Chapter 13 - Territory

FREYA'S POV

The stairwell was the one place on the floor without cameras pointed directly at the door, which I hadn’t paid attention to once, until Silas stepped out of it in front of me on my way down to the mail room, blocking the exit like he’d been waiting there for me.

“You’re avoiding me.” He said it flatly, no charm left in it this time, none of the manipulative softmness he’d tried by the elevators. “Every time I come up here you disappear before I can finish a sentence.”

“I’m working.” I stepped to the side to go around him. He mirrored my movement, closing the gap I’d tried to create and standing so close enough now that the stairwell felt smaller than it had a second ago.

“I heard Raiden had me pulled from the Whitmore account.” His voice had an edge under it I recognized from the worst nights of the last four years. The tone that came right before he said things he was going to regret. “You know how that looks. My own uncle cutting me out because his secretary complained.”

“I never complained about anything.”

“You didn’t have to. He watches you like you’re something he’s decided to keep.” He laughed, short and humorless. “You think that makes you safe? You think he’s going to protect Elena the way I was protecting her?”

My stomach dropped even as I kept my face still. “Don’t start.”

“I’m not the one who canceled anything this time, Freya. I’m just telling you. I still know people on that hospital board. I still sit on committees that decide which private funds get renewed and which don’t. You think because I’m off one account I lost every string I can pull?” He leaned in, close enough that I had to fight not to step back and give him the satisfaction of watching me flinch. “You made me look weak in front of my own family. I can make things very hard for you without lifting a finger anyone could trace back to me.”

“Get out of my way.”

“I’m not threatening you.” His voice softened, that horrible practiced softness he used right before it turned again. “I’m reminding you. You keep playing whatever game you’re playing with him, and you’re going to find out the hard way that some doors don’t stay open forever. I could still make this easier for you. All you’d have to do is agree to my terms.”

I pushed past him this time, hard enough that he had to catch himself against the railing, and didn’t look back until I was through the door and into the hallway, breathing like I’d run up six flights of stairs. 

I didn’t tell anyone. I went back to my desk, my hands still not quite steady, and buried myself in work until the shaking stopped.

Garrick must have seen something on the stairwell camera outside the door, or heard it from someone, because by three o’clock his expression when he passed my desk had changed again. It wasn't the cold suspicion from my first weeks, but something more careful and in a different direction now. He didn’t ask me about it. He just disappeared into Raiden’s office for almost twenty minutes with the door shut, which never happened in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.

I didn’t find out what was said. Raiden didn’t call me in. He didn’t mention it at all, not that day, not the next. He went about the rest of the week with the same controlled distance he always kept in the office, like he knew nothing about what had happened.

But on Friday morning, when I badged into the elevator, the display flashed a message it had never shown before;  'floor access restricted, contact security', and I glanced up to see one of the building’s guards standing near the executive bank, checking a list against a tablet with a focus that hadn’t been there the week before.

“Everything okay?” I asked one of the junior assistants at the coffee station, keeping my voice light.

She lowered hers automatically, the way people do when they’re about to say something they probably shouldn’t. “I heard some visitor access got flagged this week. Family members, apparently but nobody’s saying whose. Security’s been tightened on this floor since yesterday.”

I didn’t ask whose. I already had a good guess, and a colder, quieter feeling underneath it that I couldn’t quite name. It wasn't relief, not exactly, though it should have been. It was rather something closer to unease; the particular unease of realizing someone had moved to protect you without telling you they were doing it, without giving you the chance to say whether you wanted the protection at all.

I thought about knocking on Raiden’s door and asking him outright. I even got as far as standing in front of it before I lost the boldness to do so, because some part of me already suspected what his answer would look like. That flat, unreadable face with that voice giving away nothing and telling me it was a routine security update and nothing more.

I didn’t test it. I went back to my desk instead, and spent the rest of the day wondering exactly how much of my life had already started affecting the world around me instead of affecting me directly.