Chapter 130: Her Nostalgia II

She’s back as a different version, he thought. And she’s sitting in the restaurant she couldn’t sit in before.

That matters, he thought. More than the suite. More than the flight. It’s the little things like this that matters.

They ordered. Selene went with a pan seared salmon with a lemon herb butter sauce and a side of roasted potatoes. She’d been looking at it since the menu arrived and had decided within thirty seconds. Xavier ordered a slow braised short rib with a red wine jus and creamed spinach. A shared plate of warm bread arrived before either of them had put their menus down.

The food arrived properly cooked and properly presented. Nothing that needed to apologise for itself or explain what it was trying to be. The kind of meal that a kitchen produced when it had been doing this long enough to stop trying and just cook.

Selene ate with the focused appreciation of someone who had been waiting a long time to eat here properly.

Xavier paid before the bill had fully landed on the table.

[ REBATE SYSTEM ]

Transaction Detected: $1,240 spent on lunch — River Street Restaurant

Base Multiplier (Tier 2): 2x

Total Return: $2,480

[ Net Balance: $18,470,493.00 → $18,471,733.00 ]

[ Millhaven Mission: $527,385 / $3,000,000 ]

$1,240 for lunch, Xavier noted. She couldn’t afford a coffee here once although she was younger but eating here will be like a bad budget. He looked at Selene finishing the last of her salmon. Different times. He smirked.

Selene looked at the window after the plates were cleared.

The street outside. The people moving through it. The city being itself on a Friday afternoon.

"Xavier," she said.

"Selene."

"Thank you for bringing me here," she said. Simply. The plain version of it without the composed surface doing any of its usual work. "Not to the suite. Not to the hotel." She looked at him. "Here. This restaurant. This street." A brief moment. "This version of coming back."

Xavier looked at her across the table.

This version of coming back, he thought. As someone who can sit in the restaurant she used to pass and feel like she was trespassing.

"You did the work," he said. "I just booked the flight."

She held his gaze for a long moment.

Then she looked back at the window.

Something resolved, Xavier thought. Something that had been sitting open for three years just — closed a little. In a restaurant on a street she used to walk every day.

Good, he thought.

That’s why we came.

They walked back toward the Ashford Grand in the late afternoon. The river was visible between buildings, catching the afternoon light in the particular way rivers caught late afternoon light. Honestly, without performing it.

Selene walked beside him with her hands in her jacket pockets and the flat shoes and the dark jeans and the version of herself that existed when nobody from Hale & Associates was watching.

Different from the standing desk, he thought. Different from the corridor. Different from the Thursday restaurant.

This is the version she kept for herself, he thought. And she brought it out here.

His phone buzzed. He checked it was Vincent.

My assistant, he thought. Vincent Hale being Vincent Hale. Professional to the last word even in a casual text.

Xavier: vacation is good. She’s fine. Better than fine.

Vincent: good. The analyst is managing. Take your time. Don’t rush back on my account.

Xavier pocketed the phone.

Don’t rush back on my account, he thought. From a man who runs a financial crime firm and measures everything in efficiency and returns. He looked at Selene walking beside him. He sent her with me willingly. That means something.

Take your time, he thought.

We will.

Xavier pocketed the phone.

He looked at Selene walking beside him through her city.

We will, he thought.

[[ REBATE SYSTEM ]

Daily Cycle Complete

Donations processed: Women’s Empowerment Fund, Digital Access Initiative, Child Nutrition Foundation, Rural Water Access Trust

Total Spent: $195,000

Total Returned: $390,000

[ Net Balance: $18,276,733.00 → $18,471,733.00 ]

[ $200,000 buffer retained ]

[ Millhaven Mission: $721,145 / $3,000,000 ]

$18,471,733, he noted. Past eighteen million. First full day in Millhaven done.

He checked the mission tracker.

$721,145 of $3,000,000, he noted. $2,278,855 remaining.

Two good days of Tier 3 cap, he thought. $2,000,000 each day if I push it. Don’t need to rush it’ll come willing.

_ _

They got back to the Ashford Grand suites at 5PM.

The suite was exactly as they’d left it. Charles had been through at some point, the kind of invisible service that happened without announcing itself. Fresh towels. The bar restocked. The curtains adjusted to catch the late afternoon light coming off the river.

Selene dropped onto the sitting area sofa with the particular ease of someone whose feet had earned it.

Xavier went to the window.

The city below in the late afternoon light looked different from the morning version. wwarmer, the river catching gold, the streets settling into their Friday evening rhythm. He looked at it properly for the first time since the breakfast view.

Millhaven, he thought. Different from Kenvale in ways that go beyond size.

He opened his banking app. Checked the mission tracker.

$721,145 of $3,000,000, he noted. $2,278,855 remaining.

Two more days, he thought. Push the cap both days and it closes comfortably.

He was about to put the phone down when something caught his eye.

Not the system. Not a notification. Just something he’d been processing without fully registering since they’d left the market area that morning. A pattern sitting in the background of everything he’d seen while walking through Millhaven with Selene.

He opened his browser. Started looking.

Selene was asleep on the sofa by 5:30PM.

Not dramatically, just the natural consequence of two hours of walking and a proper lunch and the particular emotional weight of a day spent in a city you’d left three years ago. She’d been quiet on the walk back, the good kind of quiet, and had sat down and that had been that.

Xavier let her sleep.

He sat at the suite’s dining table with his MacBook open and worked.

The pattern, he thought. I’ve been seeing it all day without naming it.