Rose looked at him, seeing past the billionaire, the ruthless titan who crushed competitors before breakfast. She saw a man who had been carrying the weight of an empire on his shoulders since he was barely older than she was now.
“Why Victoria?” Rose asked, the question slipping out before she could stop herself.
Nathaniel walked over to a leather wingback chair near the fire and sat down, gesturing for her to take the sofa opposite him. Rose sat, pulling her knees up slightly to protect her aching side.
“Victoria was convenient,” Nathaniel admitted, staring into the orange coals. “Our families moved in the same circles. She was polished, she knew the protocol, and she never demanded emotional intimacy that I didn’t have time to provide. I thought our marriage would be a functional corporate alliance. A merger of assets that would allow me to stabilize our European expansions while keeping the board satisfied.”
He let out a short, self-deprecating scoff.
“I was an arrogant fool. I thought I could control every variable. I thought money and legal contracts were absolute armor. I didn’t realize that under all that polished pedigree, she was a predator on the verge of starvation.”
“You couldn’t have known she would try to kill your mother,” Rose said softly.
Nathaniel lifted his head, his eyes burning with an intense, raw emotion that made Rose’s breath catch.
“My mother is the only person on this planet who ever loved me for who I am, Rose. Not for the Callaway name. Not for the hedge funds, the yachts, or the stock options. If she had fallen off that building…”
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the armrests of the leather chair.
“If you hadn’t caught her, I would have burned this entire city to the ground to find whoever was responsible, and I would have destroyed myself in the process.”
He looked back at her, his gaze dropping to her bandaged hands resting on her lap.
“Tell me about Maya,” he said, abruptly shifting the subject away from his own darkness. “The medical reports my team pulled said she has severe interstitial pulmonary fibrosis. That’s rare for a child her age.”
Rose swallowed the lump in her throat. Talking about Maya’s illness always felt like peeling back a layer of raw skin.
“It started three years ago,” Rose whispered. “A bad case of pneumonia that never really went away. Her lungs developed scar tissue. The doctors in Queens said she needed advanced immunotherapy and bronchial cleansing treatments, but our insurance didn’t cover experimental procedures. The out-of-pocket copay was four thousand dollars a month.”
She looked down at her lap.
“I worked the morning shift at a bakery, afternoon shifts at a dry cleaner, and nights with the catering company. Every single cent went to the pharmacy and the clinic. I didn’t care about anything else. Just keeping her breathing.”
Nathaniel leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his intense gaze fixed entirely on her face.
“And your parents?”
“Drunk driver on the Long Island Expressway four years ago,” Rose said, her voice steady with the practiced numbness that comes from surviving unimaginable grief. “They didn’t have life insurance. Just a mountain of debt. The state tried to put Maya in foster care because I was only nineteen at the time. I spent every dollar of our savings on a family court lawyer to get legal guardianship.”
She looked up, meeting Nathaniel’s eyes with a fierce, unyielding pride that struck him right in the chest.
“I am not a victim, Mr. Callaway. I don’t want your pity. I don’t even need your charity. I will work eighty hours a week for your mother. I will scrub every floor in this mansion if she asks me to. Just… please don’t let Victoria’s family take away Maya’s doctors.”
Nathaniel stood up.
He crossed the distance between them with slow, deliberate steps, stopping right in front of her. Slowly, he knelt down on one knee in front of the sofa, bringing himself down to her eye level.
No one in New York had ever seen Nathaniel Callaway kneel before anyone.
He reached out, his warm, strong hand gently cupping the side of her face. His thumb brushed against her cheekbone, light as a feather, sending an electric jolt straight to her heart.
“Listen to me, Rose Vance,” Nathaniel said, his voice dropping into a fierce, absolute promise that echoed in the dark library. “You will never scrub another floor in your life. Maya will see the best pulmonary surgeons on the globe next Tuesday, and you will never, ever have to beg anyone for medicine again.”
Rose stared at him, her lips slightly parted, her heart racing against her ribs like a trapped bird. Up close, his scent—sandalwood, rain, and clean cotton—was dizzying.
