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Gabrielle snorted. “Of course, he’d want his lineage floating in a temperature-controlled vault.”
“Exactly.” I sat down hard on the couch. “I just… I wasn’t ready for that. Seeinghimin that context. It’s clinical, but it felt… intimate.”
We were both quiet for a second. Julian mumbled something in toddler-ese and reached for his mom’s watch.
Gabrielle looked at me seriously. “So… do you know what you’re going to do?”
I stared out the window. The sun was low as the palm fronds swayed like they didn’t have a care in the world.
“No,” I said slowly. “I don’t. I’m not even sure what the question is yet.”
She sat beside me, her hand warm as it wrapped around mine. “Then don’t rush the answer.”
I nodded, my eyes still on the breeze, still trying to quiet the noise in my chest. “I just didn’t expect to find him… there. I thought I was walking into the future alone. But now he’s... already part of it. In the most Sinclair way possible.”
Gabrielle was quiet for a beat. Then she gave me a side-eye smirk. “So this is my fault?”
“Oh, completely,” I said, turning toward her. “You’re the one who told me to get checked out. You’re the one who dragged our inherited mystery uteruses into the conversation. If I end up pregnant by accident through a sperm bank that includes my billionaire situationship? That’s onyou.”
She laughed, full and loud. “Please. If we’re assigning blame, we both know who really deserves it.”
We said it at the same time:“Mom.”
Gabrielle snorted. “God, she wouldhatethis conversation.”
“Which is exactly why we’re having it.”
We both laughed, the kind of laugh that releases more than it adds, and I let my head rest briefly against her shoulder. Julian babbled something in his toddler dialect and tossed a pacifier under my coffee table like it had personally offended him.
“You’re gonna be fine,” Gabrielle said.
I wasn’t sure if she meant about Damian, or fertility, or the whole mess of it—but I nodded anyway. “Yeah. I will.”
Eventually.
But in the meantime, at least I had wine.
And someone else to blame.
CHAPTER NINE
Damian
A Few Weeks Later
The logistics binder lay open in front of me—passport copies, customs declarations, chain of custody documentation for the Kandinsky. Clean. Complete. Ready for handoff.
I ran my thumb along the edge of the folder and flipped to the final page again. Everything checked out. The curator in Baden-Baden had confirmed receipt of our itinerary, and the museum’s attorney had pre-signed the export clearance. The chain was tight. Airtight.
It had to be.
I sat back, let out a slow breath, and reached for my coffee—lukewarm now, but still drinkable. The office around me was quiet in that mid-afternoon way that suggested the workday wasn’t over, but no one wanted to admit it.
My laptop dinged.
Subject:EARLY MENTION— Cut of Her Jib
Thatcher. My PR guy. I clicked.