Elena was awake when he got home.
Of course she was.
She was at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and her laptop open but not being looked at — the posture of someone who had been waiting and was pretending they hadn't been.
He sat down across from her.
Told her everything.
Every word, every pause, every flicker of something real behind Carter's performance when he had realized he'd been read completely.
Elena listened without interrupting — which was how he knew she was genuinely focused, because Elena's natural state during information delivery was to ask clarifying questions.
When he finished she was quiet for a moment.
"He's going to call James," she said.
"Possibly."
"And James will—"
"Handle it correctly," Shen Mingzhu said. "James doesn't make deals that aren't clean. Carter will either come in properly or he won't come in at all."
Elena nodded slowly. Processing. Filing. "And the legal threat?"
"Dormant. Not dead." He looked at her. "He won't pursue it aggressively now. The cost-benefit has shifted. But he'll keep the documentation as leverage — something to hold in reserve in case he needs it later."
"Can he hurt us with it?"
"Not significantly. Not with Dr. Anand's trial results and the merger documentation and everything else on record." He paused. "But I want to get ahead of it. Preemptively."
"How?"
"I want to do an interview," he said. "A proper one. Not a press conference, not a response to someone else's article. A chosen platform, a journalist we've vetted, a full conversation about the company, the science, and—" He paused. "The personal story. Controlled narrative. Our terms."
Elena looked at him. "The personal story meaning—"
"Meaning I address the question of who I am directly. On my own terms. Before Carter can shape it." He held her gaze. "Not the full truth — I'm not sure this world is ready for the full truth — but a version that's honest enough to satisfy the question and specific enough to make Carter's legal angle look absurd by comparison."
She thought about it.
"The journalist from the Financial Review," she said. "Clara Hess. She's the best in the space. Fair. Thorough. If she vets the story it carries weight."
"Can you get the meeting?"
"Already have her number," Elena said.
He looked at her.
She almost smiled. "I've been thinking about this since the article," she said. "I just needed to know which direction you wanted to go."
"You could have suggested it."
"I knew you'd get there yourself," she said simply.
Something about the way she said it — the quiet confidence of it, the complete absence of any need to have been the one to say it first — moved through him warmly.
She trusts how I think, he realized. Not just what I do. How I think.
That was, in some ways, more intimate than anything else.
"Elena," he said.
She looked at him.
"Thank you," he said. "For waiting up."
She looked at her tea. Then back at him. The unguarded expression — more familiar now, appearing more easily, staying longer before she thought to put the armor back.
"Don't make it weird," she said.
"I'm not making it weird."
"You're using the voice."
"What voice?"
"The sincere one." She picked up her tea. "It's very difficult to be appropriately defensive when you use the sincere voice."
He looked at her steadily. "Good."
She shook her head. But she was smiling.
The real one. The rare one.
"Go to bed," she said. "You have a 7 AM call with James."
"Come with me," he said.
She went very still.
Then she looked at him — really looked, the full direct gaze that she used when she was deciding something important.
"That's the first time you've—" she started.
"I know," he said. "I meant it."
Silence.
The kitchen. The late hour. The city outside doing what cities do at midnight — quieter, slower, more honest.
"Okay," she said softly.
That word again.
Always that word.
Okay.
The word that meant: I trust you. I choose this. I'm still scared and I'm doing it anyway.
He stood up.
Held out his hand.
She took it.
And they left the kitchen light on behind them.