CHAPTER 2- A NAME AND A PROBLEM

CHAPTER 2: Find Her

MIKE POV:

My shirt was ruined the second the wine hit me. I stood there for a full minute before moving. I couldn’t believe what the hell had just happened.

“Sir.”

My PA Priya appeared beside me with a folded jacket. She always seemed to have a spare of something ready. She didn’t ask about the wine.

“The car is outside,” she said.

I didn’t take the jacket. I was still watching the door the woman had walked through.

“Find out who she is,” I said.

“The woman who…” Priya stopped herself. “The artist?”

“You knew about it?”

“Everyone in the room knew, sir. It’s her exhibition. Her name has been on the wall all night.”

I hadn’t looked at the wall. I had looked at the price tag at the deal I needed to close and never once looked up at the name printed beneath it. That wasn’t like me. I read everything. Contracts twice, people faster than that. Somehow, I had missed the one fact that would have changed the entire conversation.

“What's her name,” I said again.

Priya checked her tablet. “Elena Martinez.”

Elena,

It didn’t sound like a woman who had just thrown wine at a Laurent. It sounded ordinary and too soft. Nothing about the last ten minutes had been ordinary. The way she looked at me without fear, without even being impressed, scraped at something under my ribs that I didn’t fully understand yet. She was bold.

“Find out everything else about her by morning,” I said, finally putting on the clean jacket once I was in the back of the car. “Find out where she trained, who represents her, and what she’s worked on.”

“ Noted, sir. Do you still want the painting ?”

I hadn’t thought about the painting in several minutes. That should have bothered me more than it did.

“I want to understand what I’m dealing with first,” I said.

It was true enough. It just wasn’t the whole truth. I just didn't have the energy to differentiate it that night. By morning, Priya left a thin folder on my desk. I read it standing up, coat still on, like sitting down would give the moment more weight than I wanted to admit.

Elena Martinez, twenty-seven years old. There was no real gallery representation until eighteen months ago, when a man named Lucas Bennett started placing her work in better rooms. Before that, she only got small commissions. A career built one client at a time. There is no family name behind her, and there is no interest in getting one.

One line stopped me. Her father’s business had collapsed years ago, and the family had rebuilt from almost nothing. I read it twice. It explained something her attitude didn't. She didn’t turn me down because she didn’t understand what my money meant.

She understood it perfectly. She just decided a long time ago that it wasn’t going to be something that moved her. I respected that more than I had respected anything in a boardroom in a long time.

“Bro, you’re smiling.”

Adrian let himself in without knocking, the same way he did since business school, and dropped into the chair across from my desk. He put his feet up like he owned the place.

“That’s new,” he said. “Should I be worried?”

“I’m not smiling.”

“ You're bad at hiding it. Anyways, who ruined your shirt last night? I heard rumors.

“It’s handled.”

“Handled how? ‘I bought the gallery’ handled, or ‘I’m going to think about this woman until it becomes a problem’ handled?”

I didn’t answer. That was answer enough, and his grin said he knew it.

“Mike.” His voice dropped out of the joke into the tone he used when he actually meant something. “You don’t chase things. You never done that. So either this is nothing and you let it go, or it’s something, and you already know it. You’re standing there reading her file like it’s a merger.”

He wasn’t wrong. That was the irritating part. I shut the folder harder than I needed to.

“It’s business. The painting still matters for the headquarters.”

“Sure it is.”

He didn’t believe a word, and I didn’t expect him to. The intercom buzzed before I could think of a better lie.

“Yes.”

“Sir.” Priya’s voice came through, brisk, with no idea what she was about to set off. “Update on Ms. Martinez. She has a meeting this afternoon at two o’clock with Sterling Group.”

My hand went still on the desk.

Sterling, our closest rival for the same headquarters deal. Circling the same real estate, the same permits, the same narrow window I had spent months trying to close in our favor.

“Say that again,” I said.

“Elena Martinez,” Priya repeated. “has a two o’clock meeting with Sterling Group. This afternoon.”

I stared at nothing and thought about the woman who threw wine in my face last night was about to walk into a meeting with the company I was competing against and I still couldn’t stop thinking about the look on her face when she did it.