Chapter 467 Delivery

Noah’s POV

A week had gone by since I left my father’s study with his blood on my hand.

Seven days of waking up and feeling the same weight sit on my chest. Seven days of looking at my phone and not calling Julian. Seven days of hearing Delia move through the house and knowing I was lying to her by saying nothing. The choice I had made in the dark had not gotten lighter. It had gone sour. Every morning I told myself I would go to him and warn him. Every night I admitted I had done neither thing. I had not exposed him. I had not stopped him. I had only sat with the knowledge and let it rot.

I felt awful in a way that sleep did not touch.

So I drove to Katia’s office with flowers on the passenger seat like a man trying to buy back a piece of his own spine. The bouquet was pale and expensive and still not enough. I had no right to check on her. I had every reason to. She did not know what I knew. She smiled at the world with a baby in her and a husband who would burn the city down for her, and I walked around carrying the name of the man who had tried to take both.

Sam met me at reception. She looked at the flowers, then at my face.

“She’s in,” she said. “Don’t stay long. She has a call at twelve.”

“I won’t.”

Sam led me down the hall. I followed her and tried to look like a cousin making a kind visit instead of a man coming to stare at the proof of his own silence.

Katia was at her desk when the door opened. She looked better. Color in her face. A file open in front of her. The bruise at her collarbone had faded to something you would miss if you did not know to look.

“Hey,” I said.

I crossed the room, kissed both her cheeks, and put the flowers in her hands.

“How are you feeling?”

She smiled, small and real. “With a husband like Julian, I am fine.”

I laughed. It came out easier than I expected. “I thought I should check on you, but I see you are doing perfectly well.”

“I am working. That is my version of fine.” She set the flowers in an empty glass on the side table and looked at me properly. “How have you been doing since you stopped working for your father?”

The question landed closer than she knew.

“I have some savings, so I am still covered.” She waited. People always waited when they wanted the second sentence. “Well,” I said, “I am still thinking of what to do.”

Katia leaned back in her chair.

“You know, I don’t know much about Elliot, but I think you shouldn’t have resigned before finding something suitable. Maybe you should go back.”

The kindness in it almost made me sick.

She was sitting there, pregnant, alive because a seatbelt and luck had done what I had not done, and she was telling me to return to the man who had written her off as acceptable damage.

“Absolutely not. I am never working for my father again. I will think of something. I still have my savings.”

She studied me for a moment.

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Then don’t go back.” She tapped her pen against the desk. “I only said it because starting over with nothing is a kind of pressure people underestimate. If you have enough to stand on, stand.”

“I intend to.”

“Good.” Her mouth curved. “And thank you for the flowers. Julian will pretend not to notice and then ask who sent them.”

“Tell him it was the guilty cousin.”

“I will tell him it was Noah. He can decide the rest.”

We talked a little longer. Work. Aiden. The weather, as if weather, was still allowed to be small talk in this family. I kept waiting for her to see it on my face. She did not. Or she did and chose not to drag it into the open. Either way, I left before I said something I could not take back.

“I should go,” I said. “Sam mentioned a call.”

“She did.” Katia stood and walked me to the door. “Don’t disappear. Whatever you’re carrying, it shows.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“That is what people say when they are not.”

I smiled because it was expected, said goodbye, and got out of the building while I still had the chance.

The drive home should have cleared my head. It did the opposite. Every light felt like a question. Why had I gone to her office? To check she was breathing? To punish myself with the sight of her? To pretend that flowers could stand in for the truth? All of it. None of it. I parked in front of my house and sat there with my hands on the wheel until I could make them let go.

Delia was not home. The place was quiet. I stepped inside, ready to shut the world out for an hour.

I had the door almost closed when a hand stopped it. Father walked in like he owned the damn place. He did not knock. He did not wait. He stepped over the threshold with that same small smile and looked around my hallway as if he were inspecting property he had loaned me.

“I knew you don’t have it in you,” he said. “You are weak. Useless. Playing house with Julian’s leftovers. Who did your useless wife say was better, you or your cousin?”

I stood there with the door still in my hand.

He came further in, unbothered, eyes bright with that old, mean pleasure.

“I thought I would be spending a few days in jail, but here I am walking free because I have a spineless bastard.”

The week of silence sat between us, ugly and obvious. He had counted on it. He had used it. He had come here to collect the proof.

He looked me over once more, from my empty hands to the house behind me, and delivered the rest like an order.

“Since you have no job and couldn’t play hero, why don’t you become my delivery guy, first delivery, tell Julian to watch his back.”