CHAPTER 2- A NAME AND A PROBLEM

POV: MIKE

My shirt was ruined. I knew that the second the wine hit me cold, then hot, soaking through to my skin, and I still stood there a full minute before I moved. I couldn’t believe what had just happened.

"Sir."

Priya appeared beside me with a folded jacket, like she always had a spare of something ready. She didn't ask about the wine.

" The Car's outside." She said.

I didn't take the jacket. I was still watching the door she'd walked out of.

"Find out who she is." I said.

"The woman who—" Priya caught herself. "The artist?"

"You knew?"

"Everyone in the room knew, sir. It's her exhibition. Her name's been on that wall all night."

I hadn't looked at the wall. I'd 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, and somehow I'd missed the one fact that would have changed the whole conversation.

"Her name," I said again, like saying it twice would make it sit right.

Priya checked her tablet. "Elena Martinez."

Elena.

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

"Find out everything else by morning," I said, shrugging into the clean jacket in the back of the car. "Where she trained. Who represents her. What she's worked on."

"You still want the painting, sir?"

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." I said.

True enough, not the whole truth. I knew the difference. I wasn't in the mood to examine it tonight.

By morning, Priya had left a folder on my desk — thin, but exact. I read it standing up, coat still on, like sitting down would give the moment more weight than I wanted to admit it deserved.

Elena Martinez. Twenty-seven. She has no gallery representation until eighteen months ago, when a man named Lucas Bennett started placing her work in rooms that mattered. Before that, small commissions. A career built one client at a time, no family name behind her, no interest in getting one.

One line stopped me, her father's business had collapsed years back, and the family had rebuilt from almost nothing. I read it twice. It explained something the wine hadn'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 it wasn't going to be the thing that moved her.

I respected that. More than I'd respected anything in a boardroom in longer than I wanted to think about.

"You're smiling."

Adrian let himself in without knocking, same as he'd done since business school, and dropped into the chair across from my desk, feet up like he owned it.

"That's new. Should I be worried?" He continued.

"Guy, I'm not smiling."

"You're doing the thing where you're not smiling, but your face forgot how to be unpleasant. It's unsettling. Who ruined your shirt last night? I heard a rumor."

"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 register he used when he actually meant something.

"You don't chase things. You never have. So either this is nothing and you let it go, or it's something, and you already know it, 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, brisk, 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'd spent months trying to close in our favor.

"Say that again," I said.

"Elena Martinez," Priya repeated. "Two o'clock meeting with Sterling Group. This afternoon.”