37. Assert Ownership
[Present] A slow-motion car crash unfolds as Theo humiliates Jude at the airport. He thinks he's claimed his prize. But the most dangerous opponent is the one who lets you think you're winning.
[Narration: 3rd omniscient]
Red Lace
Theo and Bells hadn’t spoken much since that visit to Emma’s two weeks ago, and the tension between them had only gotten worse when she’d announced this Tokyo trip the day after their row.
Theo watched from the doorway as she packed her bag with the methodical care of someone planning an escape. Each folded garment felt like a small treachery, every zipped compartment another door closing between them. He told himself he was just needlessly insecure. Bells loved him, had said yes to his proposal, wore his ring (three carats, platinum band, flawless cut). But lately anxiety and intuition have been uncomfortable bedfellows in the Watson-Hann household. All while Watson and Hann themselves were not. He continued his self-imposed banishment in the guest room for 14 nights straight, and she’d not protested it even once.
Bells, for her part, was trying very hard to appear nonchalant. Folding items mechanically, smoothing creases with her hands. Her palms were damp - she could feel it - the clammy heat of guilt that no amount of casual movement could disguise.
“Need help with anything?” Theo’s asked, light and and seemingly helpful but she knew better. The question carried weight, subtext, hidden clauses in fine print.
“I’m fine, thanks.” Keep it simple. Don’t give him ammunition.
But Theo was already moving closer, pulled by an instinct the Watson men had refined over generations - the need to audit, to verify, to know exactly what belonged to them and where it was going. His steps on the hardwood were soft, deliberate.
He looked into her suitcase - shades of grey, white, and rose pink blended together like a Sfumato painting. Business casual mostly: blazers with sharp shoulders, trousers with knife creases, sensible shoes that clicked with authority on marble floors. Professional armour. Then his eye caught something blood-red tucked beneath the blacks, a slash of colour that didn’t belong in any boardroom.
Gotcha, he thought, even as his stomach dropped. Because finding proof of disloyalty was never as satisfying as one imagined. It was like picking at a scab. Compulsive, necessary, and guaranteed to leave a scar.
“What’s this?” His fingers closed on the fabric, pulling it free. It slithered between his fingers like something alive. He held it up as if it could explain itself. Thirty-five inches of calculated seduction.
Bells felt heat bloom in her cheeks, spreading down her throat. Her pulse jumped, visible in the hollow above her collarbone.
“It’s just a dress, Theo.”
“Just a dress?” He ran his palm over it, feeling the quality of the fabric, the way it would cling and drape and reveal. He saw her in this before - the hem ending above the knee, figure-hugging, exposing the swell of her breasts, the kind of dress that made men stop mid-conversation and recalculate their negotiating positions.
“For your business meetings?”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “There might be social events. Yamamoto mentioned.”
“Right. Social events. When you’d be pretending to be Larssen’s fiancé? In this?”
She’d almost forgotten he knew about the fake engagement. That he’d helped draft clause 4, had insisted on it specifically, predicting exactly this scenario like a man hedging against inevitable betrayal.
“I… just like it.” Her voice wavered despite her best efforts. “It makes me feel feminine.”
He tossed the dress aside and reached back into her suitcase. This time his fingers found delicate lace, hidden in a side compartment she’d thought was discreet. He pulled it free: crimson underwear, matching bra and knickers, and something else. A bodysuit, black, architectural in its construction.
The air left his lungs.
“You need THIS for your business trip?”
Red lace, whisper-thin, so delicate it could be torn with minimal pressure. The kind that wasn’t meant to stay on long, designed for efficient removal by hands that knew their way around a woman’s body. The lace caught on his calluses, the tiny imperfections in his otherwise-smooth palms, each snag a small indictment. And beside that, Christ, a bodysuit. The sort of thing that suggested a woman had given considerable thought to what a man might find when he undressed her.
His throat felt tight, constricted, the suffocation of watching your assets depreciate in real time.
Bells snatched the lingerie back, fingers colliding with his in the exchange. The brief contact was tense. Her movements were sharp, defensive.
“I put it on sometimes under business attire for confidence, okay?”
Theo knew all about Bells and confidence, knew how she transformed when she felt powerful. He'd remembered how she'd put a hot number on under her office dress once, when an important client meeting loomed ahead. Her walk altered - hips shifting with liquid precision, spine straightening, chin angling up to catch light and male attention in equal measure. She’d become blue-chip stock, and men’s eyes tracked her movements like hungry day traders watching market openings.
He'd imagined one man in particular had always noticed. He still recalled Larssen’s assessment - clinical, comprehensive, hungry - when she’d stepped out from his Bentley in front of Il Silenzio. That slow appraisal from toe to crown had been a hostile takeover bid conducted in five brutal seconds. Lustful. Brazen. A man pricing an acquisition down to the penny. Then those bright eyes had met Theo’s, unphased by the competing claim.
“How does that work exactly, Bells? Like you’re hiding some secret under your clothes? Something to bring men to their knees?”
His voice was rising now, control slipping. His hand gripped the bedpost, knuckles whitening, the wood grain pressing into his palm.
“Is that what this is about, Bells? You want to feel powerful over him?”
Him. They both knew who him was.
Private Eye
Before Bells could formulate a response that wouldn’t sound like a lie, Theo’s phone buzzed. Mike’s name on the screen. His private investigator, the man his father swore was “best in class” but who seemed to so far specialise in delivering expensive banalities.
“Nothing on the Bielawski kid, not a single trace,” Mike’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Very rare. I’ve only really seen such a vacuum with children from care settings. Everything sealed tight, guarded, and destroyed after a number of years. I checked the Cambridge connection as per your suggestion. Appears to have gone there.”
No shit, Sherlock, Theo thought. He was increasingly considering reaching out to a different professional.
“Received a couple of scholarships, some based on merit, others on need.”
So Bielawski was some poor council estate kid, Theo reasoned with disdain.
“Must have generated impressive returns post-graduation to produce £2 million in capital?” His free hand flexed, fingers curling and releasing, a nervous habit from trading floors he used to frequent that betrayed his agitation.
“Still assessing the revenue streams.”
Outstanding. Theo nearly rolled his eyes. Twenty-four hundred pounds in fees so far for information he could have, and had, found himself and quicker.
“And Larssen?”
“Surrey. Only child. Family of Swedish doctors.”
Surrey. Theo let that settle, warm and reassuring like good scotch. Solid middle-class equity. Professional family foundations. The kind of stable, boring background that produced men who knew how to dress power like a second skin but had to learn it, weren’t born into it the way Theo had been.
“Boarding school?” The question carried weight he couldn’t quite hide. For one breathless moment he wondered if they’d been near-peers at Eton, Larssen slightly his junior, both groomed in the same institutional machinery that manufactured British authority.
“Still researching.”
After ending the call with instructions to find Bielawski’s address - I don’t care what it costs, just find it - Theo turned back to find Bells zipping her suitcase with enough force to damage the mechanism. The sound of metal teeth biting closed made something in his chest tighten painfully, like a fist closing around his lungs.
“Ready?” He reached for her bag, an instinctive gesture of help he immediately regretted.
She pulled it away before his fingers made contact, clutching the handle like contested assets in a hostile divorce. The rejection stung - small and sharp and somehow worse than the lingerie, because it was contact she was refusing, not just honesty.
Depreciation
The drive to Heathrow was thick with silence that had physical presence - heavy, humid, the kind of quiet that pressed against eardrums and made swallowing difficult. Punctuated only by the low hum of the Bentley’s engine and the occasional direction from the GPS. London traffic crawled past the windows - brake lights reflecting red off wet pavement even though it wasn’t raining, just that perpetual Thames dampness that made everything feel soggy and compromised.
Finally, at a red light that felt interminable, Theo broke. His hand left the gearshift, reached across the centre console, found her knee. Cold through her jeans. Unresponsive. She didn’t move toward his touch, didn’t shift to accommodate it, just sat there letting his palm rest on her leg like a claim she was too polite to contest.
“I don’t want us to part like this, babe. I do love you.”
This is what love looks like when it’s dying, Theo thought. Pleading. Careful.
“I know, Theo.” Her voice was flat, professional, the exact tone she used with difficult clients who needed to be managed rather than engaged with. “The last two weeks have been... intense.”
“Darling.” He squeezed her knee, felt the muscle tense under his palm, resistance flowing through her like voltage.
“Nothing we can’t overcome, right?” The hope in his voice embarrassed him, made him feel young and stupid and powerless, a junior analyst begging for mercy from a senior partner who’d already made up their mind.
“Sure.” She was looking down at her hands.
The light changed. Green wash over the dashboard. He returned his hand to the gearshift, fingers gripping leather that was warm from body heat and use.
“Going through your bag... That was uncalled for. You have every right to be mad.”
There it is, she thought, that perfect tactical retreat he always executed on those rare occasions he crossed the line. He always knew the right concession to make, the exact moment to offer just enough remorse to shift the balance sheet. To make her feel like the unreasonable party, the one withholding forgiveness for forgivable offenses, refusing to accept his bid for reconciliation.
“It’s fine, honey. Let’s just forget about it,” she said regardless. Not wishing to make a fuss now.
But they both knew: some breaches of trust were permanent entries in the ledger.
Tech bro
Terminal 1 hit them with that specific airport sensory assault - recycled air thick with coffee and anxiety sweat, departure announcements echoing off high ceilings, the peculiar acoustics of large spaces designed to move people efficiently rather than comfortably. The overhead lights were too bright, fluorescent and unforgiving, making everyone look slightly ill.
Bells spotted her team near the departure gate: Mark, Keith, Jack, flanked by two engineers and one data scientist, all performing the ritual of avoiding eye contact through phone screens. Professional distance. Plausible deniability. The modern corporate shield.
“Where’s Jude?”
The question left her mouth before she could audit its cost, before she could stop herself from proving Theo’s accusations through her own eagerness.
As if summoned, he emerged from WHSmith - newspapers folded with geometric precision beneath his left arm, left hand pocketed, right hand holding coffee that steamed lazily into recycled air, looking like some Victorian gentleman who’d traded his top hat for a start-up CEO’s studied casualness. Everything about his movement irritated Theo: the unhurried confidence, the way he inhabited space as if he owned it, the maddening suggestion that while other men rushed through airports, Jude Larssen simply arrived.
“A paper?” Theo’s voice carried that upper-class disdain he’d perfected at Eton, the verbal equivalent of looking down from a penthouse at street-level commerce.
“Don’t you tech bros read everything on screens?”
Tech bro. Just to shoot him down a peg. He was nothing but just another grifter college drop out, a reformed nerd whose unhealthy interest in computing has turned out a happy coincidence as the world went digital. All of them a bunch of misfits who’d lucked into relevance. Unlike financiers, the class really running the world. The elite Theo belonged to.
Jude’s eyebrows lifted fractionally, an economical movement that somehow managed to be both acknowledgment and dismissal. He sipped his coffee, the cup hiding what might have been a smile.
“Evening, Teddy. Alright?”
The diminutive scraped against Theo’s ears like fingernails on glass. It reduced him, made him small, turned his carefully cultivated authority into something childish and temporary.
“Don’t call me that,” Theo snapped.
“That’s your name, isn’t it?”
The question brutal in its candour. Because yes, Theodore was his name, but Teddy hinted at familiarity, condescension, suggested that he was not a threat.
“It’s Theodore. Or Mr. Watson to you.”
Bells looked at him with something approaching horror, God, please don’t let him start something right now. As she got one of them behaving, leather belt to his throat nonetheless, the other started to throw his toys out of the pram. She glanced sideways, desperate for de-escalation, and spotted Yen suddenly there, chatting with Klar. Perfect.
“Oh look Theo, Yen is here! Jude’s girlfriend.” she boomed, purposely loud.
“She is not” Jude replied swiftly as Yen emerged by his side, surprised the conversation suddenly involved her.
“We’re just seeing where things go”
She touched his arm with proprietary gentleness, claiming territory with casual intimacy. Bells tracked how he lowered his arm fractionally, barely an inch but enough, making Yen’s palm slide away. The small cruelty of it was almost elegant in its minimalism.
“They’re not going anywhere, Yen’s seeing a Bank of England lad, Alex” Jude looked directly at Bells now, as if this explanation was owed specifically to her. Yen looked down, embarrassment glinting in her eyes, said nothing.
Theo was enjoying this now, his opponent’s awkward dance, trying to show himself as a viable prospect for his fiancé, at the same time having to manage the clinginess of his side piece. This was gold, Bells seeing just how morally bankrupt the guy was without Theo even having to lift a finger. Though lifting several fingers - preferably clenched into a fist - still held considerable appeal. His knuckles actually ached with the wanting.
“Ah Larssen, a woman having a partner never stopped you before” Theo said mockingly, winking at Yen.
Bells was astounded at what just came out of his mouth. The public accusation, the casual cruelty, the implication delivered in Heathrow departures where their entire team could hear.
Jack’s eyes went wide, Keith shook his head, his expression transmitting “please God make this stop”, Mark from finance pacing awkwardly with his phone pressed to his ear as if suddenly remembering an urgent call. The two engineers and Klar moved closer, drawn by disaster the way crowds gather at accident scenes.
“You’re right, it hadn’t” Jude replied pointedly, “Why hold back now?” he said looking at Bells.
Theo realised he walked into a landmine of his own making.
Jude looked at him for a moment, faintly amused. Then pulled out a bit of paper from his pocket, folded exactly in half along the long edge, and passed it to Bells casually.
“Your boarding pass Ms Hann”
The way their eyes met for a moment, the way her fingers brushed his, irritated Theo like a personal affront. His arm found her waist automatically, wrapping around her with enough pressure to feel possessive, territorial. Claiming. Pure animal response.
“You’d better get used to saying Mrs Watson. Won’t be long now.”
There. Public claim staked, future ownership declared. Except Bells felt rigid against him, and the announcement landed with all the romance of a business merger.
Jude turned to Theo directly, “Have you checked her phone records yet, or is that still pending?”
“EIGHT!” Bells’ voice cut through the terminal noise like a whip crack, referencing Terms of Engagement. “Eight and five even.”
Theo knew what that was about. The contract he helped draft. Jude was being warned off, reminded of boundaries, told to stay in his lane, like a dog yanked back on its leash. Clause 8 - prohibited him from using whatever history they have shared as leverage. Five - maintain professional conduct.
Jude paused, coffee cup halfway to his lips.
“My apologies,” he said, giving Bells a look that was anything but apologetic. “I’m contractually obliged not to state the obvious.”
Theo stepped closer toward him. His voice turning dangerously quiet, but she’d heard him.
“Maybe she talked to you a few times when she was pissed and bored. Kind of pathetic how you treasure that like some trophy, but sure. Have that. Keep your little phone calls, your borrowed scraps of attention. It’s me she ends up in bed with every night though. Picture that.”
Perfect. Cruel, true, and delivered when his opponent was legally gagged from responding with any truths of his own. Theo felt a savage satisfaction as the words hit their target.
Jude said nothing, just a small smile tugging at his lips.
Bells bit the inside of her lip hard, he doesn't have to picture it Theo, he's been where you have been. Yet something in his expression suggested the blow landed regardless. And Bells wondered if the “every night” was what sealed it - not the possession itself, but the consistency, the routine, the domestic permanence that phone calls and stolen moments could never compete with.
Theo beamed at Jude’s silence, reading victory in the lack of response.
Sure, perform nonchalance with that Mona Lisa smirk, you twat. We both know who won this round, he thought.
The departure board updated with an electronic clatter - numbers and letters flipping, gates changing, flights boarding. Suddenly everyone was moving, the spell breaking, the professional veneer snapping back into place. Gathering bags, heading toward security, retreating into the safety of logistics and schedules.
Theo pulled Bells close for a kiss that was equal parts affection and performance. Deep, possessive, angling her head back with the hand at her nape, the other tightening on her waist. Designed to leave no doubt about ownership. About who she belonged to. About what Jude wasn’t getting.
She stood rigid in his arms, and when he released her, she walked toward security without hesitation. Without the backward glance.
“I love you, babe,” he called after her.
The words echoed in the terminal.
Unanswered.
Many thanks to Sydney Taylor for her thoughtful comments and creative nudges that helped shape this scene x
Omniscient is the light and the way.
Impressive technique. Like the technical notes: “[Narration: 3rd omniscient]”