitting cleanly against mine.

"Let’s get your engineers in here. If we want Patent 409-X integrated before the Apex Global tender next week, we have forty-eight hours of heavy—"

The office door flies open without a knock.

Selene’s assistant, a young guy in wire-rimmed glasses, stumbles over the threshold with a tablet clutched white-knuckled to his chest. "Ms. Brooks—I’m sorry, I tried to stop them down in the lobby, but—"

"Stop who, Noah?" Selene frowns, dropping my hand.

"You didn't really think I’d let you hide behind my husband’s back without saying good morning, did you, Selene?"

The voice echoes down the hallway before the heels even hit the doorway.

My spine locks.

Vivian strides straight into the office, wearing sunglasses and a sharp white trench coat thrown hastily over a wrinkled blouse—she didn't even take the time to fix her hair after finding my ring on the dresser. And walking half a step behind her, wearing a smug grin and a five-thousand-dollar Italian suit, is Matthew Badnor.

Vivian rips her sunglasses off. Her eyes are bloodshot, her chest heaving as her gaze darts from my charcoal suit to the signed contract sitting on the table between Selene and me.

"You bastard," Vivian breathes, her voice shaking with pure fury as she glares at me. "You actually came here.

After what we did last night—after you swore to me you’d think about our future—you sneaked out of the bed at dawn to sell my company’s patent to her?"

Beside me, Selene goes very still. Her head turns fractionally toward me, her jaw tightening at Vivian’s words. After what we did last night.

I don't flinch. I slide the signed contract into my folder and look at Vivian like she’s a stranger on the street. "It’s my patent, Vivian. My name is on the code. Yours isn't—and neither is his."

Before Vivian can explode, Matthew steps forward, sliding a possessive hand around Vivian’s waist and pulling her against his hip right in front of me. He looks me up and down with an amused sneer.

"Relax, Viv," Matthew says smoothly, patting her hip like he owns her. "Let Selene keep the little software patch. It’s useless to her anyway."

Selene’s chin lifts, her voice dropping to freezing. "Get out of my building, Matthew, before I have security throw you through the glass."

"Oh, we’re leaving," Matthew chuckles, pulling a stamped blue regulatory folder from his breast pocket and tossing it onto Selene’s desk. "I just came up to hand-deliver this courtesy notice. Twenty minutes ago, Vanguard and Baudelaire Tech signed an exclusive five-year buyout with NorthStar Cloud—along with the other two tier-one server farms in the tri-state area."

Selene’s assistant gasps.

Even Selene pales, picking up the notice. In the enterprise sector, you can’t bid on a conglomerate tender without certified tier-one server capacity to host the live stress test.

"We bought up a hundred percent of the local server capacity this morning," Matthew says, his eyes gleaming with malice as he steps into my space. "Which means Brooks Systems doesn't even have the hardware to run Tom’s precious patent next week. You two are disqualified before the tender even starts."

Vivian’s lips curl into a cruel, triumphant smile as she looks at me. "Come home with me right now and tear up that contract, Tom, and maybe I’ll let this little tantrum slide. Stay here with her, and I’ll watch you both crash and burn by Friday."

I look down at Matthew’s hand resting on Vivian’s waist, then up into her arrogant eyes.

"Keep the NorthStar servers," I say softly, slipping my hand into my pocket. "In fact, pay them triple upfront.

It’s going to make it that much funnier when I pull the plug on both of you."