Chapter 41: What You Don’t Say

Katherine Brown wasn’t one to falter under pressure, but this Thursday had clawed its way under her skin.

She arrived early, even before most of the team had clocked in. The Los Angeles sun had barely lifted over the skyline, but she was already on the fourteenth floor, sipping too-strong coffee and trying to shake off the weight of Sebastian’s words from the previous evening.

“Who called you?”

That voice — calm, direct — still echoed in her chest. He hadn’t accused her. Hadn’t pushed. But he had known. Somehow, he always did.

Now, as her heels clicked across the polished floor toward her office, she caught sight of Sebastian through the glass walls of the conference room. Already inside. Reviewing something with one of the department leads. Dressed in a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled. Every inch the man in control.

But today, she didn’t greet him.

She entered her office, closed the door with unusual quiet, and placed her coffee on the desk like it might shatter if handled too quickly. For a few minutes, she just stood there. The silence was thick, padded with questions she wasn’t ready to answer.

There was a knock.

Sophie peeked in, tablet in hand. “Morning, Ms. Brown. Do you want to review the vendor reports before the 9:30 with Mr. Mason?”

Katherine nodded. “Yes, bring them in. And… remind everyone we’re starting on time today. No delays.”

“Of course.” Sophie paused, clearly sensing the shift. “Everything all right?”

Katherine smiled, polite but not too warm. “Just a lot of things ahead.”

As the assistant retreated, Katherine sat, opened her inbox, and forced herself to focus. The report from Liam was still sitting there. Superuser access. Floor 14 only. Nothing since then — but the implication lingered like a shadow behind her monitor.

The rest of the morning unfolded with mechanical precision. Meetings. Presentations. A few awkward glances from team members who noticed how Sebastian kept looking at her — with a trace more interest, a bit more attention. Like he was trying to read something between the lines.

She didn’t give him much to work with.

During the mid-morning meeting, as they reviewed the LA branch’s performance over Q2, Sebastian surprised the room.

“I want to acknowledge the improvements made over the past few weeks,” he said, his voice smooth, confident. “There’s a difference in how this branch is operating. That difference has a name: Ms. Brown.”

The room turned toward her. Some polite applause. A few murmured agreements. But she just smiled tightly and nodded.

She could feel his eyes on her as the meeting continued.

Afterward, he followed her into the hallway.

“You didn’t have to downplay it,” he said casually, falling into step beside her.

“I don’t downplay facts,” she replied. “Just prefer not to clap for myself.”

He chuckled. “You’re the only person I know who can make humility sound like a threat.”

She didn’t answer.

“Is this still about the call?” he asked, low enough for no one else to hear.

Katherine stopped walking, just for a beat. Then resumed. “I said I’d handle it.”

Sebastian didn’t press. But the softness in his gaze faded just slightly, like a shutter clicking shut.

They parted ways again until late afternoon.

When the clock neared five, most of the floor began to thin out. Desks cleared. Lights dimmed. But Katherine stayed behind, reviewing documents and pretending to still be immersed.

She knew he hadn’t left.

Her door creaked open, without knocking.

“Still here?” Sebastian’s voice was quieter than usual.

She looked up. He stood in the doorway, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a folder she recognized — her notes from the earlier strategy session.

“I figured you’d gone.”

“I was waiting.”

“For what?”

His eyes didn’t flinch. “For you to stop pretending everything’s fine.”

Her breath caught. “Sebastian —”

“I’m not pushing you,” he said gently, stepping in and closing the door behind him. “But you’re different today. Even Sophie noticed.”

Katherine looked down at her desk, then back up at him. “Some days are just heavier. That’s all.”

He studied her for a long moment, then placed the folder on her desk. “If someone’s threatening you, or the company —”

“They’re not,” she cut in quickly.

His jaw clenched, almost imperceptibly.

“I don’t like being kept out of things, Katherine.”

“I’m not keeping you out. I’m just not ready to let you in.”

Silence swirled between them.

Then, after a beat, he nodded. “All right. But when you are… don’t wait too long.”

He turned to leave, then hesitated. “And just so you know… if it’s someone inside this company — I’ll find them. And they’ll wish I hadn’t.”

When he closed the door behind him, Katherine let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

The silence returned. But this time, it felt different.

Like the beginning of something far more dangerous than a phone call.

---

The office was quieter than usual that Friday morning.

Katherine Brown entered the fourteenth floor with the same sharp poise she wore every morning. Her coffee, dark and unsweetened, steamed in her hand as she moved through the corridor like a woman made of purpose. Sophie, as always, was already at her desk, eyes flicking up from her screen.

"Morning, Ms. Brown," Sophie greeted, but her voice was unusually hesitant.

Katherine narrowed her gaze. "Something wrong?"

Sophie hesitated for half a second. "He asked me not to say anything."

"Who?" But Katherine already knew.

Sophie just motioned subtly toward her office.

Katherine's pace didn’t falter, though her pulse picked up the second she reached for the handle. She pushed open the door —

— and stopped.

Sebastian Mason was sitting in her chair. Legs crossed, hands steepled. Perfectly at ease.

"Good morning, Miss Brown," he said without rising. His tone was calm, clipped. But his eyes glinted.

She stepped inside and closed the door with exaggerated care. "Are you comfortable?"

"Surprisingly so. I can see why you never want to leave."

She gave him a look, set her coffee down, and walked slowly around the desk. "Are we playing power games now, Sebastian? Because I thought we left those back in New York."

He stood. "No games. Just curiosity."

She arched a brow. "About what?"

He leaned in slightly. "About what you're not telling me."

There it was. The softness was gone.

Katherine took a breath. "I already told you —"

"Yes, I know what you told me. But it doesn’t explain why you're more guarded with me than you were a week ago."

She turned away, reaching for the folder that Sophie had slid under the door earlier. "I have work to do, Sebastian."

"And I’m not stopping you. I just wanted to start the day in your chair, to see what it feels like to be the person who knows everything but says nothing."

She froze for a moment.

Then she met his gaze. "You’re enjoying this."

"Not even a little."

He moved past her then, not touching, but too close to be casual. At the door, he paused, hand on the knob.

"You don’t have to protect me, Katherine. I’m not fragile."

She didn’t answer. Not until the door clicked shut behind him.

Only then did she allow herself to sit.

Her chair was still warm.

---

The café was tucked away behind an art supply store on Westwood Boulevard, the kind of place that smelled like roasted espresso and oil paint. Katherine liked it because no one important came here. It was quiet, anonymous — and today, it was exactly what she needed.

She spotted Liam already at a corner table, looking almost out of place in his black hoodie and scuffed Converse. A laptop glowed open in front of him, a pair of wireless earbuds slung around his neck like a careless necklace.

“Miss Brown,” he said with a grin as she approached. “Looking dangerously corporate today.”

“Don’t start,” she muttered, sliding into the seat across from him. “What have you got?”

He dropped the smirk and turned the laptop toward her. “Okay. So. First off, whoever accessed your surveillance logs? Not just an insider. This was someone who knew the system inside-out. It wasn’t brute force. It was surgical.”

Katherine’s mouth tightened. “Was it someone from the LA office?”

“Physically? No. But the signal was routed through an internal node. Could’ve been piggybacking on an admin login. The real kicker, though?” He tapped the screen. “They accessed the feed again. This morning. Just before 9 AM. For about thirty seconds. Then they wiped the trace. But I caught it.”

She frowned. “What did they watch?”

“Just your office again. That’s it. Like they were… checking.”

The chill returned to her spine. “Can you stop it? Block access?”

He nodded. “I already did. You’ve got a new firewall and access protocol. No one gets in now without your biometric signature.”

She exhaled. “Thank you, Liam.”

He hesitated. “Kat… you might want to tell someone higher up. This isn’t just creepy. It’s methodical. It’s someone with an objective.”

“I will,” she said, looking out the window. “But not yet. Not until I’m sure who it is.”

Meanwhile, at the company tower just ten minutes away, Sebastian Mason stood near the glass railing overlooking the atrium lobby. His phone was still in his hand, open to a message draft he’d nearly sent five times.

Lunch? Something casual. Just you and me. Maybe we stop pretending nothing’s off.

He sighed and deleted it again.

She had been different since Wednesday. Not cold, not confrontational — just... restrained. As if she were carefully measuring every glance, every word. And while Sebastian had never been a man who chased validation, it unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.

He turned and walked toward her office.

Sophie looked up from her desk with a polite smile. “Oh — Mr. Mason. She’s not in right now.”

His brow creased. “Where did she go?”

“She said she had a meeting outside the office. Just after her morning reports.”

“A meeting?”

“Yes.” Sophie looked momentarily uncertain. “She didn’t say with whom. Just that she’d be back by two.”

Sebastian’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He nodded and walked away with measured calm, but the word echoed in his skull like a whisper in a cavern.

A meeting.

Not a lunch, not a site check, not a press appointment. A meeting.

It could be innocent. Hell, it probably was. Katherine Brown wasn’t exactly in the habit of disappearing without cause. But the part of him that had spent the last twenty years building empires on instinct — that part didn’t like it.

He walked into the elevator, pressed the button for the 14th floor, and let the silence settle. Something had shifted between them. He’d felt it in the way she didn’t touch his arm when passing in the hallway. In how she laughed with others, but not with him. In how she smiled when necessary — and nowhere beyond that.

Now she was out. Meeting someone. Off the radar.

And Sebastian Mason — a man not used to being left out of the loop — found himself wondering not whether he trusted her, but why it suddenly mattered so goddamn much.

---

Sebastian Mason had always preferred precision over possibility. He was a man of numbers, of outcomes, of things he could measure and control. Control, in fact, had been the backbone of everything he built — from his empire to his reputation to the carefully constructed distance between himself and the chaos of emotion.

So why the hell was a woman like Katherine Brown — vibrant, unpredictable, maddeningly warm — getting under his skin like this?

He stood in the silence of the empty boardroom, the cityscape stretched before him in muted silver and glass. Far below, traffic moved like red blood cells through concrete veins. Up here, everything was still. Except for him.

He had told himself it was a professional visit. That coming to Los Angeles in person was necessary after recent financial anomalies and internal friction. He’d needed to make an example, remind the branch that corporate eyes were still watching. But if he were honest — brutally honest — it wasn’t just about the company. It hadn’t been for weeks now.

Something had shifted in New York. Maybe in the way she challenged him in that elevator. Maybe in the spark of defiance in her voice when she refused to let him talk over her. Maybe it was the look in her eyes when she didn’t back down — the kind of look that made a man forget about boardrooms and think about bedrooms.

He had planned to stay for three days.

This was now day six.

And every damn day she was different. Still Katherine — but cautious, quiet in places she’d never been before. Like she’d pulled her light back behind a wall, just enough to make him feel the cold.

He wanted to ask again what had changed. Who had called her. Why she looked at him now like he might be made of glass and fire at once.

But he didn’t ask.

Sebastian wasn’t a man who asked for clarity. He expected it.

And that was what bothered him. She hadn’t given it. Hadn’t explained. And worse — he hadn’t demanded it.

Instead, he found himself checking her office more than once. Hovering near Sophie’s desk just a moment too long. Considering lunch invitations, small talk, all the things he normally avoided like the plague.

It was irrational.

He didn’t date his employees. He didn’t flirt at work. He didn’t think about what color someone’s lipstick was when she bit her pen during morning briefings.

And yet — he’d noticed today’s lipstick.

A muted rose. New. Subtle, but impossible to ignore.

He’d noticed her absence too.

Meeting. That’s what Sophie had said. A vague word. Innocuous. But his mind had already filled it in: a man from another firm? A business rival with more flexible ethics? An old flame? Or worse — someone who knew something. About her. About them.

Sebastian clenched his jaw and turned away from the glass. Jealousy didn’t suit him. It was messy, inefficient. But that was the word, wasn’t it? Jealousy. Not suspicion. Not concern. Just… jealousy. Pure, stupid, human jealousy.

And it gnawed at his composure like a splinter under skin.

Because if Katherine had told someone about the call — the mysterious video feed, the growing discomfort she tried so hard to hide — it meant that someone else now stood closer to her than he did. Someone else she trusted.

And that wasn’t a professional problem.

It was a personal one.

He checked his phone again. No messages. No updates. No return time.

With a frustrated sigh, he loosened his tie and sat down at the head of the conference table, folding his hands like a man trying to pray but not sure who to pray to.

He could call her. Demand answers. Reassert control.

But if he did that, he’d prove every fear she hadn’t voiced aloud.

No. He had to wait.

But the next time he saw her, he would not be so easily brushed aside.

---

The air in the office was unusually still when Katherine returned from the café. Her steps were calm, measured, the way they always were after a meeting where she needed to maintain a razor-sharp focus. She had spent the last hour with Liam, discussing reports, updates, and a few whispers of internal murmurs that had surfaced over the week. Nothing critical. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

But the moment she stepped into the hallway and spotted Sebastian Mason standing near her office, arms folded and jaw tight, something shifted inside her.

He turned sharply at the sound of her heels.

"You're back," he said, voice cool. Controlled. Too controlled.

"Yes," she replied, offering a neutral smile. "Just a meeting."

"So Sophie said."

He didn’t move.

Katherine hesitated. There was something in his eyes— restlessness, maybe. Or something closer to frustration carefully dressed as indifference.

She unlocked her office door and stepped inside. Sebastian followed.

"You usually have lunch in the office," he said, leaning against the glass wall.

"Sometimes I don't."

He arched an eyebrow. "With Liam Carter?"

Katherine paused at her desk. Her hand hovered just over the surface before pulling back. "Is there a problem, Mr. Mason?"

The formal address made his eyes narrow. She almost smirked. Almost.

"Depends," he said slowly. "Should there be?"

She exhaled. Turned. Met his gaze fully.

"If you're asking whether it was a date, no. It wasn't."

"I didn't say it was."

"But you thought it."

Sebastian's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Not quite a denial. He stepped forward, slowly, measured as always.

"I don’t care who you have coffee with," he lied.

She tilted her head. "Yes, you do."

That hit a nerve. The tension spiked, sharp and sudden. Katherine watched his shoulders stiffen, the muscles in his jaw flexing slightly.

"You’ve been… distant," he said, quietly. "Since the call."

Her breath caught. She hadn’t expected him to bring it up so plainly.

"Because someone crossed a line. And I — I needed time."

He nodded slowly, eyes not leaving hers. "And you still haven’t told me who it was."

"No."

"Why?"

Her voice was calm. "Because it wasn’t you."

He blinked. "You sound sure."

"I am. Because if it were you, you wouldn't be standing here right now, looking like you're about to throw your phone across the room just because I had lunch with someone."

Sebastian scoffed, a low, guttural sound that betrayed the slip in his mask. "That obvious, huh?"

"Painfully."

A beat.

"So, what, Katherine?" he asked. "You get to keep secrets, and I get to stand around and pretend I don’t notice you're pulling away?"

She stepped closer. "It’s not about secrets. It’s about protection. Mine. And maybe yours too."

He frowned. "From what?"

She hesitated.

"From getting too close."

He didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze fell briefly to her lips, then back up to her eyes. It was the first moment in days they’d let the silence breathe between them without filling it with protocol or polite detachment.

"I need to finish some work," she whispered.

He gave a curt nod. Took a step back.

"Fine. Just let me know when you decide I'm allowed back in."

He left without another word.

And for the first time since the call, Katherine realized something far more dangerous than suspicion was blooming between them:

Trust.

And the fear of what might happen if they broke it.

---

The large conference room was buzzing with energy. Afternoon sunlight poured in through the tall windows, warming the mahogany table that stretched through the middle. Katherine stood at the head of the room, confident but exhausted, flipping through the digital agenda on the tablet in her hands. Her sleek navy dress matched her mood: sharp, controlled, but brittle beneath the surface.

Sebastian was already seated near the middle of the table, a calm observer among the department heads. He hadn’t said much since lunch, and though his expression was neutral, Katherine could feel the chill radiating from him. She couldn’t shake the memory of his eyes narrowing ever so slightly when Sophie mentioned she was "out for a meeting."

A meeting with Liam.

She forced her mind back into the room as Lauren from PR began her presentation on the upcoming client campaigns. Halfway through her explanation of projected reach and engagement metrics, Sebastian casually interjected.

"Have we considered streamlining the brand tone across platforms? The inconsistency in voice makes it feel... disjointed."

Lauren hesitated. Katherine, feeling an automatic need to shield her team, responded a bit too sharply, “This is Los Angeles, not Wall Street. We’re not here to echo your quarterly report voiceovers.”

A few people exchanged awkward glances. The silence rang loud. Even Katherine felt it — like a tight wire snapping. She saw something flicker in Sebastian’s eyes.

He didn’t lash back. Instead, he raised a brow, leaned back in his chair and replied dryly, “I suppose I’ll take that as constructive criticism... with a twist of citrus.”

The room chuckled nervously.

Katherine’s heart sank. That wasn’t professional. That wasn’t fair.

But the meeting went on. Sebastian didn’t bring it up again, didn’t make a scene. He even participated politely when asked a direct question, and by the end of the hour, everything seemed... fine.

Except it wasn’t. Not to her.

---

It was nearly 6:30 PM when Katherine found herself walking toward the executive meeting room. The hallway was dim, only a few lights still on. Most of the staff had left already, and silence hung heavy in the air.

Her heels clicked quietly against the floor as she reached the familiar wooden door. She stood there for a second, one hand on the handle, the other clutching a folder she didn’t need. She hadn’t knocked on his door since Monday. And now she wasn’t even sure what she was going to say.

She pushed it open gently.

Sebastian was alone, jacket off, white shirt sleeves rolled up as he sat by the window looking at something on his laptop. The soft glow of the evening sun framed him in light, making his usually hard expression look... distant. Thoughtful.

He looked up. “Ms. Brown.”

She flinched at the formal tone. It hit harder than a raised voice.

“Sebastian,” she said quietly.

He gestured toward the table without looking away. “Is this about tomorrow’s forecast? Or...?”

His voice was calm but clipped.

“No. Not about work.” She closed the door behind her. “I came to apologize.”

That made him pause. Slowly, he closed the laptop and leaned back. “Oh?”

“I shouldn’t have snapped at you in the meeting,” she said, coming closer. “You were giving honest feedback. I was —” she exhaled — “defensive. It wasn’t about you.”

There was a long silence. His gaze softened just a little. “I figured that much.”

“I just...” She stopped beside the table. “You were trying to help. And I lashed out in front of the team. That’s not who I want to be.”

Sebastian tilted his head. “You know, I’ve been insulted worse in boardrooms. But this one... stung a little more.”

Katherine winced. “Then let me make it up to you.”

He smirked. “You brought a peace offering?”

She looked down at the folder in her hand and laughed. “Only bad PowerPoint slides. Want me to read them dramatically?”

He smiled at that — really smiled. Then shook his head.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said more softly. “I’ve been... on edge. More than I should be.”

“You’ve had a lot on your plate,” she offered gently.

He met her gaze, quiet for a second too long. “And some of that... is you.”

Her breath hitched.

He stood, took a step closer. Not close enough to touch. Just close enough to remind her what was hanging between them.

“I know you’re being careful, Katherine,” he said. “I know something’s shifted between us. But I hope... you know I’m not your enemy.”

“I do,” she whispered.

“Good,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Because I’ve already got enough enemies.”

She smiled faintly and took a slow breath. “Dinner?”

His brows lifted. “You asking?”

She nodded. “As... colleagues.”

His smirk widened. “Colleagues with unresolved tension?”

She rolled her eyes but smiled. “Don’t push your luck, Mason.”

He laughed and grabbed his jacket from the chair. “I’ll get the car.”

---