Chapter 340: You run my heart
"You run my heart," he cut in gently, before she could finish talking herself back down into something smaller than she was. He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles, once, slow and certain. "That’s a bigger empire than any boardroom, Amara. Don’t you dare talk yourself out of this. Not tonight."
She was still trying to find the words to answer him, trying, and failing, because there was something about being looked at like that, like she was the single most remarkable thing he had ever encountered, that always managed to steal every clever sentence right out of her head when the sound of small, hurried footsteps came thundering down the hallway toward the study, accompanied by a chorus of delighted giggling.
"Mama! Papa!"
Justina rounded the doorway first, dark curls bouncing, chubby arms already flung wide the moment she spotted her parents, with Josh close on her heels, toddling determinedly to keep up with his twin sister despite his shorter legs. Their nanny appeared a beat behind them in the hallway, slightly breathless, offering an apologetic smile.
"They insisted on saying goodnight themselves, ma’am, I couldn’t talk them out of it."
Amara was already out of her chair before the woman finished the sentence, scooping Justina up into her arms in one smooth, practiced motion, laughing as the toddler immediately buried her small fists into her mother’s hair.
"Mama," Justina announced again, this time with great satisfaction, as though the word itself were the whole point, and Amara peppered kisses across her daughter’s round cheeks, her forehead, the tip of her nose, until Justina dissolved into breathless giggles and squirmed happily in her arms.
Beside them, Julian had already lifted Josh onto his hip, and he mirrored Amara’s affection exactly, kiss after kiss pressed to his son’s soft cheeks until Josh let out a delighted shriek and grabbed two fistfuls of his father’s shirt collar, grinning with the particular, gummy joy of a child who had not yet learned that the world could contain anything but love.
Amara watched Julian with their son for a moment, something warm and enormous unfurling in her chest this powerful, unshakeable man, who commanded boardrooms and negotiated deals worth more than some countries’ annual budgets, reduced to helpless, doting mush by one giggling toddler.
It still astonished her sometimes, how completely he had rearranged his entire life to make room for a family he had once, in the earliest days of their acquaintance, sworn he had no interest in building.
"You two," Amara murmured to her children, pressing her forehead briefly to Justina’s, "are about to have a very busy mama tomorrow."
"Mama’s going to be on the cover of a magazine," Julian told Josh solemnly, as though the toddler could possibly follow the sentence, though Josh only responded by patting his father’s cheek with a small, sticky palm and babbling something enthusiastic and entirely unintelligible in reply.
"Close enough," Julian said, laughing, and pressed a kiss to the crown of his son’s head.
That night, long after the children had finally been coaxed to sleep and the house had settled into its familiar, comfortable quiet, Amara lay awake for a long while, staring up at the dark ceiling, Julian’s arm heavy and warm across her waist.
Tomorrow felt enormous in a way that even the company’s biggest contract negotiations never had. This wasn’t about numbers or margins or shareholder confidence.
This was about telling her story, the whole of it, the parts she was proud of and the parts that had nearly broken her to a magazine that would put her face on newsstands across the country, under a headline declaring her, of all things, a woman who had won.
She thought of every version of herself that had led her here. The girl who had inherited a fortune and a family name and had spent years terrified that it was the only thing anyone would ever see in her.
The young woman who had sat beside Janet on designs, refusing to let the doubt in her own chest win. And the wife, the mother, she had somehow, against every early prediction, become.
Julian stirred beside her, not quite awake, and pulled her closer against him in his sleep, murmuring something soft and wordless against her hair.
Amara let herself relax into the warmth of him at last, and somewhere in the space between wakefulness and sleep, the fear finally loosened its grip enough to let her rest.
The next day arrived bright and clear, the kind of golden, cloudless morning that seemed almost deliberately staged for the occasion.
By mid-morning, the crew from Business Women Magazine had arrived at the Pedro mansion in a modest convoy of two vehicles considerably less fanfare than Amara had braced herself for, though the interviewer herself, a sharp-eyed woman named Adaeze with a warm smile and an even warmer handshake, carried herself with the unmistakable calm confidence of someone who had interviewed presidents and moguls alike and was rarely, if ever, rattled.
They settled in the garden, at Amara’s suggestion, she had wanted somewhere that felt like her, rather than the sterile hush of a boardroom, somewhere with the scent of blooming frangipani in the air and the soft murmur of the pond nearby instead of the artificial hum of studio lights.
A small crew arranged two low chairs facing each other beneath the shade of the old flame tree, cameras positioned at careful angles to catch the natural light, while a sound technician clipped a small microphone to the collar of Amara’s cream blouse with practiced efficiency.
Inside, framed by the mansion’s tall glass windows, Julian stood with Josh balanced on one hip and Justina’s small hand tucked in his own, watching the proceedings with the quiet, steady pride of a man who had waited a long time to see his wife given the credit she had always deserved.
Every so often, Amara’s gaze flicked toward the glass, and every time it did, she found him already looking back at her, offering the smallest, most private smile, a silent reminder that no matter how many cameras were pointed at her, she wasn’t facing any of it alone.
"Whenever you’re ready," Adaeze said warmly, settling into her chair across from Amara, notes balanced lightly on her knee, though it was clear from the ease in her posture that the notes were more habit than necessity.