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I sat there in silence for a moment, letting everything process.

In all the time I had known Yonas, he had always been the man who had every detail of his life mapped out three steps ahead. It wasn’t that he never faced obstacles. Everybody had problems, but he was wealthy, fiercely confident, and usually so sure of his next business move that his unshakeable calm almost drove me crazy. Seeing him sitting across from me looking visibly exhausted and stressed to the bone, felt completely foreign.

“Are you okay?” I asked quietly.

He shrugged one shoulder, trying to force a careless look that didn’t work. “I’m handling it.”

“That wasn’t what I asked, Yonas.”

His lips curved into a faint, tired smirk. “You’ve been waiting to use that line on me for months, haven’t you?”

A small laugh broke from my chest. “A little bit, yeah.”

He shook his head, but the fleeting humor disappeared from his face almost as quickly as it had arrived, replaced once more by the heavy lines of stress around his forehead.

“I’m stressed, Lakelyn,” he admitted softly, his voice dropping into raw honesty. “I’m really damn stressed.”

“I can imagine.”

“I got attorneys blowing up my phone every single morning, business partners looking at me sideways, and colleagues I’ve known for years acting like they don’t even recognize my number when I call,” he said, looking down at his clasped hands. “And the money situation is a whole other headache.”

“What about the money?”

“Some of my corporate investment funds are frozen while the forensic audit is running,” he explained. “I’m not broke. I still have my personal liquidity and savings. But watching hundreds of thousands of dollars drain out of my bank account every couple of weeks just to defend myself against crimes I didn’t commit is getting old real fast.”

My heart ached for him.

Without thinking, I reached across the small distance between us and laid my hand gently over his knuckles.

“I’m so sorry, Yonas. Truly.”

He nodded, turning his hand over to give mine a light, grateful squeeze. “I appreciate that.”

We sat together in the quiet room for a minute, the only sound being the distant hum of the central heating through the mansion’s vents.

Inevitably, my eyes traveled back to the two large suitcases sitting near the doorway.

Yonas still hadn’t given me a logical explanation as to why he’d had shown up at my door with two suitcases and not so much as a phone call, text message, or warning. Whatever had brought him here, I needed to know exactly what it was.

“So...” I dragged the word out. “Why are you here with luggage?”

“Well, for one, Willow told me not to tell you.”

“Of course she did. What’s the other reason?”

“I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to spend some time with y’all.”

I pulled my hand back and let out a soft sigh, settling against my chair. “Yonas...”

I truly didn’t mind helping him if he needed somewhere to stay while everything with his job and legal situation was being sorted out. And if spending a few days with me and Kaidence gave him some peace, I wasn’t against that either, but I also wasn’t about to let sympathy blur a boundary I had already made clear.

“Just hear me out, Lakelyn.”

I folded my arms and waited, letting him have his say.

“I’ve been trapped in conference rooms with lawyers and investigators for weeks,” he said, leaning forward to plead his case. “Every time my phone rings, it’s bad news or somebody demanding another document. I felt like I was suffocating back home. I just wanted to be somewhere I could actually breathe for a few days.”

“And you thought coming here was the answer?”