My Boss's Hidden Heir (Elara and Marcus) novel Chapter 215

Chapter 215: Hey Bro, Hi Babe

Elara’s POV

She almost didn’t want to come to the meeting that day.

The morning had pulled her in three directions at once, two supplier calls that ran back to back and a fitting with a client who couldn’t make up her mind about anything, and by eleven thirty Elara was already typing a message to Marcus telling him she’d see him at home tonight.

The morning had been full, two supplier calls and a fitting that ran long, and by eleven thirty Elara was already texting Marcus to say she’d see him at home. Then she stood in the boutique with her phone in her hand and changed her mind without being able to explain why.

She didn’t know why she changed her mind, she just did and got in the car.

Marcus looked up when she walked into the boardroom at five minutes to twelve. He didn’t say anything, just pulled out the chair beside his with one hand while his eyes went back to the document in front of him. Elara sat down and settled her bag under the table and that was the entire exchange. No explanation asked for, none given. That was what you looked like when you actually knew someone.

The room was quiet in the way rooms get when people are trying to project calm they don’t entirely feel. Dante sat at the far end of the table with his phone face down and his eyes moving between his laptop screen and the door. Patricia had a legal pad in front of her and a pen she kept clicking against the table until the man beside her put his hand flat on the table and she stopped. Four other members of Marcus’s senior team sat arranged around the table with the particular stillness of people who understood that whatever was about to walk through that door had already cost them significant money and they wanted to see its face.

Elara looked around the room and felt the tension sitting in everyone’s shoulders like something physical.

She looked at Marcus.

He was reading but he wasn’t reading. His eyes were moving across the page but his jaw had that set to it that meant his mind was somewhere else entirely, running through possibilities, preparing for variables. She knew that jaw. She knew every version of it.

He felt her looking and glanced over.

She raised her eyebrows slightly, the silent version of *are you okay.*

He did the thing with the corner of his mouth that meant *I will be.*

She looked back at the door.

At noon exactly the elevator at the end of the corridor opened.

Elara heard the footsteps before she saw him, a single set, unhurried and even, the kind of footsteps that don’t speed up because they have no reason to. Then the boardroom door opened and Killian Wade walked in.

Tall. Dark suit, no tie, jacket that sat on his shoulders like it had been made specifically for them. Dark hair. The kind of face that didn’t need to arrange itself into anything because it was already arranged, already settled into the expression it intended to hold.

He moved through the doorway and took in the room in one sweep, the way you look at a room when you already know most of what’s in it and you’re only looking for one specific thing.

His eyes found Elara.

He stopped walking.

Not slowed, not hesitated. Stopped completely, one foot still slightly behind the other, like his body had made the decision before his mind caught up with it.

Elara felt something leave her chest.

She knew this face. Not this version of it, not the version that had filled out and sharpened and learned how to walk into rooms like this, but the one underneath it. The one she’d known at twenty two in a city that felt enormous and a life that felt like it was just beginning. She knew the exact shape of his nose and the way his eyes sat and the particular line of his jaw and she was aware in the same instant of every person in this room watching her look at him and looking at her looking at him and understanding none of it.

The silence lasted maybe three seconds.

Killian recovered first.

Something moved across his face, fast and controlled, and then it was gone and he was walking again, crossing the room directly toward Marcus with his hand already extended, easy and certain like the pause had been nothing, like she had imagined it.

“Marcus Thorne.” His voice was even and calm. “I’ve been looking forward to this, Bro”

Marcus stood, looking confused as to why he just called him Bro, took his hand and in that moment Elara watched her husband’s face do something she had never seen it do before. He looked at Killian the way you look at something that almost makes sense, his eyes moving across the other man’s face with a slight narrowing that he probably didn’t know was happening.

He didn’t know why yet. He just felt it.

“Killian Wade,” Marcus said.

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