Daylight Rules

Chapter Six

Wren didn't call Priya until nearly noon, which was itself a kind of confession. In six years of friendship she'd never once sat on a story this big without picking up the phone within the hour.

"You've been staring at that photo for four hours," Priya said, letting herself in with the spare key she technically wasn't supposed to have, finding Wren exactly where she'd left her the night before. Laptop open, gala photo blown up to pixels, the signet ring beside the keyboard like an accusation. "I can tell because you haven't blinked and your coffee's gone cold twice."

"It's him," Wren said, not looking up. "The ring. The build. The way he holds a room without trying. It's Alaric Voss."

Priya sat, humor gone from her face. "So you found what you were looking for."

"I found more than that." Wren turned the laptop toward her. "Priya, I slept with him. Twice. Before I knew. There's a version where I could argue I didn't really know until last night, except—" She stopped, throat tight. "Except some part of me didn't want to know. I was choosing not to look too hard, because looking too hard meant stopping."

"That's a very human thing to do," Priya said. "It doesn't make you complicit in whatever he's done. It makes you someone blindsided by chemistry, which last I checked isn't a crime."

"It doesn't change what he did to my father's company."

"No," Priya agreed. "But it might change what you're capable of doing about it now, and I think you know that, which is why you've sat here four hours instead of writing the story you'd have written a week ago." She closed the laptop gently, the photo gone. "What do you actually want to do, Wren? Not what you think you're supposed to want. What do you want?"

Wren opened her mouth to answer with the story. The byline, the vindication, a year of work finally paying off. The words wouldn't come.

"I don't know," she admitted. "For the first time in a year, I genuinely don't know."

The email came at two-fifteen. Formal, unremarkable, except the sender line.

Voss Holdings — Office of the CEO. Subject: Meeting Request — Ashby Communications Legacy Matters.

Wren read it four times before she believed it wasn't a mistake. A meeting request at Voss Holdings' downtown headquarters, ostensibly about "outstanding matters related to the 2024 Ashby Communications acquisition," Thursday afternoon, signed with a title and nothing else.

Nothing in the sterile phrasing hinted the man requesting it was the same one who'd asked her, two nights ago, whether learning his real name would change anything they'd already shared.

He's testing something, Wren realized. He wants to see how I handle him in daylight. Whether I'll bring the club into a boardroom, or whether I can compartmentalize as well as he apparently can.

She thought about declining. Weighed the professional risk of walking into his headquarters against the much bigger risk of standing in a room with him again in any capacity before she'd figured out what she felt.

She typed her acceptance and hit send before the doubt could win.

Voss Holdings took the top eleven floors of a glass tower built specifically to remind visitors how small they were the moment they stepped in. Wren arrived Thursday at three sharp, dressed in her sharpest blazer, research folder rehearsed in her bag like armor she wasn't sure she'd need.

The elevator opened straight into reception. The first person she saw wasn't Alaric. A woman in a tailored suit, dark hair pulled back, watched her approach with a face that gave away nothing.

"Ms. Ashby." Camille Renard extended a hand. "I work closely with Mr. Voss. He's finishing a call. I'll walk you back."

Wren followed her down a corridor of glass-walled offices, cataloguing everything on instinct. Carpet, security, the way employees straightened under Camille's gaze without seeming to notice they'd done it.

"You'll find Mr. Voss very precise about how he spends his time," Camille said, not quite conversational, stopping outside a set of dark double doors. "He doesn't take meetings like this often. Curious what earned you the exception."

Something in her phrasing set off a quiet alarm. "The acquisition of my father's company is a fairly significant piece of Voss Holdings' history," Wren said evenly. "Not unreasonable there'd be outstanding matters."

"No," Camille agreed. "Not unreasonable." Her eyes moved over Wren one beat too long. A flicker of something assessing, almost recognizing, before the professional mask slid back. "He's ready for you."

---

Alaric Voss in daylight, without a mask, without candlelight to soften anything, was a different animal. Precise in a way that made the club version of him look warm. He stood, buttoning his jacket with the automatic formality of a man who'd shaken a thousand hands he didn't want to shake. For one disorienting second Wren wondered if she'd imagined the whole connection between them, if this cold executive could possibly be the man who'd murmured her name like something worth keeping.

Then his eyes found hers, and something flickered behind the businesslike expression. Brief, unguarded, gone almost before she could be sure. Every doubt she'd talked herself into on the elevator ride up dissolved on contact.

"Ms. Ashby." Voice level, extending a hand across the desk like they'd never touched in any other context. "Thank you for coming. I understand you've had questions about the Ashby Communications acquisition."

Wren shook his hand, feeling the deliberate pressure of his fingers, the private acknowledgment underneath the professional handshake that only she'd recognize. "I have," she said, matching his tone, refusing to break character first. "Quite a few."

"Then let's answer them," he said, gesturing to the chair across from his desk, "as honestly as this room allows."

Camille stayed near the door instead of leaving, arms loosely crossed, watching the exchange with a stillness that read less like discretion and more like surveillance. Wren caught her eye once, briefly, and saw something that tightened her stomach. Not suspicion exactly. The look of someone who already knew far more than she was letting on.

Wren sat, opened her folder with hands only slightly unsteady, and looked across the desk at the man she'd fallen into bed with twice before she knew his name.

"Let's start," she said, "with why your company profited so dramatically from my father's collapse, and whether that profit was ever the point, or just a convenient byproduct of something else."

Something shifted behind Alaric's expression. Not alarm, but close, close enough that Camille's arms uncrossed slightly by the door, like she was bracing for what came next.

"That," Alaric said quietly, "is a longer conversation than either of us is prepared to have with an audience in the room." His gaze flicked to Camille, then back. Something urgent under the composure. "Camille. Give us the room."

Camille didn't move for a beat longer than deference required, eyes moving between them with a weight Wren didn't fully understand yet. "Of course," she said finally, though her voice disagreed entirely. "I'll be right outside, Alaric. In case you need me."

The door clicked shut, and for the first time since she'd walked in, Alaric let the executive mask slip. Not entirely. Enough that she could see, underneath, the same man who'd asked her on a terrace if the truth would change anything they'd already shared.

"You know," he said quietly. "Don't you. You've known since before you walked in here."

Wren held his gaze. "Since I found a photograph of you wearing that ring three years before you ever wore it into a private club with me."

Something in his expression cracked. Not surprise. Relief, tangled up with something more dangerous.

"Then I suppose," he said, rounding the desk to stand directly in front of her, close enough the professional distance between them collapsed entirely, "we should stop pretending this meeting is about acquisitions."

Before Wren could answer, the door burst open without a knock. Camille stood in the frame, pale, phone already extended toward them both.

"Alaric," she said, voice tight, close to fear. "You need to see this. Now."