CHAPTER 6: THE FATHER

Marcus Voss moved through a room the way his son did, all controlled precision, except where Adrian's stillness read as restraint, his father's read as threat. He crossed to the head of the table without waiting for an invitation and set his briefcase down with a soft, deliberate click, like a man placing the first piece on a board he already intended to win.

"You must be Ms. Callahan." He didn't offer his hand. "I have to say, when my assistant told me Adrian was in an emergency negotiation with his former fiancée's bridesmaid, I assumed she'd misheard something. I flew home to correct the record. Apparently there was no misunderstanding at all."

"Father," Adrian said, his voice flat in a way Temi was starting to recognize as his version of a raised voice, "this isn't the time."

"On the contrary. This is precisely the time." Marcus finally turned his attention fully on Temi, and she felt the full weight of it land, the practiced, dismissive assessment of a man used to deciding within seconds whether someone in front of him mattered. "Twenty four hours ago you were arranging seating charts for my son's wedding to a woman he actually chose. Today you're negotiating a contract to take her place. I confess I find the turnaround impressive, if nothing else."

"Marcus." Naomi's voice cut in, cool and even. "This conversation should happen privately, between family."

"Ms. Chen, you work for my son, not for me, so I'll thank you not to manage this room as though you have standing to." Marcus didn't even look at her. "Reyes. I assume you drafted whatever hastily assembled agreement is sitting in that folder. Walk me through it."

Reyes glanced at Adrian, who gave the smallest possible nod, jaw tight enough that Temi could see the tendon standing out along his neck. Reyes opened the folder and began, in the same careful, measured voice he'd used all morning, and Temi watched Marcus's expression shift through the terms, mild interest sharpening into something colder by the time Reyes reached the settlement figure.

"That's a remarkable sum," Marcus said, "for a woman he's known, what, two days."

"The terms were negotiated fairly," Temi said, before she could stop herself. "By my own attorney, not just his."

Marcus's eyes cut to her, and for a moment something almost like amusement flickered there, quickly buried. "She speaks. Good. I was beginning to wonder if my son had simply found someone agreeable enough not to."

"Enough," Adrian said, standing now, his palms flat on the table. "You don't get to walk in here and speak to her like that."

"I get to walk in here because my father's will, the one you're so eager to satisfy with a stranger and a signature, still leaves my name on the shareholder registry, and I have every right to voice concern when my son is about to attach the company's public image to a decision made in a single sleepless night." Marcus's voice never rose, which somehow made it worse than if it had. "You have sixty days, Adrian. You could have taken all sixty finding someone appropriate. Instead you're rushing into this with the first willing woman who crossed your path, and you expect the board, the press, and eleven thousand employees to simply trust your judgment."

"I don't need the board's permission to get married."

"No. But you need their confidence to keep running this company, and confidence is a fragile thing, easily spent, difficult to earn back." Marcus straightened his cuffs, a small, unhurried gesture that somehow radiated more menace than anything he'd said. "I'll be watching this arrangement closely, Ms. Callahan. Closely enough that I'd advise you to read every clause of that contract twice, because I intend to."

He picked up his briefcase and turned for the door, pausing only once, at the threshold, to look back at his son with an expression Temi couldn't quite read, something that might have been disappointment if she squinted, or might have simply been the practiced look of a man performing disappointment for an audience that included exactly one person he actually needed to convince.

"Your grandfather is dying, Adrian," Marcus said. "I would think you'd want to make him proud in his final months, not hand him one more thing to worry about."

The door closed behind him with a quiet, controlled click that somehow landed louder than a slam would have.

For a long moment, nobody in the conference room spoke. Naomi was the first to move, crossing to the window and letting out a slow breath, like she'd been holding it the entire time Marcus was in the room.

"That went about as well as I expected," she said.

"He's not wrong that the board will ask questions," Reyes said carefully. "We should have a public statement ready before this leaks, and it will leak, likely within the day."

Adrian hadn't moved from where he stood at the head of the table, his hands still flat against the surface, staring at the door his father had just walked through like he was replaying every word of the last five minutes on a loop. Temi watched something pass across his face that she recognized, uncomfortably, because she'd worn the same expression herself more times than she wanted to count. Not anger, exactly. The particular exhaustion of a person who had spent their entire life being measured against a standard they never agreed to and never seemed able to meet.

"Adrian," she said quietly.

He blinked, like he'd forgotten she was still in the room. "I'm sorry you had to witness that."

"Don't apologize for your father's behavior. You didn't choose it any more than I chose mine." Temi hesitated, then added, because it felt true even though she'd known this man for less than two days, "For what it's worth, I don't think you're rushing into anything. I think you're doing the math on an impossible situation and choosing the least bad option available to you. I understand that better than you probably realize."

Something shifted in his expression, brief and unguarded, gone almost as soon as it appeared.

"We should set a date," he said. "Before he has time to do anything else."

Reyes cleared his throat. "I'd recommend within the week, given the circumstances. Something small. Controlled. We announce on our terms, not his."

Temi thought about the studio, about Pri, about the lease notice still folded in her desk drawer, about the man who had just walked out of this room promising to watch her closely enough to find every crack in whatever they built together. She thought, too, about the flicker of something almost grateful in Adrian's eyes a moment ago, gone before she could name it.

"Fine," she said. "Within the week."

Nobody in that conference room noticed, in the flurry of dates and logistics that followed, that Marcus Voss had left his briefcase resting against the doorframe for the length of exactly one phone call before picking it back up, long enough for the small device clipped inside its lining to catch every word spoken in that room after he left, a detail that would not surface again for many months, by which point the damage it caused would already be impossible to undo.