Never Leave Me Again: Healing The Billionaire’s Heart

Leomaris’ POV

“I apologize for being late. My wife just died. Alright, we’ve got a lot on the agenda today, let’s begin.”

The room went tomb silent.

I didn’t look up from the leather-bound folder I’d just dropped onto the mahogany table. I didn’t need to see their faces to know what was there: the wide eyes, the stifled gasps, the pathetic, suffocating pity. I hated pity more than I hated the cancer that had taken her.

“Sir,” Author, my head of operations, stammered. His voice was thin, vibrating with an awkwardness that made my skin crawl. “Perhaps we should…..postpone? The board would certainly understand given the—“

“The board understands that time is the only currency we cannot replenish,” I cut him off. My voice was flat, dead weight.

I finally looked up, my gaze sweeping across dozen executives seated around the long table. They weren’t friends. They were staffs—components of a machine that needed to keep turning. I didn’t need them to be my mourners.

“The acquisition of the Valmont Group is the priority,” I stated, my eyes locking onto Author’s until he looked away. “Open your binders to page twelve.”

The sound of the rustling paper filled the air, a frantic, desperate noise as they scrambled to obey. I sat down, the high back leather chair feeling like a throne of ice.

It was 12:05pm.

Four hours ago, I stood in the grey morning mist and watched a mahogany casket disappear into the dirt. Three hours ago, I walked away from my daughters, Lenon and Noa, as they stood in the foyer of our hollowed-out home.

I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t touch them. To see them was to see her—and to see her was to feel the jagged edges of my own soul being ripped out all over again.

“The projected margins for the first quarter are on the screen,” I said, clicking the remote. A cold, blue light washed over the room, illuminating the graphs. My hands didn’t shake.

Mr. De La Fontaine,” one of the older VPs started, her voice trembling with a misplaced sense of maternal comfort. “We are so incredibly sorry. Lotte was such a—“

“Lotte is dead,” I interrupted. The name felt like a razor blade in my throat, but I didn’t let it show. “And she is not on the agenda. If you cannot focus on the Valmont acquisition, leave the room. Other wise, we are discussing the logistical overhead.”

The woman flinched as if I’d slapped her. She looked down at her papers, her face flushing a deep, embarrassed red.

Good. I wanted them uncomfortable. I wanted them to see the wall I had built and know that there was no way I had built and know that there was no way over it. If I allowed even a second of silence to linger—the reality of the empty bed and quiet hallways would crush me.

“Author,” I barked, not looking at him

“The debt-to-equity ratio on page fourteen. Does it or does it not meet our internal requirements?”

“It…..it does, sir,” he whispered.

“Then speak up. I am not paying you to whisper in a tomb.”

I lived for numbers now. The data. The cold, hard facts that didn’t require a heart to understand.

The meeting was scheduled for ninety minutes. we hit the two-hour mark, then the third. By the fourth hour, the air in the room felt thin, used up. My executives were flagging; Author’s forehead was slick with sweat, and the others were pale, their pens trembling over their legal pads.

They wanted to go home to their families. They wanted to escape the monster at the head of the table who had just buried his wife and hadn’t blinked since.

“Again,” I commanded, staring at discrepancy in the logistics report. “Run the numbers again. I don’t pay for “approximate” figures.”

“Sir,” Author whispered, his voice cracking. “It’s four o’ clock. We have been through the Valmont files three times.”

I looked at him, my expression unreadable. I wasn’t ready. If I ended this meeting, the silence of the De La Fontaine estate would be waiting for me. The sound of two five year old girls crying for a woman who would never answer would be waiting for me.

“Then we shall go through them a fourth.” I said coldly.

But eventually, even I couldn’t find more ways to delay the inevitable. When I finally dismissed them, the fled. They didn’t walk; they scrambled out of the room as if the floor were catching fire, leaving me alone in the cold, blue glow of the projector.

I stood up, adjusted my cuffs, and walked to my private office.

Luka, my assistant, was already there. He was the only one who didn’t look at me like I was a ticking bomb—mostly because he knew I’d already exploded, and this was simply a fallout.

“Sit,” I said, walking behind my desk. I didn’t ask how he was. I didn’t care. “Did you get the job done?”

Luka didn’t flinch. He placed a thin manila folder on my desk. “I did, sir. The listing for the nanny position was posted across the top-tier agencies three hours after the…..services concluded.”

“And,” I leaned back, the leather creaking. My eyes felt like they were full of glass.

“The response was overwhelming, but most failed the preliminary screening,” Luka said. He tapped the folder. “However one did meet the requirements. Exactly.”

I stared at the folder. I didn’t want a stranger in my house. I didn’t want anyone touching Lotte’s things or speaking to my daughters. But the girls…..the girls were a mess. The house was a graveyard. And I….. I couldn’t be the one to fix it. I couldn’t even look at them without seeing a ghost.