POV: Jasmine
He looked at me. Then he leaned toward his manager.
"That's the one," he said. Low, but not low enough. Not meant to be low enough. "The one who runs the place now. Fucked her way to the top and then the top died."
The manager's face tightened. He put his hand on the rapper's arm — a warning, a correction — but the rapper didn't move.
He was watching me, waiting for the reaction, the same way he had waited in the conference room months ago when he put his feet on the table and asked if I was the one who slept with her three bosses.
I stepped into the elevator.
Pressed my floor. Stood facing the doors. Did not look at him.
He kept talking. Something to his manager about how Cadence had changed, how the energy was different, how the people running the building now didn't know what they were doing.
He said it casually, the way men like him said things — performing for an audience of one, testing whether the words would land.
I let him finish. The elevator opened. I stepped out. Then I turned and looked at him directly.
"Your contract with Cadence is terminated."
His expression shifted. The smirk dropped.
"You were arrested for drunk driving under the influence of controlled substances," I said. "You assaulted your girlfriend. You shoved a fan at a public event. Your sales dropped by forty percent in two quarters. You were given a meeting to discuss restructuring, and you used that meeting to make personal and sexual comments to a senior member of staff."
Each sentence was specific. Each sentence was documented.
"That's bullshit," he said. "You can't just —"
"I can. I hold the controlling stake in this company. The termination clause in your contract allows dissolution for conduct that causes material reputational harm. Every incident I just named is on record."
His manager stepped forward. "We need to have a conversation about this. There are processes —"
"The decision is made," I said. "Your attorney will receive the formal notice by end of business today."
The elevator doors closed between us. I walked to my office. Sat down. Called legal.
The call took four minutes. I gave the paralegal the artist name, the contract number, the termination clause, and the list of documented incidents. She confirmed she would prepare the notice. I hung up and set the phone face down on the desk.
My hands were steady. My pulse was not.
The anger was still there — not at the words, not at the crude performance of a man who had mistaken cruelty for power. At the assumption behind them.
That I was here because someone had died and left me the keys. That everything I had built in this building was a byproduct of loss, not work.
Liam had not given me this. Liam had seen what I was and made sure the company would have it. There was a difference, and men like that rapper would never understand it.
Chapter 238 POV: Jasmine
Leo sat across from me in the living room with his hands on his knees and the expression of a man who had rehearsed something and was now trying to remember the first line.
"Aurora looks good," he said. He meant it — I could see the relief in his face, the way his shoulders softened when he said her name.
"She's getting there," I said. "Some days are better than others."
"She talked to me about the rabbit today. She said the rabbit is sad because it misses the boat." He paused. "I think that means she misses Italy."
I turned my coffee cup in my hands. "I think so too."
He was stalling. I could see it in his posture — the way his weight kept shifting, the way his eyes moved to the coffee table and then back to me.
Leo had never been good at hiding when he was working toward something. Even as a boy, even when he was at his worst, his body always told the truth before his mouth did.
"Leo." I set my cup down and waited until his eyes met mine. "Whatever it is, just say it."
He reached into his jacket pocket and set a small box on the coffee table between us.
My breath caught. Not because I was surprised — I had seen the ring in Italy, in the jewelry shop, the afternoon he walked me and Aurora through the narrow streets. I had watched him choose it.
But that had been before. Before the road. Before the hospital. Before everything that came after.
"I know the timing looks wrong," he said. His voice was steady but his hands were not. "I know what's happened. I know you're still in the middle of it. And I've been going back and forth for weeks about whether to wait."
He looked at the box.
"But Liam would have told me to stop waiting. You know he would have. He told me that in Italy — the night before, at the bachelor dinner. He said I had already waited too long. That loving someone and not telling them was just fear dressed up as patience."
My chest tightened. I could hear Liam saying it. The exact tone. The direct, unguarded certainty of a man who never believed in waiting when the answer was already clear.
"He was right," Leo said. "And I'm done waiting. I want to propose to Nora. I want to do it properly. And I want your help."
I picked up the box. Opened it.
The ring was the same one from the Italian shop — a simple band, a single stone, nothing excessive. It was right for Nora. It had been right the first time I saw it, and it was right now.
"It's still perfect," I said.
Leo exhaled. His whole body released, the tension going out of his shoulders in one long breath.
"Tell me the plan," I said.
He told me. Nothing elaborate — a dinner at his apartment, just the two of them. He would cook. He had been practising a specific recipe for three weeks. He wanted candles but wasn't sure if that was too much. He wanted music but didn't know what.
"Candles are fine," I said. "Not too many. And let her pick the music."
"What if she says no?" His voice dropped, and I heard the boy in it — the one who had spent years expecting the worst from every good thing that came near him.
"She's not going to say no," I said. I said it with the certainty I used for things I knew in my bones, because Leo needed to hear that certainty from someone who never gave it lightly.
"But what if —"
"Leo." I looked at him and held it. "She moved you into her apartment. She sat beside me in a hospital corridor for a week. She held Aurora when I couldn't. She's not going to say no."
He nodded. Swallowed. His eyes were bright.
"Thank you," he said. "For all of it. For raising me even when I made it impossible. For not giving up on me."
"That's not something you thank someone for," I said. "That's just what we do."
He stood. Picked up the box. Put it back in his pocket with the care of someone carrying something fragile and irreplaceable.
Then he leaned down and kissed my forehead — once, brief, the gesture of a man who had grown into someone I did not always recognise from the boy I had raised.
He left.
I sat in the living room and let the warmth of it settle. My brother was going to ask the woman he loved to marry him. Liam had told him not to wait. Liam had been right.
The grief and the joy lived in the same breath, and I let them both stay.
Later that evening, the phone rang. Priya.
"Nothing new," she said. "Jackson's counsel confirmed the hold is still in place. Communication is continuing. I'll call when there's something to report."
Professional. Efficient. Standard Priya. But something in her voice was different — a warmth at the edges that hadn't been there before. Not unprofessional.
Not compromised. Just the slight shift of a woman who had been spending hours in conversation with someone and had stopped treating every exchange as purely tactical.
"How are the conversations going?" I asked. Not about the legal content. About the conversations themselves.
A pause. Half a second too long.
"They're productive," she said. "He's more willing to engage directly than I expected. The tone has shifted."
"His tone," I said. Testing. Watching the question land.
"Both of ours." She didn't hesitate, but she didn't elaborate either — and that restraint told me everything the words didn't.
She said it plainly, the way Priya said everything — without hiding it, without framing it. But I heard what sat underneath: the careful honesty of a woman who had noticed something in herself and had not yet decided what to do with it.
"Keep me updated," I said. I almost added something else — almost asked the question that was forming behind my teeth. But Priya would tell me when she was ready. She always did.
"I will," she said. And hung up.
Finn was in the kitchen. He came back with two glasses of water and sat down beside me.
"Who was that?" he asked, handing me one of the glasses.
"Priya," I said. "Jackson is still holding."
"Good." He settled back into the couch, his arm along the top of it behind me — not touching, just there. The apartment was quiet. Aurora was asleep.
Then, after a pause: "Are you thinking about Jackson?"
"No," I said. And I meant it. For the first time in weeks, Jackson was not the thing sitting at the front of my mind. He was there — present, unresolved, a problem Priya was managing. But he was not what I was thinking about.
I was thinking about Leo putting a ring box in his pocket. About Liam telling him not to wait. About Priya's voice on the phone and the half-second pause that told me more than anything she actually said.
I was thinking about the lyrics on my phone. About Aurora asking to go to the park. About the fact that I was sitting on a couch beside a man who had been here every night for weeks and I had stopped fighting it.
Finn looked at me. "That's different."
"Yes," I said. "It is."