THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 59

She looked at me and waited.

I could tell she wasn't sure what I meant by different things. I wasn't even sure I knew how to explain it properly. I had spent the last few weeks trying to push this feeling away because I had too many other things to deal with. Victoria. The legal case. Lily. The corporation.

But sitting across from Yemi in that small warm coffee shop on a Sunday morning with her hair down and her hands around her cup I realized that pushing it away wasn't working anymore.

"Different how?" she asked quietly.

I looked at the table for a second. Then I looked back at her.

"Before all of this happened to me I didn't have anyone," I said. "I mean that literally. There was no one in my corner. Not one person who was genuinely on my side." I paused. "Then everything changed and suddenly there were people. Henry. My friends. Lily." I stopped again. "And then you came."

She was listening without moving.

"You came because of a job," I said. "I know that. You came to protect Lily and that was the whole reason. But somewhere in between the planning sessions and the kitchen table and the butterfly garlands and all of it something changed." I looked at her directly. "You stopped feeling like someone who worked for me and started feeling like someone who was just there. Present. In the actual way."

Yemi looked at me for a long moment.

"I know what you mean," she said softly.

"You do?"

"Yes." She looked at her cup. "I have been trying to be professional about this since the birthday party. Maybe even before that." She looked back up at me. "It is not easy to be professional about something when the thing keeps being right in front of you every single day."

I almost smiled at that.

"So what do we do?" I asked.

She thought about it seriously the way she thought about everything.

"We are doing it," she said simply. "We are here. On a Sunday. Talking properly for the first time without anyone needing anything from either of us." She looked around the small coffee shop. "This feels like the right place to start."

"The right place to start what?" I asked.

She looked at me and this time she smiled. The full one.

"Whatever this is," she said.

We stayed for two hours.

Neither of us looked at the time. When we finally did we were both slightly surprised by how long we had been sitting there. The coffee shop had filled up and emptied again around us and we had not noticed any of it.

We talked about things I had not talked about with anyone.

I told her about my mother. Not the legal version of the story. Not the version I gave to lawyers and prosecutors. The real version. The one where my mother hummed while she worked and saved her tips for my birthday cake and gave me a necklace she said was all she had to give me.

Yemi listened to every word without interrupting.

When I finished she was quiet for a moment.

Then she said: "She sounds like someone who is loved very completely."

"She did," I said.

"That is where you get it from," she said.

I looked at her. "Get what?"

"The way you love Lily," she said simply. "It is the same. Complete. Without condition." She paused. "Not everyone loves like that. Most people put conditions on it. You don't."

I did not know what to say to that so I said nothing.

She seemed to understand that silence was the right response and did not push further.

I asked her about the things that happened when she was young. The thing that made her want to do security work. She was quiet for a moment before she answered.

"My younger brother," she said. "He was nine. I was fourteen." She looked at the window. "We were walking home from school and someone tried to grab him. Right on the street. In broad daylight." She paused. "I screamed and fought and people came running and he got away. My brother was fine. Physically." She looked back at me. "But I kept thinking after that. What if I had not been there. What if I had gone home a different way that day."

I thought about Lily at the school gate. The woman who grabbed her wrist.

"You were there," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I was there." She looked at her cup. "I have spent my whole career making sure I am there. For whoever needs someone to be there." She looked up at me. "And then I came to this house and there was this little girl with a rabbit and emerald eyes and I understood immediately why I had spent ten years training to do this."

I looked at her.

She looked back at me.

"She is lucky to have you," I said.

"I think I am the lucky one," Yemi said quietly.

We walked out together into the Sunday morning street.

It was cold but bright. The kind of Sunday morning that made the city look clean and new. People walked past with coffee cups and dogs and the unhurried pace of people who had nowhere to be before noon.

We stood outside on the pavement.

Neither of us moved to leave immediately.

"This was good," she said.

"Yes it was," I said.

She looked at the street for a moment. "Going back to work tomorrow is going to feel strange."

"Probably," I said. "But we will figure it out."

"Yes," she said. "We will."

A moment passed between us on the pavement. The city moved around us and we stood still in the middle of it.

Then she turned to look at me fully.

"Ethan," she said.

It was the first time she had used my name without the slight professional hesitation she usually had before it. It came out easily and naturally like she had been saying it her whole life.