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Chapter 65: Just Us
Fecha de publicación:
2026-04-23 03:36:34
Último capítulo
EYES OPEN Chapter 89: Owen Garrick
Saoirse sends it in a file at eleven forty three am.Fourteen pages.She has been building it since Monday morning and what she has constructed in under twenty four hours is the kind of research that takes most people a week... thorough and specific and cross referenced, the methodology that is entirely hers doing exactly what it was always capable of when someone finally let it run.Priya and I read it in a coffee shop two streets from Brand Intelligence Quarterly with our coats still on because sitting down to take them off would have cost thirty seconds and neither of us wanted to wait thirty seconds.Owen Garrick is fifty three years old.He has backed fourteen creative industry startups in the past eight years. Eleven of them were acquired within two years of launch. Not because they failed. Because they were built to be acquired, structured from inception as acquisition targets for larger holding companies, the founders paid out and the independent identity absorbed and neutrali
EYES OPEN Chapter 88: Sylvia Trent
She picks up on the third ring and her voice is exactly what her publication is, precise and slightly intimidating and completely awake."Ms. Trent," I say. "My name is Camille Vann. I believe you received something of mine over the weekend."A pause that is shorter than I expected."I wondered when you would call," she replies."I would have called sooner but I spent Sunday identifying all seven recipients," I say. "You were fourth on my list.""Who were the first three?" she asks."Helena Cross, Callum Reid, Owen Garrick," I reply."Interesting order," she says."Threat assessment then opportunity assessment. You are in the opportunity column."Another pause, longer this time, and I can feel her recalculating the way Helena recalculated the first time I said something she was not expecting."Come in," she says. "Tomorrow. Ten am. Bring the partner.""Both partners?""How many are there?" she asks."Two, Priya Anand and myself.""Both," she says. And hangs up.Priya's reaction when I
EYES OPEN Chapter 87: The Leak
By Monday morning the deck has reached seven people.I know this because Helena, after her initial message, spent Sunday making calls the way Helena makes calls, efficiently and with full information retrieval, and by nine am she sends me a list.Seven names.I read them at the kitchen counter with coffee going cold beside me and Rhys reading over my shoulder and Arlo sitting on my feet with the one white ear forward like he understands the gravity.Helena Cross. Expected. Our referral source, our former employer, the friction target.Callum Reid. Also expected. The man who made an offer I declined and does not accept no gracefully.The other five are not expected at all.A venture capital partner named Owen Garrick who funds creative industry startups and whose name I have seen in industry publications but never encountered personally.A woman named Sylvia Trent who runs the most influential brand consultancy trade publication in the country and whose endorsement or condemnation can
EYES OPEN Chapter 86: Three People
I do not sleep.Rhys does, eventually, because Rhys understands that problems do not get smaller by staring at them and sleep is a tool, but I lie in the dark running the same calculation over and over and arriving at the same three answers and not being able to eliminate any of them.Priya built half the deck.Saoirse built the research framework inside it.I built the rest.The shared drive access logs will tell me who opened it last and when, which I check at two am from my phone and the result sits in my chest like something cold because the last access was four days ago.Saoirse.Which means nothing on its own. Saoirse accesses things, refines things, she is meticulous about her work and goes back to documents repeatedly.But it is also the only data point I have and data points without context are how innocent people get accused of things they did not do and I know that better than most.I get up at six.Make coffee.Sit at the kitchen counter with my phone and Helena's message
EYES OPEN Chapter 85: The Ex
Her name is Amanda.She is standing in the corridor outside James's apartment when Priya and James come out of the lift, which means she has been there long enough to know his floor and his door and which lift he uses, and the specific knowledge of a woman who spent enough time in someone's life to memorise its geography.Priya tells me this on the phone and I listen and I ask the one question that matters."Do you want me to come?"A pause."No," she says. "But stay on the phone."I sit on our couch with the phone against my ear and Rhys sits beside me saying nothing because he can read the room and the room requires silence.Through the phone I can hear the specific muffled quality of a conversation happening in a corridor, not words exactly, just tone, and tone tells you everything.Amanda's tone is not aggressive.That is somehow worse.Aggressive would be easier to dismiss. This is the tone of someone who is genuinely in pain and has decided that showing up is the only move left,
EYES OPEN Chapter 84: Dinner For Four
James is exactly what I expected and nothing like it.Warm, yes, the kind of warmth that fills a room without trying. But underneath it something sharper and more watchful than his client relations smile suggests, and within fifteen minutes of sitting across from him at the restaurant Priya chose in Soho, I understand completely why she fell for him and also why she took four months to admit it.He is the kind of person who pays attention without making you feel observed.Dangerous quality.Rhys likes him immediately, I can tell because Rhys goes quieter when he likes someone, not colder, just more himself, the version that does not perform anything, and within twenty minutes he and James are deep in something about structural engineering and urban planning that Priya and I let run because watching Rhys talk about buildings with someone who is genuinely interested is one of my favourite things."He researched it," Priya says quietly across the table. "Rhys's restoration project. He lo
EYES OPEN Chapter 16: Mother
My mother has three modes.Warm, which is her default and her best. Concerned, which arrives when she suspects something is wrong and deploys itself as a series of increasingly loaded questions disguised as casual conversation. And activated, which is what three words and a full stop at nine forty
EYES OPEN Chapter 12: The Mistake She Made
I figure out Vivienne's mistake at seven the next morning.I am standing at the kitchen counter with my coffee, scrolling back through every message she has sent from every number, laying them out in chronological order in my notes app like a timeline, and that is when I see it.She tipped her hand
EYES OPEN Chapter 11: Photos
I read the message three times.Then I screenshot it, forward it to my personal email, and save the number.Then I sit down on the couch because my legs have made a unilateral decision about standing.Photos. Someone has photos of me and Rhys at Archer's and they are threatening to hand them to Der
EYES OPEN Chapter 8: Morning Comes
I do not sleep much.Not because I am crying, not because I am falling apart, just because my brain refuses to switch off, cycling through everything on a loop like it is trying to make sure I have processed every single detail before it lets me rest.I lie there listening to the sounds of the apar
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