Chapter 29

Alistair’s POV

I sat in my office, sifting through a pile of files I’d let languish, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t concentrate. I turned page after page, eyes tracking the neat lines of print without absorbing a single word, the text blurring into one dull smear of ink. My mind refused to stay tethered to the numbers and clauses in front of me. It kept slipping away, like a leash jerking out of my fingers, snapping back to everything that had been gnawing at me for days.

My thoughts were tangled in stress—trying to undo the deadly deal Mr. DeWitt had negotiated and juggling my regular workload—and, most of all, I couldn’t stop thinking about my new wife. The pressure from the board, the looming crisis if that contract went through, the knowledge that one wrong move could bring the whole company down—under normal circumstances, that would have consumed every waking second. But even that chaos had taken a step back in my mind, eclipsed by the image of a wo