Chapter 5: Proofing the Menu

The interlude of the subsequent days was a tight, strained affair. Jonah executed Harper's fripperies with a chill, unblinking precision that was in itself a species of rebellion. He proved the menu, cross-checked dietary requirements with relish, and set security spreadsheets humming with precision. He did it not as a defeated worker, but as a man who was making a point: that his capability was so wide that it could encompass the frivolous without being diminished by it.

He posted each completed task without comment. He received no acknowledgement. The silence above was a message unto itself.

His real work, the Aether, continued in the buzzing solitude of his basement vault. He integrated Clarkson's titanium-composite fix, and it was, infuriatingly, a work of genius. The weight savings were lovely, the efficiency gain unquestionable. It was an ongoing, maddening reminder that the man he was learning to resent so intensely was also the only intellectual equal he'd ever had to contend with.

The summons, when it eventually arrived, was not one for more busyness. It was a terminus and a time: Pier 11. 21:00.

The sun had set hours before, and the sky was a deep indigo as Jonah approached the Andromeda. The yacht glowed with light, a beacon of luxury in the dark water. The throb of a string quartet and the muted hum of upper-class chatter drifted across the dock. The investor party was in full force.

He bristled with a fresh burst of rage, and burning resentfulness. He was to be invited to the outskirts of the very function he'd had to arrange, a servant being requested to observe the banquet he'd prepared but could not partake of.

Another sailor, someone he'd never seen before, waved him forward not to the top deck where laughing sparkled like glass, but down a side passage and into the bowels of the ship. They arrived at a heavy, soundproof door.

"In here, sir. Mr. Roberts will be with you shortly."

The room was a high-tech command center, a jarring contrast to the opulence above. One entire wall was a row of real-time video displays of every part of the gala—the packed main salon, the star-studded aft deck where couples swayed to music, the dining room where waiters circulated with silver platters of canapés that he had assisted in choosing. The audio was subdued, making the elegant affair a mute, dreamlike pantomime of wealth and power.

He was to observe. To watch the story play out in the background.

The door opened and closed behind him. Clarkson arrived. He was a vision in a black tuxedo that clung to him like a second skin, a far cry from his usually serious business suit. The beauty was breathtaking, but it was the look on his face that stole Jonah's breath. Gone was the icy CEO. In his place was a man stretched to his limits, his jaw clenched, his eyes burning with a cold, suppressed rage. He carried the subtle, heady scent of expensive whiskey.

He didn't look at Jonah. He stared intently at the video wall, at a feed of Harper Lane laughing with a group of older investors.

"Albright simply cornered me," Clarkson snarled, his low, threatening voice vibrating in the small room. "He hinted, very carefully, that my focus seems… fragmented. That the 'whimsical' course of the Poseidon Project might be a sign of a deficiency of stable, personal role models in my life." He finally turned his head away, and the rage in his eye was directed at Jonah. "He then proceeded to take me in to meet his niece. Again."

The import was explicit, ugly. The board wasn't concerned about the ships; they were concerned about the bachelor status of their CEO. They wanted a wife, a picture-perfect afterthought to firm up the stock price. And they regarded Jonah's power as a destabilizing, destabilizing fancy.

"I apologize my presence is so obnoxious to your shareholder value," Jonah spat out, the bitterness acid on his tongue.

Clarkson pushed further. The air was tight, more tenuous all of a sudden. "He asked me if I had seen the new trash from the on-the-bone architectural website. One that had put out a rumor Roberts Global had hired in a 'radical, green-conscious designer' with 'questionable credentials.' A rumor they printed two days after you checked their site from the server room's IP address."

Jonah's blood congealed. "I never— I wouldn't—"

"Ah, yes," he cut him off, his voice accusatory. "I followed the leak. From a junior analyst in Harper's department. A planted doubt. A test to see if you'd be flattered, if you'd break confidentiality. You did." He said it as if it were a fact, not a compliment. "But the damage is done. The whisper network is activated. They're closing in."

He turned around to the screens, his shoulders braced. On the screen, Harper smiled, a perfect, sharpened knife of a smile. Jonah saw it all now—the true battlefield Clarkson had spoken of. It wasn't in boardrooms; it was in whispered gossip, in social politics, in perception being turned into ammunition. And he was the ammunition being fired at him.

The naked, raw unfairness of it ignited something in Jonah. It wasn't anger on his own behalf, but furious, unthinking protectiveness on behalf of the man beside him, who was carrying this alone.

"So what's the game?" Jonah asked, his tone gentler now. "Do I just bunker down here in the darkness until the gala is over?"

Clarkson sat in silence for an extremely long time, watching the silent film of his own life. He saw Albright thump him on the shoulder in the morning, the act now revealed to be a threat. He saw the niece, breathtakingly empty and lovely, smile up at him. He saw the gilded cage, not his own, but one his board was laboriously putting together around him.

"Not in your life," Clarkson finally answered, the word soft but firm. The pent-up rage coalesced into something else—something wild and crazy. He whirled to Jonah, his gaze raking over his dull button-down and black jeans. "The play is to change the story."

In an instant, before Jonah could even process the words, Clarkson was unbuckling out of his stunning tuxedo jacket. The movement was fluid, choreographed.

"What are you doing?" Jonah asked, flabbergasted.

Clarkson remained silent. He moved into place at Jonah's back, his heat a solid wall of warmth against him. Jonah braced, each nerve ending blazing to life. He felt Clarkson's hands on the shoulders, then the smooth glide of fine wool as Clarkson draped his own tuxedo jacket over Jonah's shoulders.

The sensation was overwhelming. The jacket still vibrated with Clarkson's body heat, carrying his warmth, his scent—that same crisp, biting ozone and bergamot, now flavored with the same subtle, smoky perfume of whiskey. It was such a closeness that it was both a violation and a claim. The silk lining scratched at Jonah's neck.

"Arms," Clarkson commanded, his voice gritty by Jonah's ear.

Jonah put his arms in the sleeves on instinct alone. The jacket was too broad across the shoulders, too long in the arms, enveloping him completely. He was being wrapped in the very flesh of Clarkson Roberts's public persona.

Clarkson stepped back around to look at him. His own eyes were black, unreadable pools in the gloomy control room light. He held out a hand and began rolling down the too-long sleeves of the jacket, his fingers smooth and certain against the crisp white cuff of Jonah's shirt, his skin against Jonah's wrist with each turn of the fabric.

Each touch was a brand. The room was silent, filled only by the sounds of their breathing and the muted pantomime of the gala on the screens.

“They want to see a stable influence?” Clarkson murmured, his focus entirely on the task of tailoring Jonah in his clothes. “They want to see me grounded? Then that’s what they’ll see. I’m not hiding my architect in the basement. I’m presenting to him.”

He finished the sleeves, his hands pausing on Jonah's forearms before falling away. He studied Jonah from head to heels, an icy, examining gaze. It was ridiculous and completely transforming. The rumpled tuxedo jacket over Jonah's worn clothes shouldn't have worked, but it did. It made him look like a protégé, an artist pulled from his studio—a calculated, careful move.

"They'll eat you alive," Jonah gasped, his heart racing. He feared Clarkson, for this insane gamble.

A wicked, slow smile spread on Clarkson's face. It was the most natural smile Jonah had ever witnessed on him. It was the smile of a man who had just decided to burn the entire game to the ground.

“Let them try,” Clarkson said, his voice a low thrum of power. He straightened his own shirt, now jacketless, a more relaxed but no less commanding figure. “You’re my disruptive genius. My calculated risk. It’s time they met you.”

He placed a hand on the small of Jonah's back, a gesture of possession and guidance that shocked him. "Stay close. Don't speak unless you're addressed. And for the love of God, try to blend in."

And then he pushed open the door. The quartet enveloped them, expanding like a cloud of light. The light, the laughter, the scent of perfume and champagne battered Jonah like something concrete.

Billionaire CEO Clarkson Roberts stepped out of the shadows and into his gala's spotlight, his purported, sworn, black-jacketed architect at his side. The first head turned. A second did. A wave of shocked recognition swept through the room, followed by a tidal wave of deafening silence.

The cast had only recently changed. And Jonah, splashing through Clarkson's coat and surrounded by the agog elite, could only chase his custodian to the very heart of the gilded cage.

—-