“Not necessary,” I say calmly. “He has a restricted schedule until Q4 closes.”
Whitaker Crane,the third,looks me up and down, making my skin crawl.“We have concerns about his ongoing travel. His absence from the office. This lack of presence is… unusual.”
Translation? We sense weakness, we want proof, we are ready to pounce.
I am two seconds from inventing a story when the elevator dings.
Matteo steps out like divine intervention in an Italian wool suit.
He approaches with smooth confidence, voice carrying the weight of two decades running my father’s life.
“Gentlemen,” he says warmly, “this conversation has already been addressed.”
They turn toward him reluctantly.
Matteo continues, tone polite but sharp enough to pierce armor. “You have all received your quarterly reports. Every division exceeded projections. Revenue grew ahead of schedule. Shareholder returns surpassed last year’s numbers. Clearly, Mr. Fairfax is performing his duties and performing them well.”
The men shift, caught off guard by the blunt recitation of their own financial gains.
Matteo smiles with a disarming calm. “Surely a man who delivers growth at that level is entitled to travel as he pleases. Just as you all do. We would not want to hold him to a stricter standard than the one you set for yourselves.”
The shareholders stiffen because Matteo has just politely called them hypocrites.
“Mr. Fairfax informed you that he will be in New York for the holiday, then away again until the new year. He looks forward to meeting after the quarter closes, as scheduled.”
Silence, and then, with tight smiles and bruised pride, they retreat toward the elevator.
When the doors close behind them, I finally allow myself to breathe.
Matteo glances at me. “They walk in here thinking they run Fairfax. They forget who started it, and who keeps it alive.”
I swallow the knot in my throat. “Thank you.”
He gives a slight nod. “We hold the line together.”
“I almost didn’t.”
“But you did,” he says simply.
Matteo tilts his head. “Go home. Change for the game tonight. And breathe, Sofie. You do not always have to be the shield.”
I smile, small and grateful, but he is wrong, of course. I absolutely do. There’s so much on the line for everyone.
Chapter 2
Vs. Capitals
Aleks
When Sofie Fairfaxslams the car door shut behind her, I can’t help but laugh under my breath. Not because she is special. Not because she gets under my skin. I laugh because she is a type. Untouchable. Perfect hair. Perfect voice. Perfect little world built out of money and rooms she has never had to clean herself.
I grew up around girls like her. In my gymnasium in Moscow, all the children are privileged. Scholarship kids like me; a few made it a semester. Diplomat kids. Oligarch kids. The elite who pretended half the school did not exist ruled the halls.
Five girls at the top. Five very polished, very wealthy, very bored daughters of men who could buy my entire childhood street. They used to tilt their chins up whenever I walked past. Pretend not to see me. Pretend I did not belong there. Then, one by one, over the months and years that followed, each of those girls came to me. Separately, privately, carefully.
Slipping into stairwells or empty classrooms, cheeks flushed, skirts too short, breath shaky. Not for apologies or a confession.Just for me. For what they knew, I could give them. For what I did give them, but they also gave me something, and not just when they were on their knees, and that is precisely where they had to go first if they wanted anything else. I loved them in that position, looking up at me for once. The sex, the secrecy, the hypocrisy, and the truth that the same girls who pretended I was beneath them would come undone for me when the world was not looking.
So, when Sofie Fairfax rolls her eyes at me in the elevator and calls me AK like I’m just an object of destruction, a tool in an arsenal, not human, and she’s above everything I am? I know her type. And she is already more interesting than she wants to be.
