Chapter Six: Richard Cross

# LENA

Landon texts Sunday morning with the details.

Dinner. Tuesday. His father's usual restaurant downtown. Dress like you belong there. I will pick you up at seven.

I spend Sunday with Leo. He is home, propped on the couch, running through a video game with more focus than he has ever given anything medical. His color is good. He complains about the pain medication making him slow. He beats three levels in the time it takes me to eat lunch.

I do not tell him about Tuesday. I do not tell my mother either. I sit with them the whole day and let it be what it is, ordinary and quiet, the one day the contract cannot touch.

Monday I go to the library and research Richard Cross.

He is not difficult to find. His name is on the Westbrook gymnasium. His firm manages assets for fourteen companies in the region. He sits on three school boards. There is a profile in a regional business journal from two years ago, a photograph of him at his desk looking like a man who has never been told no and has therefore forgotten it is an option.

One line I read three times.

Richard Cross attributes his success to understanding what people need before they know they need it.

I close the browser. I know what that means. I have been on the other end of that skill once already this month.

Tuesday at six fifty I am in the dorm lobby when Landon pulls up. He gets out of the car and looks at me for a moment before saying anything.

"You look right," he says.

"I researched the restaurant."

"Of course you did." Something in his expression, not quite a smile, closer to relief.

In the car he briefs me like we are walking into something that requires preparation, which I appreciate because we are. His father is going to test me. He is going to look for the angle, the need, the thing he can use. He is very good at finding it fast.

"Do not let him be generous," Landon says. "The moment he offers you something, whatever it is, that is when he has found it."

"I know," I say.

"I am serious. He is."

"Landon." I look at him. "I have been at this school on a scholarship for three years surrounded by people who use money as a personality. I know how to handle generosity as a weapon. I have been doing it since I got here."

He goes quiet. Then, lower: "Sorry."

The restaurant is the kind of place where the lighting is dim and the menu has no prices because the price is not the point. Richard Cross is already seated when we arrive. He stands, tall and groomed, with the ease of someone who has never walked into a room and wondered if he belongs.

He looks at me the way the article described. Like he is already running numbers.

"Lena," he says, using my first name immediately, which is a choice. "Landon has told me about you."

"He has told me about you as well," I say.

Something small shifts in his expression. He was expecting grateful. He got something else.

We sit. He orders for the table without asking. He talks about the school and Landon's season and the future in the easy way of someone who has already decided what the future looks like. Then he turns and looks at me directly.

"I understand your brother had surgery recently," he says. "I am glad he is recovering. Medical costs can be devastating for families in your position."

There it is.

Landon goes very still beside me.

"Leo is doing well," I say. "We are grateful for good doctors."

"Of course." Richard Cross smiles. "If there is ever anything you need, any support for his ongoing care, I hope you know that doors are open."

"That is very kind," I say. "We manage well."

He looks at me for a moment. The numbers are still running. He expected a different answer. He expected the angle to hold.

"Landon," he says, turning to his son, "she is not what I expected."

"No," Landon says. "She is not."

Richard Cross looks between us and something changes in his expression. Not warmth. Something sharper.

"I hope you understand," he says to me, "that my son's future involves a great deal of complexity. Partnerships that extend beyond personal preference."

"I understand that you see it that way," I say.

The table goes quiet.

Landon picks up his water glass. His hand is steady. Under the table his knee presses briefly against mine. One second. Then nothing.

I do not look at him.

Richard Cross changes the subject smoothly and we finish dinner with clean conversation and no raised voices and everything perfectly civil on the surface.

In the car Landon does not speak for three full minutes.

Then: "You held."

"I told you I would."

"He is going to come at you differently next time. When the direct approach does not work he finds another one."

"I know." I look out the window at the city moving past. "What is the merger timeline now."

"Sixty days."

I look at him. "That is not six months."

"No," he says. "It is not."

We drive the rest of the way in silence.

Sixty days. The contract says six months. His father is accelerating the timeline which means the agreement we signed may not be the one we are actually working inside anymore. I think about the amendment page. The careful block letters. Every condition I wrote down in the library that morning.

I did not write an amendment for sixty days.

We pull up to the dorm. I get out and turn back.

"Landon."

He looks at me through the open window.

"What does your father do when a plan does not work the way he designed it."

His jaw is tight. "He does not stop. He changes the design."

I go inside and straight to my desk and I open my notebook and write down everything. Richard Cross. The merger. Cassidy Hale. Sixty days. The article. The restaurant. The line about understanding what people need before they know they need it.

I write until two in the morning.

Because if Richard Cross changes the design, I need to understand the original one first. And I am starting to think we are already inside a plan that began long before Landon ever walked into my music room.