Regrets - Chapter Twenty Eight
Nicole and Charles discuss options in "Alternative Arrangements".
Tuesday - Week 3 (3 of 5)
Alternative Arrangements - Nicole
The door opened before she could knock twice. Charles stood in dark slacks and a white t-shirt, hair tousled like he’d just stepped away from a whiteboard mid-plan. His mood read focused, not frantic. The kind of edge that came from solving problems no one else could see yet.
He looked at her once, long enough to read the stillness in her face. He didn’t ask. Just stepped aside.
“Living room. Wine. Sit.”
Nicole stepped inside. The air smelled like lemon wood and the expensive candle he always lit when he needed to think. She dropped her bag beside the couch but didn’t sit.
“I just came from Elizabeth’s.”
That was enough. Charles moved toward the bar without a word.
“She told me I wouldn’t sit at the table if this didn’t go through. That she’d make sure of it. She’s betting everything on the Scotts and the wedding. Templeton, the hold, all of it.”
Charles’s eyes narrowed, calm but sharp. “She run the Rick play?”
“Not yet. But it’s loaded.” Nicole paused. “She doesn’t know that I know.”
He handed her a glass. The silence said he understood exactly what that meant. Elizabeth was holding a card she didn’t know had already been read.
“Then she’s already showing her hand,” he said.
“She said it like scripture. Like the ending was already written.”
“Then we rewrite it.”
“I let her finish,” Nicole said. “I didn’t argue the engagement. That’s not what I went there for.”
Charles glanced back at her, just once. He already knew what she’d gone there for.
“How’d that go.”
Not a question.
“She accused me of being emotional.”
He made a sound. Half disgust, half something older than pity. “That’s grotesque.”
“She said without him I’d lose the company. That without the engagement I’d be seen as unstable. Unfit.” Nicole paused. “She meant it.”
Charles’s jaw tightened. “That’s not leverage. That’s blackmail.”
“She’s been eating Aaron’s narrative,” Nicole said. “He showed her photos of Dad leaving Alexis’s place. Told her it was an affair. Let her rot in it.”
The muscle in Charles’s jaw flexed once. He stayed quiet.
Nicole took a breath. “She thought Dad was cheating. It was me. It was always me. He just gave her enough poison to believe the rest.”
Charles nodded slowly. “Then that’s his weakness. He built his control on her shame.”
Nicole finally sat. The couch took her weight. Across from her Charles settled in, the skyline behind him bleeding gold into dark. A jazz record played low somewhere in the back of the apartment.
“So,” he said, leaning forward. “Let’s talk about your plan. Not hers. Not his.”
She lifted her glass. “I want to win. But not like this.” She paused. “Not by pretending to be a fragile stand-in for Dad. I want them to see what I’ve built. What he wanted.”
Charles’s mouth curved. “Then we do it. We get you your seat on your terms.”
He clicked a pen. “Board’s split. Rick’s pushing legacy. Sam’s quiet.”
“Then read him,” Nicole said.
“That’s your job,” Charles replied. “Let Rick do his pitch. Don’t play defense. This is your pivot, not his.”
Nicole looked down at her glass. “And if I don’t want either path?”
“Then we build a third,” he said simply. “The board’s fractured. You only need enough leverage and clean capital to redraw the offer.”
She thought of the car earlier. The sunlight slicing the windshield. That promise had already hardened into something else.
She reached into her bag and slid her phone across the table.
Charles picked it up. The screen lit his face. Aaron, half-naked, drunk, laughing into a phone that wasn’t his. Different rooms. Different women. Same arrogance. Hotel glass, music, champagne, his voice slurred over the noise. Not rumor. Record.
Charles didn’t speak. He scrolled once, expression tightening.
Nicole’s voice stayed even. “It’s not new. Just useful.”
He looked up. “Don’t make this public.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said. “It’s leverage. I was going to show him privately, make him walk. But he’s all in. And my mother’s backing him. The engagement’s her anchor and she’s betting the company on it.”
Charles set the phone down. “Then we make sure that anchor drags him under. Not you.”
Nicole said nothing. Just let that sit.
“And the video?”
“Stays private,” she said. “Until it isn’t.”
He turned the pad beside him and wrote. Short, neat strokes. “Freeze the narrative. Legal on standby, containment not reaction. Private capital to buy you options once the smoke clears.”
She watched him move through it. For the first time since leaving Elizabeth’s, the thing in her chest settled into something she could work with.
“If this goes through,” she said quietly, “I have one more thing to ask.”
He glanced up.
“It’s not business,” she said.
He studied her a beat. “You know this is a trap, right?”
She tilted her head. “What is?”
“You. Here. Admitting you need help. Irresistible.”
Something passed between them then. Not surprise, just recognition. He already knew what sat underneath everything she hadn’t said tonight.
He nodded once. Small and certain.
That was enough.
“Then we start tonight,” he said, and turned back to the page.
Author Note: I’m slowing down a bit to let readers catch up to the story. Its a lot, and I have seen people joining mid stream, so I’m going to adjust the releases to allow people to catch up a bit. Let me know what you think in the comments.