Too Late To Love Me I Already Left With His Twins (Lydia and Dave) novel Chapter 47

Lydia POV

“Congratulations, ma’am. Five years with the firm.”

Nina, my assistant, placed the bouquet of white lilies on my desk.

Then she smiled once and left before I could respond.

I stared at the flowers.

Said nothing.

Not because I was ungrateful.

Because my brain had stopped briefly.

Five years?

Five?

That could not possibly be right.

I came to this country less than six years ago with two suitcases, one unborn child

which later turned out to be offensively two children and enough money to survive approximately one week.

And now-

Five years.

Five years since Madam Eloise handed me a card and changed the trajectory of my life with the emotional warmth of a military

draft notice.

I sat back slowly in my chair.

Looked around my office.

Floor to ceiling windows.

Glass shelves.

Awards I pretended not to care about. 1

A framed magazine cover Nina insisted on hanging despite my objections.

A terracotta plant pot on the sill painted badly by Ava and labelled in Eli’s handwriting:

PROPERTY OF MUMMY. WATER RESPONSIBLY.

My throat tightened.

Slightly.

Annoying.

I looked at the lilies again.

Then at my reflection in the window.

And for one suspended moment

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Het nyself acknowledge it.

I had done it.

Professionally, the last five years had been insanity in tailored clothing.

At some point the industry had started calling me the PR Goddess of Country Z.

Mortifying title.

My first year with Eloise, I saved a footballer from career suicide after he posted drunk abuse at three in the morning and attempted to solve the problem by tweeting “my account was hacked by bitterness.”

It was not. 1

My second year, I handled a cosmetics company whose miracle skincare line gave half the internet chemical burns.

Their legal team wanted denial.

I suggested accountability, compensation, reformulation, and a founder interview where she cried exactly once.

Sales doubled in four months. 1

A governor’s son was caught on video assaulting a valet.

His family wanted the footage buried.

I advised them that bribery was not technically a communications strategy.

We turned it into a rehabilitation campaign instead.

Three months of anger management.

Public apology.

Scholarship fund.

By month six the public had decided he was “young and learning.”

People adore redemption if you package it correctly. 1

A luxury hotel chain denied entry to a disabled guest and lied about it.

A politician’s affair leaked one week before election season.

A celebrity chef was exposed for stealing recipes from junior staff. 1

A fintech founder embezzled investor funds and thought smiling through an interview would help.

It did not.

I had fixed scandals in hotel bathrooms, airport lounges, moving cars, hospital corridors, and once while breast pumping between client calls because motherhood and capitalism remain uneasy companions.

At some point the panic stopped reaching the boardroom before it reached me.

People called me first now.

Madam Eloise had not trained me kindly.

She had trained me correctly.

“Perception matters more than truth in the first forty eight hours,” she told me my second month there.

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“If you do not shape the narrative, someone dumber wi!!.”

Another time.

1

“Never enter a room unless you know more than everyone in it.”

And my personal favourite

“Competence is silent until challenged. Then it should be devastating.”

I took courses because she expected it.

Crisis management.

Corporate negotiation.

Media law.

Behavioural psychology.

Advanced reputation analytics.

Executive communications.

Three certifications in strategic brand architecture.

One in conflict mediation.

And a negotiation intensive taught by a terrifying woman from Switzerland who smiled like litigation.

Every time I finished one, Eloise would nod and assign me harder work.

Praise remained largely theoretical.

But once, in year three, she looked over a strategy deck I had built for a multinational crisis and said—

“Good. You think like consequence now.”

I nearly framed the sentence.

The office no longer called me junior.

Clients no longer asked for supervision.

And by year four people stopped saying Madam Eloise’s firm,

They said ours.

She never corrected them.

Neither did I.

It feels surreal.

My children, meanwhile, had grown into fully formed tiny people. 1

Disturbingly quickly.

Eli was tall for his age.

Too observant.

Too logical.

す

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The sort of child who negotiated bedtime like contract law.

“Mummy, if I sleep now, may renegotiate vegetable intake tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Then this agreement lacks incentive.”

Ava was softer looking.

Round cheeks.

Big eyes.

The face of an angel.

The governance style of a senior prosecutor.

Last month I found her standing over Eli with hands clasped behind her back saying

“You knew the rule. Yet you chose chaos.”

She was five.

No child should sound that much like upper management.

They were also deeply committed to collective mischief.

1

“She requested layers.”

When Eli bit another child at school because “he was dishonest first,” I made him apologise face to face and surrender dessert for two days.

He cried.

Then held him after

I sat her down and explained why honesty mattered more than avoiding punishment.

That mattered to me more than I could explain without becoming irritatingly emotional.

They had recently informed me I was no longer permitted to bathe them.

“Mummy,” Ava said with solemn dignity three weeks ago.

“We require privacy now.”

“You are five.”

“You still cry when toothpaste is spicy.”

Poorly.

And our life

Our life.

Big enough that the twins could race through hallways at unsafe speeds.

Big enough for peace.

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The sleepless nights.