Arianne had been back at Rochefort Group for several days now. The work came back to her like a shirt she'd worn a hundred times—familiar, comfortable, hers. She'd missed the quarterly reports and the board summaries and the endless stream of decisions that needed her signature. She'd missed the clean satisfaction of a solved problem and the quiet hum of an office that ran because she'd built it that way.
But something was different now.
Gio had cut her workload without asking. Meetings that ran past four got rescheduled. Documents that arrived after five stayed unread until morning. He stood at her door every day at five, tablet in hand, face unreadable. She argued once. He said, "Franz asked me to make sure you rested. I agreed. The matter is settled."
She didn't argue again.
Not because she agreed. Because some fights weren't worth winning.
No one at the office knew she was pregnant.
