8 — Promotion

**JAPHETH POV**

"Japheth, I will let Jasmine start her proper job next week. No arguments," Dad said, the moment I sat down across from him.

I blinked. "What proper job?"

"Financial analyst. She's earned it. Cum laude, top of her intern class, and she's been carrying half of Hughes without anyone noticing for months." He said it like it was already decided, because with Dad, it always already was.

"Dad, she's a fresh grad. No experience outside an internship."

"So are you," he said, not even looking up from his tablet.

"That's exactly my point. I need someone experienced on my team because I'm not." I heard how it sounded the second it left my mouth  thin, and he heard it too.

"You'll learn. So will she." He finally looked up. "Or is this about something else, Japheth?"

I didn't answer fast enough, and that was answer enough for him.

"I'm not going to pretend I haven't noticed the two of you circling each other since you walked back into this building," he said. "But don't let whatever this is cost her a position she earned fair and square. That's not fair to her, and frankly, it's beneath you."

I sat with that the whole walk back to my office, because he wasn't wrong, and being told you're wrong by your own father is a special kind of humiliating.

There was also a second thing sitting under it that I hadn't said out loud, not even to myself until right then: Voss had spent two weeks looking for any excuse to say I'd stacked my team with people who owed me loyalty instead of competence. Moving Jasmine up, right now, into a department Voss oversaw indirectly, was going to hand him exactly the narrative he wanted. *The new CFO promotes his own assistant. Wonder why.*

I didn't know how to say either of those things to her without sounding like I was making her success about me.

She was already at her desk when I got back, coffee in hand, humming something under her breath.

"Did you have your coffee?" I asked, sitting down across from her instead of going straight into my office.

"No. I was waiting for you." She smiled, easy, unguarded in a way she hadn't been in weeks.

I didn't sit down easy. My stomach was already doing something complicated.

"What's going on with you?" she asked, reading my face the way she always could, four years apart or not. "You look like you just lost millions."

"You're being promoted," I said. There wasn't a better way to say it, so I just said it.

Her hands stilled around her mug. "What?"

"Financial analyst. Dad's decision. Effective next week."

I watched it land watched the surprise turn into something brighter, something that made her whole face open up in a way I hadn't seen since we were kids and she'd get an A on something she'd worked hard for. She actually laughed, covering her mouth with her hand like she couldn't quite believe it.

"Aren't you going to say anything else?" she asked, when I didn't match her excitement.

"I'm happy for you, Peaches. I am." And I was. That part wasn't a lie.

"But," she said, because she always could hear the but before I said it.

"But it's not going to be simple," I admitted. "There are people in this company who are already looking for a reason to say I don't belong in my own seat. Moving you up right now, while everyone can see we have history it's going to look a certain way whether either of us likes it or not."

Her face changed slowly, the brightness draining out of it by degrees. "So you don't want me to take it."

"That's not what I said."

"You're worried what people will think of you," she said, and it came out flatter than I wanted, like she'd already filed it under something she recognized.

"I'm worried what they'll do to you, Peaches. There's a difference."

"Is there?" She stood, gathering the folder she'd been working from, careful and controlled in a way that told me she was working very hard not to let this rattle her in front of me. "Because from where I'm standing, it sounds a lot like the position I earned is suddenly a liability because of something you're worried about."

"That's not fair."

"No," she agreed quietly. "It's not."

She didn't storm off. She didn't slam a door. She just picked up her things and said, "I need to think," and walked into her own office and closed the door  gently, deliberately, which somehow felt worse than if she'd shouted.

I sat there for a long moment, staring at the space where she'd been, running back everything I'd just said and hearing, for the first time, exactly how it must have sounded to someone who'd spent her whole life being told her worth came with conditions attached.

I hadn't meant it that way. That didn't mean it hadn't landed that way anyway.

I picked up my phone and put it back down twice before I finally opened a message to Kate.

**JAPHETH:** I think I just made a mistake with Peaches.

**KATE:** What did you do now.

**JAPHETH:** I don't even know how to explain it without sounding worse than I already feel.

Kate didn't answer right away, which was somehow more ominous than if she had.