“She’s not a variable,” I say. “She’s a person. And she doesn’t belong to you.”
“That’s a matter of perspective,” he says, and smiles. It reminds me of the way you smile at a dog that doesn’t know it’s on a leash right before the lead jerks it to a halt.
My hand curls into a fist.
“Con,” Maverick says, easy warning, a hand at my shoulder that doesn’t quite touch.
Atticus closes his laptop like a gun in a church. “If he sees her, it’s becauseshesays yes. Not because he demands it.”
“Excellent,” my father says brightly. “Let’s give the lady the courtesy of asking whether she’d like to be involved.”
He’s already walking toward the hall before anyone invites him, because that’s his favorite trick. I follow because I won’t let him be the first through any door where she is.
Phoenix meets us in the doorway with Zeus at her side and a hoodie swallowing her shoulders. Her hair is damp. Her eyes are dry. She’s smaller in my father’s gaze and also larger, like a star that gets brighter when the night decides to perform.
“Mr. Masterson,” she says neutrally, and the neutrality is an intentional cut.
She doesn’t look at me.
“Ms. Jones,” my father says, warmer than he was with his own blood. “You’ve made quite a splash.”
“Ships do that,” she says. “When they go down.”
He smiles for real—brief, delighted. He likes clever, even when he hates the lips it comes from. “You’re wasted in a job where your gift is being used to herd men with more money than sense.”
She tilts her head. “And yet you hired me for that very job. Which is it—I’m necessary for it, or I’m wasted in it?”
He’s nonplussed for a moment. “You were necessary in the moment, but now?—”
“It’s okay,” she stops him, lifting her hand, palm out. “No need to attempt an explanation. I quit.”
The words hit the room and leave an audible dent. My father’s immediate, visible delight is almost boyish. I hate him for it the way you hate the part of yourself that wants to clap when a glass shatters in a restaurant.
“Oh?” he says, bright. “Well then. You have your freedom. All you have to do is take it.”
Atticus steps forward with a file. He anticipated this hour three days ago and wrote twelve different ways it could play out already. He flips to a page with a red flag and offers it without bowing.
“Her contract,” he says, business voice crisp and no-nonsense. “Clause seventeen C. Release upon material endangerment of life or bodily integrity resulting from scope-of-work duties. Signed by me, witnessed by Hotel Counsel and an outside attorney you’re fond of. Retroactive to the night she agreed to the original contract.”
My father doesn’t reach. He makes Atticus hold the paper until his eyes have eaten it, every word. “You include a payout,” he observes.
“One million,” Atticus says. “Severance and damages. Non-disparagement running only one way: we owe her silence; she owes us nothing in return.”
I should say something. I don’t. My mouth knows that anything I add will be either a plea or a threat, and both are beneath her.
Phoenix is more than that. She’s everything.
My father hums. If he were a smaller man he’d rub his hands together in frustration. “Well then,” he says to Phoenix, and it’s the closest I’ve ever seen him come to gleeful without a corpse on the floor. “You can leave whenever you like.Now,if you’d like. My car is comfortable, and I’d be more than happy to take you anywhere you’d like to be removed to.”
Maverick’s body shifts between heartbeats, invisible to anyone who isn’t one of us. Storm slides just a hair left in case the house ends up needing a new wall. Atticus’s jaw ticks—once, but he stays silent.
Phoenix’s chin lifts that fractional three degrees that means she’s not negotiating with herself anymore. “I’m not getting in your car,” she says. “And I’m not just a thing for you to hand back like a store credit. I said I quit working for you. That doesn’t mean I’m leaving.”
He tilts his head. “What does it mean, then?”
“It means I’m not your employee,” she says, and I feel the floor shift—dangerous, good. “If I work at the Titan-Wynn again, it’s because I decide to. If I love your son, it’s because I decide to, and I’m no longer sixteen and capable of being bullied away by some anonymous notes. If I walk out that door, it’s not because you opened it. It’s because I own my destiny, and I make my own decisions from here on out.”
“That’s…bravo,” he says. The civility peels back long enough for the steel to show. “Well. I’ve seen. You’ve performed. The men have preened. The dog has a cast. We’re all very modern and important here.”
