The Valuation

Chapter One

My hands would not stop shaking, no matter how hard I pressed them flat against my knees.

Damian Cross sat across from me, a folder between us, his eyes cold enough to freeze the air in the room, and he had not looked up once since I walked in.

"Everything they had on you," he said. "Every failed pitch. Every rejection letter."

"That's private."

"Nathaniel doesn't care about rights when he wants something."

He finally lifted his eyes, slate gray and sharp enough to cut straight through whatever composure I had left.

Three years ago, those same eyes had been the last thing I'd seen before walking out of his apartment for good, and I had promised myself I would never let them do this to me again. My stomach still dropped the same way it used to, a slow, sick fall I felt behind my ribs before my mind even caught up.

"He wanted your breaking point. Looks like he found it three weeks ago."

I looked down at the page, my name staring back at me above my worst year, a single line at the top that read Ivy Calloway, Valuation.

Not a person. A price.

"I didn't ask for his help."

"Doesn't matter." He shut the folder. "Six months. Turn Special Projects around. If my brother interferes, you come to me. Understood?"

"And if I say no?"

"You won't." He said it plainly, no cruelty in it, just certainty, the kind that used to make me believe every word out of his mouth without a fight. "You need this job as much as I need you to fix it."

I hated that he was right.

I did not trust my voice, so I took the folder and left.

My new office smelled like dust. I set my bag down and told myself to breathe. Numbers. Deadlines. Anything but the man who now owned six months of my life.

A knock. The door opened before I answered.

"Checking my math?"

Nathaniel Reyes leaned against the frame, two coffees in hand.

"You shouldn't be in here."

"It's my building." He set one cup down. "Black, no sugar. Your old assistant's order."

He lingered a beat too long before pulling his hand back, close enough that I caught the clean scent of him, and hated how easily my pulse noticed.

My stomach dropped. "You bought my file too."

"I invested in talent." His smile did not reach his eyes. "Damian gave you your failures. I brought coffee. Guess which one of us wants you to win."

"Why does either of you care?"

"Because Damian needs someone to blame when this division collapses. I need someone who can save it first."

"By digging through my private reviews?"

"By knowing what I'm working with." He leaned closer. "He gave you six months. I can get you there in three. But you have to trust the right brother."

"I don't trust either of you."

"Smart." He winked. "Check your inbox."

He paused at the door, glancing back like he wanted to add something else, then thought better of it and let the silence do the work instead.

The door shut behind him.

Six months, or I was finished. I opened my laptop.

It was not another list of my failures. It was a target account, laid bare in red text.

Vanguard Group. Terminating current contract. Contact immediately.

A note sat below it in blunt black handwriting.

Damian thinks we lost this pitch. Don't tell him otherwise.

My phone buzzed. Unknown number.

He's watching the cameras. Don't look up.

My skin turned cold. I lifted my eyes slowly across the ceiling until I found it. A small dark lens, aimed straight at my desk.

I froze, the laptop still glowing, my pulse loud in my own ears.

The door slammed open.

Damian filled the frame, his jaw locked, his eyes cutting from my face to the screen and back.

"Get out of that file, Ivy."

I closed the laptop but did not answer him yet.

"It's his file," I said. "Your brother sent it to me."

"I know what he sent you."

His eyes flicked once toward the ceiling, toward the same lens I had just found. Something passed over his face. Not shock. Recognition.

"You knew about the camera."

He said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.

"Sit down, Ivy."

I did not sit. My legs felt locked in place.

"You gave me six months to save this division," I said. "Your brother hands me stolen data before lunch. And now you walk in here acting like I did something wrong."

"You don't understand what you're holding."

"Then explain it."

He was quiet, and the quiet stretched long enough to scare me more than his voice ever had. His eyes dropped to the folder still on my desk, the one he had thrown down that morning, and something like exhaustion cracked through his control before he shut it away again.

"Not here," he said. "Not with him listening."

"Listening how?" My voice climbed higher than I meant it to. "You just told me you knew about a camera pointed at my desk and now you won't even tell me why."

"Because the answer isn't small, Ivy. And I'm not ready to hand it to you standing in a room he can see into."

My stomach turned. If Nathaniel could plant a camera before I finished my first coffee, what else had already been arranged around me without my knowledge?

Damian moved toward the door, then stopped, his hand on the frame.

"There's something you need to know about this division," he said. "Something my father never got the chance to finish."

"What are you talking about?"

He turned back, and just for a moment, the ice in his eyes gave way to something rawer.

"Three years of financial records don't add up," he said. "Money leaving this company and never coming back. I didn't hire you to babysit a failing brand, Ivy. I hired you because you're the only person I trust to find out where it's going."

My chest went cold. "Why me?"

"Because everyone else in this building already knows what not to look at."

He left without another word, and I sat alone with a hidden camera above my desk, a brother sending me stolen files, and a warning I had not asked to be part of.

My phone buzzed again. A photo this time, no caption, no name.

It was Nathaniel's office. Taken from outside, through the glass, timestamped an hour ago.

He was on the phone, pacing, one hand pressed against his forehead like a man losing control of something important.

I sat back in my chair, my pulse still uneven, my mind trying to fit two brothers, a hidden camera, and a photo of a man I barely knew into some kind of order that made sense. None of it did. Not yet.

I thought of the way Nathaniel's hand had lingered near mine that morning, easy and deliberate at once, and wondered how much of it had been real and how much had simply been another move in whatever game he thought we were both already playing.

Who took this picture, and why did they want me to see it before anyone else?