Page 37 of After-Hours Heir

Too soon, the elevator reached its destination, and they were moving quickly out of the office. His car was there, waiting up against the curb.

She was having difficulty processing things.

They got into the car, and it began to drive away from the building.

“I have asked the doctor to meet us at my penthouse.”

“We didn’t really decide—”

“It is decided.”

She swallowed hard.

She wished she didn’t feel so alone. She wished that she still felt like she could text him. And in a fit of minor panic, she reached into her purse and took her phone out. Pulled up the tech stream she now knew was him.

It still saidBaby. She kept it that way.

Kid: I’m dealing with this guy, and he’s a real dick.

His phone buzzed. He took it out of his pocket and opened it, looked at the text.

“Really?”

“Really I think you’re a dick? Or really I texted you?”

“I know I’m a dick.”

She laughed. “Well, why shouldn’t I text you? I’m used to communicating with you that way.”

He looked down at his phone and began to type as she watched her screen.

Baby: Are you going to make this difficult?

She looked up at him. And she smiled. “Yes. I think I will, Christos. Because I have made far too many things in this world easy for people.”

She wanted to call her mother and ask for advice. But her mother wouldn’t give good advice. She wanted to do a séanceand get in touch with her father’s ghost. She wanted the man who had once been a source of great comfort to her to actually be real and not some specter of Christos. A variant who wasn’t real.

It was like the two of them in those texts had been people existing in another timeline. In another life. She just wished that… She really did wish that she could somehow pop herself into that timeline. Where maybe that version of them was real.

Instead, she was stuck with this one.

She looked at him, at his rigid, unsmiling profile.

All too soon they were at his penthouse.

The building was like a fortress. He had a private entrance at the side, a private elevator that only worked with his fingerprint.

“What if other people need to come up without you?”

“They can use the front. And there are certain people approved to enter.”

“I see. But only you get to use this fancy private door.”

“Yes.”

“And what about me? What about when I’m supposed to live here? Do I get to use the fancy private door?”

“I’ll program your fingerprint into it.”