The next morning, Ivy called in a personal day and took a cab straight to the care facility.
Nathaniel hadn’t come home the night before, and for once she hadn’t bothered checking on him.
She simply moved through her morning like he didn’t exist.
Inside, a thin, frail woman was working through physical therapy exercises with a nurse, building her strength ahead of surgery next month.
Ivy stood in the doorway watching her mother push through it, and her eyes burned.
Whatever she’d sacrificed these past three years, whatever she’d swallowed and endured, it had all been worth it as long as her family stayed whole.
“Ivy?
Is that you?” Eleanor Hart caught her daughter’s presence and reached out, feeling her way over.
“You only ever manage to visit on your days off.
Did something happen?”
Ivy hurried over to help her sit.
Her mother had always been able to read her moods, no matter how well she tried to hide them, so she got ahead of it.
“Mom, why did you take me in back then?
People in the village said I wouldn’t even survive the year, that I’d just be a burden on you.”
She’d been left out in the elements as a newborn by the Sinclairs, and to this day she still didn’t fully understand why.
Back then, Eleanor’s own reputation had been dragged through the mud after a con man tricked her into a brothel.
Moving out to the countryside hadn’t been enough to escape the whispers that followed her.
But she’d never let that history define her; she’d taken in a dying infant anyway and raised her like her own.
“Don’t be ridiculous.
Look at you now, healthy, beautiful, thriving.” Eleanor cupped her daughter’s thin face, quiet for a moment before she went on.
“Ivy, every life is worth something.
God handed you to me for a reason.
What kind of fool turns away a daughter who’s already hers?”
Something in Ivy’s chest cracked open a little.
Then her mother sighed.
“I spend half my life in operating rooms, walking that line between living and not.
I worry that one day I won’t come back from it, and you’ll be out there completely alone.
If you could be as fortunate as I was, if you had a child of your own to keep you company I could rest easy.”
Eleanor knew the surgery, the years of illness, had been a weight on her daughter.
She’d never said so out loud, choosing instead to pretend she didn’t notice mostly because the thought of leaving Ivy behind with nobody terrified her more than dying did.
Ivy’s eyes went glassy.
“Mom, stop talking like that.
The doctors already said the surgery should go well and you’ll be back to normal soon.
And even if…
even if I did have a baby, you’d have to help me raise it.”
She’s right.
This child showing up now maybe it’s not a disaster.
Maybe it’s a gift.
Let the father stay out of it.
Let the child stay.
At least this way, I’d finally be living for myself.
After the surgery, I’ll take her somewhere far from this city, have the baby somewhere safe, and the three of us will just live.
A nurse checking in on Eleanor noticed Ivy’s phone lighting up in her lap.
She glanced down at Nathaniel, calling.
The second she answered, his voice cut through, hard and clipped.
“Ivy Hart.
You skip work and stand up a client?
Is this what a proper handover looks like to you?
Get back here.
Now.”
“I took a personal day.
I don’t have any client meetings today.” Ivy was completely lost.
She checked her call log and found over a dozen missed calls from the office, all silenced without her noticing.
Eleanor, watching with concern, asked quietly, “What’s wrong?”
“You went to see your mother?” Nathaniel’s anger stumbled for a second as he remembered Ivy’s mother had surgery scheduled next month.
He’d known that.
In three years, she’d never once missed a day without cause.
Today happened to be one of those rare exceptions.
“Forget the explanation.
Just figure out how you’re going to smooth this over with the client.
If the Barrow deal falls apart because of you, there won’t be a soft landing.” He hung up without waiting for a response.
Chloe, hovering nearby, asked carefully, “Nathaniel, is it because she doesn’t want to be around me that she skipped work today?
I’ve heard she’s incredibly dedicated; she’d never blow off a client over something personal like that.
Should I go find her?
I’ll apologize, whatever it takes to smooth things over.”
“She made a mistake.
She’ll answer for it.
This has nothing to do with you.” Nathaniel’s jaw tightened.
He reached for his coffee, set it down again without drinking, and pressed the intercom for HR.
“Is Director Hart out today?”
“Yes, sir, she requested leave first thing this morning, and said it was a family matter.”
“There’s an urgent situation.
Reassign everything scheduled for the design department today.” The HR manager, catching the edge in his voice, chose every word with visible care.
After he hung up, doubt started creeping in.
If Ivy really had a client meeting, why would she deliberately take the day off on top of it?
Regardless, damage control came first.
He called Marcus in.
“Put together an apology gift, deliver it to Barrow Group in person.
Set up a dinner with Gerald Barrow to smooth things over.”
Chloe lowered her eyes, jealousy curdling into something sharper.
Wren had made an actual mess of things, and Nathaniel barely raised his voice at her then personally cleaned up after her besides.
He’d already agreed to the divorce.
So why did he still act like her mistakes were his to fix?
Once she left the care facility, Ivy called her assistant, Hazel, to get the full picture.
Hazel dropped her voice like she was worried about being overheard.
“Director, you had a meeting rescheduled with Gerald Barrow today and then you never showed.
He called Nathaniel directly to complain, and Nathaniel’s been tearing through the building looking for you ever since.”
“I booked Mr.
Barrow for tomorrow afternoon.
I never touched today’s schedule.” Ivy was baffled, but the client’s anger mattered more right now than figuring out how the mix-up happened.
Once Hazel filled in the rest, Ivy called Gerald Barrow directly.
He didn’t pick up, so she eventually reached his secretary instead.
The woman’s tone wasn’t friendly either.
“Director Hart, Mr.
Barrow thinks highly of you.
We’ve worked together for years.
So when someone from your design department called this morning asking to move today’s meeting up, he agreed, reluctantly.”
“And then you left him sitting there for an hour without so much as a message.
He was furious enough to nearly cancel the contract on the spot.”
Ivy apologized immediately and kept apologizing until the tension eased, then asked, “This might have been a mistake by someone new on the team.
Amy, do you remember the name of whoever called?”
Amy thought about it.
“She just said she was a junior assistant in design.
Sweet voice.
I remember her calling out a name to someone else on her end, though something like ‘Chi-Chi’ or”
Wait.
Chloe.
Of course.
Petty games, apparently, weren’t beneath her.
Ivy’s expression cooled instantly.
She apologized once more, promised to visit Mr.
Barrow in person the next day, and made a stop at a jewelry store to pick out a necklace for Amy before heading back to the office.
The moment she walked in, Hazel trailed after her, voice low with frustration.
“Director, that new hire’s been coasting on Nathaniel’s backing all day late in, early out, acting like she owns the place.
She ‘accidentally’ ruined the design mockups your whole team pulled for an all-nighter finishing!”
Ivy’s face went flat and cold at the news.
“Where is she now?”
“Up in the CEO’s office, buttering him up.
She’s not here to design anything, she’s here to be his mistress with a company badge.”
Hazel grimaced.
“There’s a rumor going around that you’re quitting because Nathaniel’s new girlfriend forced you out.
Is that true?
Word is he was miserable the whole time you were out like someone lit a fire under him and not even Chloe hanging around helped.”
Ivy figured Nathaniel’s mood had less to do with missing her and more to do with a client he thought she’d humiliated him in front of.
She flipped through the ruined mockups and found them soaked through with coffee stains, completely unsalvageable.
Chloe had been so desperate to throw her weight around that she’d repeatedly torched the company’s own interests in the process which was, frankly, remarkably stupid for someone trying to look competent.
“Get the full team on overtime.
We’re redoing this from scratch.” Ivy pulled Chloe’s personnel file and said, cold and even, “Design can’t afford to babysit someone this reckless.
Have HR reassign her to the President’s Office secretarial pool.”
Hazel hadn’t expected her to move that decisively and hesitated before speaking.
“Director…
bringing Chloe into design was Nathaniel’s call.”
Ivy looked at her steadily.
“Then I’ll answer for it.
I’m still the director of this department, until I’m not.”
If you held the title, you did the job that came with it.
And as long as that title was still hers, she wasn’t about to let Chloe’s petty games torch everything her team had worked for.