Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Rory

I didn’t sleep. I sat in my office above the dock with a mug of coffee going cold in my hands and stared at the same four words on my laptop screen for two hours straight, Ashcroft Holdings, primary account, until the letters stopped meaning anything at all and just looked like a threat someone had typed out in polite corporate font.

By six in the morning I’d made up my mind. I was going to walk into that building, tell whoever was sitting behind the CEO’s desk exactly where they could put their contract, and go back to running my company the way I’d run it for the last ten years, without a single Ashcroft anywhere near it.

Talia tried to stop me at the door. “You said you’d sleep on it,” she said, arms crossed, blocking the exit like her five foot four frame was actually going to hold me back from anything.

“I did sleep on it. For zero hours. That counts.”

“Rory.”

“I’m not doing this again, Talia. I built this company so I would never have to sit in a room with that family again, and now I’m supposed to what, smile and hand over invoices like none of it happened?”

“I’m not telling you to smile. I’m telling you to think about what walking means for the twelve people on payroll who aren’t you.”

That one landed the way she meant it to, low and quiet, no yelling required, because Talia had never needed volume to win an argument with me. I grabbed my jacket anyway and told her I’d think about the twelve people after I said what I needed to say, and she let me go because she knew better than anyone that once I decided to do something there was no version of stopping me,

The Ashcroft building downtown was all glass and steel and the kind of lobby designed to make regular people feel small on purpose, and I walked through. The receptionist tried to stop me twice. I kept walking.

By the time security caught up with me I was already standing in front of the glass conference room on the top floor, and the man sitting at the head of the table wasn’t who I expected

It was Kian. Alone, no suit today, just a plain shirt with the sleeves pushed up, dark circles under his eyes like he hadn’t slept either, and something in his expression shifted the second he saw me, surprise sliding into something warmer before he caught himself and put the polite business face back on

“You look like you’re about to fire somebody,” he said.

“I’m about to quit on somebody, which is different.”

“Sit down.”

“I’m not sitting down. I’m here to tell you Vance Maritime is done with this contract, effective immediately, and you can figure out who’s going to finish pulling your company’s cargo out of the water because it’s not going to be me.”

He didn’t flinch, which annoyed me almost as much as everything else about that morning had. “Why,” he said, simply, like the answer actually mattered to him and wasn’t just a formality on the way to me leaving.

“Because I don’t work for your family. Not now, not ever again.”

“That’s not an answer, that’s a headline. Why.”

I felt my jaw tighten, felt ten years of carefully built distance start cracking right there under the fluorescent lights, and the words came out before I could stop them, sharp and fast, the way things do when you’ve been holding them too long. “Because I used to be engaged to your brother,” I said. “Ten years ago. And I swore after that I would never sit in a room with an Ashcroft again if I could help it, so forgive me for having some very strong feelings about waking up this morning and finding out I spent last night pulling your family’s cargo out of the ocean. How old were you back then. Twelve and abroad or what?.”

“You were engaged to Damian,” he said, like he was testing the words out loud to see if they were real.

“Yes.”

“Damian never mentioned that. Ever. In ten years.”

“Why would he. It ended badly. People don’t usually put their worst breakups on the company newsletter.”

He stood up from the table slowly, running a hand back through his hair, and when he spoke again his voice had an edge to it that hadn’t been there a second ago, something closer to anger, though I could tell it wasn’t aimed at me. “That son of a bitch,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “He dumped this contract on my desk two days ago out of nowhere, told me he had too much on his plate for a salvage job, wouldn’t explain why, wouldn’t even look at me when he said it. I thought it was just him being him. I didn’t think it was because.”

“Because he knew exactly whose company he’d be sending you to,” I finished.

“Yeah.” He sat back down, hard, like his legs had stopped fully cooperating. “That absolute coward.”

Something about the disbelief on his face, the genuine anger at his own brother, cracked something loose in my chest that I wasn’t expecting, some small unfair hope that maybe not every Ashcroft in the world was built exactly the same way. I hated that I noticed it. I hated it even more that I kind of liked him a little for it.

“So now you know,” I said, folding my arms, trying to sound more in control than I felt. “Which is exactly why I’m walking. I’m not doing this. I’m not spending the next however many weeks pretending your brother’s name doesn’t make my stomach turn every single time somebody says it in a meeting.”

“You don’t have to deal with him at all.”

“That’s cute, but he’s the CEO. Eventually he’s going to want updates.”

“Then he’ll get them from me,” Kian said, leaning forward, something stubborn setting into his jaw that I hadn’t seen from him yet. “I run this contract. I’m the one who authorized last night’s response. If you want, I’ll handle every single piece of communication between our companies myself, and Damian doesn’t have to say one word to you, ever, for the entire length of this job. You deal with me. Only me.”

“You’re offering to be my human shield against your own brother.”

“I’m offering to not let him screw up the one contract that actually matters to me, and if keeping him away from you is part of that, fine, I don’t have a problem with it.”

I studied him for a second, trying to figure out if this was genuine or just some corporate move to keep a valuable vendor from walking, and I couldn’t find the calculation in his face that I was looking for. Just stubbornness, and something that looked embarrassingly close to sincerity for a man I’d known less than twenty four hours.

My phone buzzed in my pocket before I could answer, and I already knew it was Talia without looking, because of course it was. I stepped into the hallway to take it, and her voice came through fast and worried, none of the patience from earlier left in it. “Please tell me you haven’t quit yet,” she said.

“I’m working on it.”

“Rory, listen to me. I just got off the phone with our accountant. If we lose the Ashcroft contract this quarter, we lose the biggest single payment on our books, and that payment is what’s covering the loan on the new tug. If it falls through, we’re not just down a client, we’re down the boat that’s supposed to be paying for itself next year.”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the cold glass wall of the hallway, feeling the whole righteous speech I’d been building since six that morning start collapsing under the weight of a number Talia had just handed me. “I hate that you’re right,” I said.

“I hate that I have to be. But I am.”

I hung up and stood there a second longer than I needed to, breathing, before I walked back into the conference room where Kian was still sitting exactly where I’d left him, watching me with an expression that was trying very hard to look neutral and failing.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll finish the contract.”

Something loosened in his shoulders that he probably didn’t realize was visible. “Good.”

“One condition.” I held up a finger before he could get too pleased with himself. “I deal with you. Only you. I never see your brother’s face, I never hear his voice on a call, I never so much as get a company email with his name in the signature line. The second that changes, I’m gone, contract or no contract. Are we clear.”

“Crystal.”

“I mean it, Kian.”

“I said crystal.” He said it fast, almost too fast, like the word had left his mouth before he’d fully thought through what he was agreeing to, and something reckless flickered behind his eyes that I chose not to examine too closely at the time. “Deal. You’ve got me instead. For everything.”

I stuck my hand out to shake on it, because that’s how I closed every contract I’d ever signed, a handshake first, paperwork after, and he took it without hesitation, his grip warm and sure despite the fact that neither one of us had fully dried off from the night before. It lasted maybe two seconds too long. I told myself it didn’t mean anything. I told myself that a lot over the next three weeks, and I was wrong basically every single time.

“Alright,” I said, pulling my hand back first, needing something to do with it that wasn’t still holding his.

“Then I’ll see you at the dock tomorrow morning. Six sharp. Bring boots this time, not whatever fashion statement you had on last night.”

“It’s a leather jacket, not a fashion statement.”

“It’s both, and you looked ridiculous in the water.”

“I can’t wait for our next date.” Don’t dream I said walking out.