chapter Seven

There are two kinds of silence. There is the silence of a man who has nothing to say to you, and there is the silence of a man who has too much, and Peter Stargard had given me both in the space of one weekend. I had spent two whole days replaying that gala, his flat voice, the words about my father, the way he had turned his chair away from me like I was a stain he wanted to forget.

So when Monday morning came, I walked into Northgate with my chin up and my heart in my shoes, and I told myself the same thing I had told myself a hundred times: the truth, I need to know what truly happened. But I still had a job to do, and I was going to do it well.

"Morning, Miss Miller!" Mary was already at her desk, bright and cheerful, a cup of coffee in each hand. She handed me one. "How was your weekend? Long one, huh?"

"You have no idea," I said.

"Ooh, I bet." She followed me into my office, lowering her voice like we were sharing a secret. "So. Everyone's been talking. Is it true? You and the CEO went to the same high school?"

My hand paused on the light switch. "Where did you hear that?"

"The whole floor's been whispering since morning." She grinned. "Nobody can believe it. He's been here three years, and I've never once seen him smile at anybody. And now there's someone who actually knew him?"

"Knew him" was one way to put it. I sat down at my desk and changed the subject fast. "The fiancée. Madison Quinn. What do you know about her?"

Mary's face changed, the grin slid off it. "You haven't met her yet?" She pulled out her phone, tapped and scrolled, then turned the screen toward me. "That's her. Quinn family. Old money, the kind of money that buys buildings and then names them after themselves." She swiped through a few photos. 

A woman with sleek dark hair, a perfect smile, standing on a yacht, standing beside Peter at some dinner, her hand resting on his shoulder. "She's beautiful, I'll give her that. But she's the type who remembers every single person who ever crossed her. If I were you, I'd stay far away from her bad side." Marry whispered.

I stared at the photo of her hand on his shoulder a moment too long. "Noted." The phone on my desk rang, Mary jumped.

"The CEO's office," she mouthed, and stepped back.

I picked up the receiver with a hand that wasn't quite steady. "Miss Miller speaking."

"Miss Miller. Mr. Stargard would like to see you." I grabbed my phone and quickly stepped of my office.

The walk down the corridor felt shorter than last time, all at once. My heels clicked on the floor, and the whole way I kept hearing my own voice from that gala, telling him I would scream if he didn't talk to me. He probably hated me even more for it.

I knocked, opened the door, and walked in with the guilt of that night sitting on my shoulders. "Good morning, Mr. Stargard."

"Miss Miller." He didn't look up from his screen. "Sit." That was it, no greeting, no glance. I sat down in the chair across from his desk and folded my hands in my lap, and it was as if the gala had never happened at all. But it wasn't the cold I'd expected it was worse. A hundred degrees colder.

"The port authority project, you've read the brief."  he said, still typing

"I have."

"Then give me your approach. The client is old-fashioned. They don't trust new faces, they don't trust new ideas, and they've shut down two bidders already." He turned the screen toward me, finally meeting my eyes, and there was nothing in them. No anger, no memory, no softness. Just glass. "Tell me something that isn't in the brief."

I took a breath. This part I knew. This part I was good at.

"The brief is wrong in two places," I said. "It assumes they want speed, but their own annual report talks more about safety than delivery time. And it assumes the decision makers are the executives. They're not." I leaned forward. "They're the dock supervisors. Every contract they've signed in ten years came out of a recommendation from below. If we walk in and only talk to the men in suits, we lose before we finish the pitch. So we build the proposal around the men on the docks, and we let the executives think it was their idea."

For one moment Peter's hand stopped over the keyboard. His eyes moved over my face, and something shifted behind them, a flicker, there and gone.

"Explain your numbers for the second point," he said.

I explained. He asked another question, sharp, testing, trying to catch me out. I answered that one too. He asked a third, and I answered before he finished asking it, and he sat back in his chair and looked at me the way I imagined he looked at a chessboard he had just lost to.

"That will do," he said. It was the closest thing to praise I had ever heard from him, and it landed like a slap and a compliment at once.

"Peter…" The name slipped out before I could stop it. "About the other night…"

"Miss Miller." His voice cut straight across mine. "We're done here. Close the door on your way out."

"But I only…"

"The door, Miss Miller."

I stood up. I don't remember standing up. I remember the click of the door behind me, and the long sad walk back to my office, and the way my eyes burned at the corners.

So this was how it would be. Not a fight. Not a cold shoulder I could argue with. Just a wall, smooth and blank and very high, with no door in it at all. He would speak to me about freight and numbers and dock supervisors, and never, ever about us.

I sat down at my desk and pushed my palms against my eyes and made myself breathe. Work. Just work. I could do work. I was good at work. If this was all he would give me, I would take it, and I would do the best job he had ever seen.

I opened the proposal and got three lines in before there was a sharp knock at my door. "Come in," I said, without looking up.

The door swung open, the air in the room changed. Perfume, smelled light and expensive, drifted in ahead of her. When I lifted my head, a woman was standing in my doorway, tall and flawless, in a cream coat that probably cost more than my rent, her dark hair falling down one shoulder like she had arranged it that way.

Madison Quinn, with a fierce and angry look.