CHAPTER 17

Chloe walked the route on Wednesday evening exactly as instructed, a lanyard borrowed from a temp badge Viktor had quietly authorized clipped to her blazer, a takeout bag in one hand as cover in case anyone questioned why a member of the creative team was loitering near the executive elevator bank after hours.

Nobody questioned her. That was, she reflected, either a good sign for the plan or a genuinely alarming commentary on the building's security — though given that Viktor himself had approved the route, she suspected it was more the former.

She timed the elevator ride to the penthouse floor — ninety seconds, longer than she expected, the express car apparently slower than the ones serving the lower floors. She timed the walk from the elevator to Mark's door — thirty seconds at a normal pace, less if you didn't stop to admire the absurd modern art he'd hung in the hallway, which Chloe did anyway, on principle, because it was truly baffling. She noted the housekeeper's car still in the garage at 6:47, gone by 7:02 — a fifteen-minute buffer tighter than Gavin's information had suggested, which she immediately texted to the group thread with three exclamation points.

*Window's real but tighter than we thought. 6:50-7:00 hard stop. After that Mark's actual schedule becomes the risk, not hers.*

Gavin's reply came back within a minute. *Noted. Adjusting timeline. Viktor's going to be thrilled about this.*

*Viktor is never thrilled about anything. That's kind of his whole thing.*

*Fair.*

---

Elena read the exchange later that evening, forwarded to her by Carter with the subject line "operational updates, I guess this is my life now," and found herself smiling for the first time in what felt like days.

It was strange, how much lighter this particular problem felt compared to everything else currently occupying her attention — the stale login Gavin was quietly monitoring, the silence from Leo that had stretched two days now, the growing sense that Serena's friendliness in the break room had a calculated edge to it that hadn't been there a month ago. Against all of that, a covert operation to rescue a golden retriever felt almost like relief. A problem with a clear villain, a clear victim, and an actual solution within reach.

She was still smiling when Alexander found her in her office that night, later than either of them should have still been at the building.

"You look pleased with yourself," he observed, leaning against her doorframe with the particular ease he'd started allowing himself around her — no longer the careful, measured CEO from her first week, something looser now, more himself.

"I'm plotting a crime," Elena admitted. "It's very satisfying."

"Should I be concerned?"

"Only if you're attached to Barnaby staying in Mark's custody, which I assume you're not."

Something shifted in Alexander's expression — surprise, then something warmer. "You're rescuing the dog."

"We're rescuing the dog. Carter, Gavin, Viktor, and apparently half of Creative, at this point." Elena gestured at her screen, where the group thread was still scrolling with logistics. "Chloe just confirmed the housekeeper's schedule. We move Friday."

Alexander crossed the room and looked over her shoulder at the thread, something almost boyish crossing his face as he read through it — a version of him she suspected very few people at Vance Enterprises ever got to see. "This is, without question, the most reckless thing anyone in this company has organized in years."

"Are you going to stop us?"

"I'm going to make sure Viktor has whatever resources he needs, and I'm going to very deliberately not ask any follow-up questions that would require me to officially know about this," Alexander said. "Plausible deniability has its uses."

Elena laughed, surprising herself with how easy it felt. "That's remarkably permissive, for a man who runs his company like a chessboard."

"Some things are worth the risk of a bad move." Alexander's voice softened, and for a moment the conversation seemed to be about considerably more than a dog. "Besides — Barnaby deserves better than what Mark's giving him. So does anyone Mark's supposed to be responsible for."

The words sat between them, weighted with everything neither of them had said out loud yet — about Leo, about whatever Elena was still carrying alone, about the growing list of things in this company that weren't quite what they appeared to be on the surface.

"Friday," Elena said finally, redirecting them both back toward safer ground. "Wish us luck."

"You won't need it," Alexander said. "You have Viktor. Viktor doesn't believe in luck. He believes in contingency plans."

"That's oddly reassuring."

"It should be. It's kept this company standing more than once." Alexander's gaze lingered on her a moment longer than the joke required, something quieter underneath the humor. "You know, I used to think Viktor's contingency plans were excessive. Overkill for a marketing firm that occasionally loses a shipment or has a vendor go dark. I'm starting to think he's been preparing for exactly this kind of chaos the whole time, and the rest of us just hadn't caught up yet."

"Maybe he knew you'd eventually hire someone who'd bring the chaos with her."

"Maybe he did." Alexander's smile was soft, genuine, entirely unlike the careful, calculated expressions she'd first met weeks ago. "I'm not complaining, for what it's worth. Things were considerably duller before you got here."

"Is that a compliment?"

"It's an observation. Possibly also a compliment. I'll let you decide which." He straightened, already halfway back toward the door, though he paused at the threshold, glancing back at her with something unguarded in his expression. "Elena — whatever else is on your mind lately. It can wait until after Friday if you want it to. But it can't wait forever."

He left before she could answer, which was, she suspected, entirely deliberate — giving her the space to sit with the observation instead of deflecting it immediately, the way she usually did.

She sat with it a long while after he'd gone, the group thread still glowing on her screen, Friday's plan taking shape line by line — Viktor's contingency routes, Chloe's timed windows, Gavin's calendar monitoring, Carter's quiet coordination holding the whole reckless operation together with something that almost resembled competence.

Her phone buzzed once more before she finally packed up for the night. Not the group thread this time — a single text from Leo, the first word from him in two days.

*Sorry for going quiet. Just needed to think some things through. I'm okay. Talk soon?*

Elena read it three times, weighing the reassurance against the vagueness, the way she'd learned to weigh everything Leo said lately. It wasn't nothing. It also wasn't everything she wanted it to be.

*Talk soon,* she typed back, and meant it as more of a promise to herself than to him — that whatever he was working through, she wasn't going to let him disappear into it alone the way she'd let herself disappear into her own problems for years.

One problem, at least, was about to get solved cleanly, this Friday, with a dog and a small conspiracy of good intentions.

She wished, not for the first time, that she believed the rest of it would be half as simple.