Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 189

Chapter 184: Lay Low

Dante’s POV

I found her in the facility at eleven.

She’d arrived before me, which she’d started doing-the early arrival that meant she was doing the footwork drills before I got there, the private work she’d been adding to the three-times-a-week sessions, the work she did when no one was watching. I’d noticed it because the court had the settled quality of someone who’d already been on it when I arrived, the faint trace of a session that had started before I’d gotten there.

She was at the baseline when I came through the door, working the inside-out forehand with the adjusted path. The shoulder extension looked cleaner than Tuesday.

She looked up.

“The shoulder is better,” I said.

“It’s getting there,” she said. “Still pulls when I push the extension too far but the range is bigger than last week.”

“I can see that,” I said.

She bounced the ball once, twice, in the way she did when she was between things, the automatic motion of a player at rest. “You have something to say,” she said. Not a question.

“I talked to Maria,” I said.

She stopped bouncing the ball.

“My manager,” I said. “She handles my career, she scouts talent, she’s been in the sport her whole adult life.” I paused. “I told her I’d been working with someone. A returning player, quality I thought was worth looking at. I didn’t tell her who.”

Sedona looked at me.

“She wants to come to Seattle,” I said. “See you hit. If what she sees matches what I’ve described, she’ll talk to you about what a return to competition might look like.” I paused. “That’s where it starts. Maria coming here and watching. Nothing beyond that until she’s seen you and you’ve talked to her and everyone has decided if this is a direction that makes sense.”

The court was very quiet.

“You called your manager about me,” she said.

“I told her I was working with someone who was worth looking at,” I said. “Yes.”

“Without telling me.”

“Without telling you,” I confirmed. “Because I wanted to know if she was interested based on my description alone. If she’d come on the strength of my professional opinion rather than because she was doing me a personal favor.” I looked at her. “She’s interested on the professional merits, Sedona. Not because of me.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“When?” she said.

“She’s flexible,” I said. “I told her the player would need to confirm. Whenever works for you.” I paused. “There’s no pressure on timeline. If you want more time before she comes, she’ll wait. If you want her here next week, she can do that too.”

Sedona looked at the court.

She was doing the thing she did when she was receiving something significant-the stillness that wasn’t absence but presence, the way she processed things before she said anything about them.

I waited.

“I’m scared,” she said, finally.

“I know,” I said.

The call came at seven-fifteen on a Monday morning.

I was in my home office, first coffee of the day, going through the weekly briefing my assistant had prepared. The company had needed real attention since I’d come back from Seattle.I’d been putting in longer hours than usual, the specific focus of someone trying to compress lost time.

The number on the screen was saved under a contact name that was a string of numbers rather than a name, which was how I’d saved it, deliberately.

I answered.

“Update,” I said.

The voice was the same voice it always was-flat, professional in the specific way of someone who treated this as a transaction rather than a relationship. “The surveillance on the Wells property and school route has been stepped down,” he said. “Happened Friday. The vehicles they had positioned–plain clothes, well placed, but I clocked them week two-have been pulled.”

“They noticed,” I said.

“The boy noticed,” he said. “Four years old and he flagged the pattern. Told his father. Father told the Preston brother and they set up the counter-surveillance.” A pause. “They ran it for a week, nothing unusual on our end because we pulled back the moment I saw the positioning. They’ve concluded it was a fluke.”

I looked at my coffee.

“They’ve stood down,” I said.

“As of Friday,” he confirmed. “The school route is clean. The property has no additional eyes on it beyond the standard residential. The facility they use for practice-clean.” Another pause. “Whatever they thought they saw, they’ve decided it was nothing.”

“Good,” I said.

“The boy is perceptive,” the voice said, which was not a warning exactly, more an observation delivered with the flat professionalism of someone noting a variable. “More perceptive than I’d have expected at that age. He clocked the surveillance cars before the adults did. You should factor thapin.”

“I’ll factor it in,” I said.