Chapter 6 - THE MIDNIGHT CONFESSIONWe didn't go straight back to the estate after the meeting.
Warren had the driver take us to a small, unassuming diner off Peachtree Industrial Boulevard—a place with sticky red vinyl booths and neon signs buzzing in the window.
"A billionaire in a diner?" I asked, sliding into the booth across from him as the waitress dropped off two mugs of black coffee and a plate of greasy fries.
"My mother used to bring me here after my father’s board meetings when I was ten," Warren said, wrapping his long fingers around the heavy ceramic mug. "Whenever he told me that feelings were a liability and business was the only religion that mattered, we’d come here and eat chili cheese fries until we felt sick."
I looked at him across the small table, the neon red light casting a warm glow over his sharp features. The cold, untouchable titan of Cole Capital felt light-years away from the man sitting here in a loosened tie, looking tired around the eyes.
"Why did you do it, Warren?" I asked softly, stirring sugar into my coffee even though I didn't drink it sweet. "You risked twenty-five million dollars on a bluff for someone you met four days ago."
Warren was quiet for a long moment. He looked out the streaked diner window at the streaming headlights on the highway outside.
"It wasn't a bluff," he said quietly. "Cole Capital really did call the loan."
My breath hitched. "You actually did it? Just like that?"
"My father built his empire by destroying other people's families," Warren said, his voice dropping into a register so low I had to lean forward to hear it. "He missed my mother’s funeral because he was closing a real estate deal in Savannah. When I was twelve, I waited outside his office for six hours on my birthday while he was inside renegotiating a debt with a man who ended up swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills that night."
He looked back at me, his pale eyes burning with an old, deep-seated fire.
"When I walked into that hospital room and saw you alone—abandoned by a coward who couldn't be bothered to put down his phone while his children were coming into the world—I saw my mother. I saw every person my family ever crushed because they thought power meant you didn't have to care."
He reached across the table, his warm fingers wrapping around my hand. His skin was rougher than I expected, the hands of a man who worked as hard as he planned.
"I didn't buy you, Amelia. And I'm not saving you," Warren said, his thumb brushing lightly over my knuckles. "You saved yourself the moment you looked at those babies and decided to keep breathing. I'm just here to make sure the bastards who tried to break you pay the toll."
My throat tightened, a lump forming that I couldn't swallow. For the first time since Derek walked out of my life, for the first time since the cold rails of the hospital bed under my fingers, the ice around my heart cracked.
May you like
"They're going to fight back," I whispered.
"Let them," Warren said, a faint, dangerous smile touching his lips. "We own the board. Now let's go home to our children."
