Chapter 238: [4.56] Hearts You Can’t Afford

My stomach dropped straight through the floor and kept going.

I’d never seen Vivienne cry. Not once in three weeks of careful observation and increasing proximity. She’d been angry, frustrated, cold as a February morning, warm as summer sunshine when she forgot to maintain her walls, but never this. Never vulnerable enough to let tears exist outside of privately locked rooms and carefully scheduled emotional release sessions.

"I requested not to be disturbed," she said, her voice cracking on the last word like ice breaking under pressure.

"Mrs. Tanaka said you requested not to be disturbed. She never said you meant it."

"That’s not how requests work in normal social situations."

"Seems like it’s exactly how they work in this house." I closed the door behind me with a soft click, moved deeper into the Archive, stepping carefully around racks of clothes that probably had individual insurance policies. "You okay?"

"Perfectly fine." The lie was so obvious it was almost insulting. Like she thought I was blind and stupid and completely incapable of recognizing basic human distress.

"You’re sitting on the floor crying in a vampire costume surrounded by clothes worth more than small countries. That’s pretty much the definition of not perfectly fine."

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, the gesture angry and frustrated, like she hated that her body was betraying her by producing tears without explicit permission from her corporate scheduling app.

"I don’t cry," Vivienne said with the kind of conviction that suggested she’d been repeating this mantra to herself for years.

"Could’ve fooled me."

"I mean I don’t let myself cry. There’s a difference." She looked away, stared at a rack of winter coats like they held the secrets of universe and the meaning of existence. "Valentines don’t break down. We handle things."

I sat down across from her, far enough away to give her space, close enough that she couldn’t pretend I wasn’t there, that this conversation wasn’t happening.

"Handling things looks exhausting." 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"It is." The words came out quiet. Small. Like she was admitting to a crime instead of acknowledging basic human limitations. "I’m so tired, Isaiah. I’m tired of quarterly reports and board meetings and pretending I know what I’m doing when half the time I’m terrified I’m going to make the wrong call and destroy everything Papa built."

There it was. The real her, underneath all the color-coded schedules and corporate speak and carefully maintained facades. Young. Scared. Carrying weight that would crush most adults, let alone a seventeen-year-old girl who should be worried about college applications and prom themes instead of profit margins and hostile takeovers.

"Your dad would be proud of you."

"You didn’t know him." The words came out sharp, defensive, like I’d touched a nerve that was still raw and bleeding.

"I know you." I leaned back against a display table, feeling something sharp dig into my spine—probably a thousand-dollar stiletto with its own authentication certificate. "And you’re seventeen years old. You shouldn’t be running a multinational corporation. You should be worrying about SAT scores and whether that boy from chemistry class likes you back."

"I don’t have time for boys from chemistry class."

"You had time to kiss me in a bathroom."

Her eyes snapped to mine, wide with shock and something that might have been embarrassment or might have been remembered heat.

Then she laughed.

Actually laughed, high and slightly hysterical, the sound echoing off the Archive’s walls and expensive surfaces like breaking glass.

"I did, didn’t I?" She covered her face with her hands, fingers pressing against her temples like she was trying to hold her skull together through sheer force of will. "Dear God. What is wrong with me?"

"Nothing’s wrong with you."

"I kissed my employee in a museum bathroom after knowing him for less than three weeks. That’s something. That’s definitely several somethings wrong."

"I kissed you back," I pointed out with what I hoped was reasonable logic. "So either we’re both catastrophically broken or neither of us is."

She peeked through her fingers, her purple eyes bright with unshed tears and something that looked suspiciously like hope. "That’s terrible logic."

"It’s the only logic I’ve got right now." I offered her the water bottle, watching as she stared at it like it was a foreign object she couldn’t quite identify. "Drink something. Iris said crying dehydrates you."

"Your sister is fourteen years old."

"She’s also right about ninety percent of the time, which is deeply annoying and occasionally useful."

Vivienne took the bottle with careful fingers, unscrewed the cap with the kind of precision she brought to everything, and drank like she’d been wandering the desert for days instead of sleeping on my lap for forty minutes.

When she finished, she set it down with characteristic carefulness, everything placed exactly where it needed to be because chaos was the enemy and control was the only thing standing between her and complete collapse.

"I called you Papa," she said suddenly. "In the car. When I was half-asleep."

"I heard."

"I dream about him sometimes. About when things were..." She trailed off, her voice getting smaller, younger. "Different."

"Better?"

"Just different." Vivienne pulled her knees tighter to her chest, making herself as small as possible, like she was trying to disappear into her own costume. "He used to take me to ballet recitals when I was little. Mama was always too busy with board meetings or photo shoots or whatever crisis needed managing, but Papa never missed one. Not once."

Something in my chest twisted, sharp and familiar. I knew that feeling intimately—the absence shaped like a person, the gap where support should be, the way love could feel like a luxury you couldn’t afford until it was gone completely.

"What would he say about all this?" I gestured vaguely at the Archive, at the night, at her sitting on the floor having an emotional breakdown over some scholarship student from Philadelphia who definitely didn’t belong in her world.

"He’d probably tell me to follow my heart." Vivienne’s smile was bitter enough to curdle milk. "And then Mama would remind me that hearts are for people who can afford them."

"That’s possibly the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard, and I grew up in Kensington."

"Welcome to my life. Population: me and a crushing sense of inherited responsibility."