I reach for the Château Margaux with hands that barely shake, using the motion to steady myself. "A classic." I manage, my voice steadier than I feel.
He moves to hold the door, and as I pass through the narrow space, his hand settles on the small of my back. The touch looks professional, courteous. It burns through the silk of my dress like a brand.
Back in the restaurant, Robert Blackwood is laughing at something his colleague said. The wine arrives with perfect timing, served in elegant crystal goblets that reflect the candlelight. We slide back into our seats, back into our roles, but everything has changed.
Blackwood raises his glass. "To new partnerships."
The glasses clink. The wine is rich, complex, and impossibly smooth.
Across the table, Garrett lifts his glass, and his eyes find mine. The look he gives me is loaded with everything we didn't say, everything we almost did. A shared secret that pulses between us like a live wire.
When the check finally arrives and we stand to leave, his hand finds my elbow to guide me toward the exit. Another touch that looks innocent, professional. Another touch that makes my pulse stutter.
The lobby stretches before us, marble and soft lighting and the kind of elegant space designed for power lunches and corporate seduction. He walks me to the taxi stand, our footsteps echoing in the quiet.
"See you tomorrow, Sloane," he says, his voice low and certain.
He waits until I'm safely in the car before turning away, but as my driver pulls into traffic, I catch him in the side mirror. He's standing on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, watching my taillights disappear into the Minneapolis night.
My phone buzzes against my purse. A text from an unknown number—but I know. Three words glow on the screen:
That was real.
The words aren't a question or a promise. They're a statement of fact. A shared truth.He felt it too.
It’spast midnight when I finally get back to my apartment. The Northstar dinner was a success—I navigated Vivian’s data sabotage, and Blackwood seemed impressed.
But I’m not celebrating. I'm terrified.
I stand in my kitchen, the navy silk of my dress feeling slick and cold against my skin. All I can see is the look on Garrett's face in the wine room. All I can hear is my own voice, telling him the story I never tell anyone.
"She lost everything. He lost nothing. That's the rule here."
I’ve spent my entire career proving I'm the exception to that rule. But tonight, surviving Vivian’s sabotage and then nearly kissing Garrett at a client dinner... it all feels like I'm walking straight into a trap.
Vivian didn't just try to make me look bad tonight. She tried to make me fail. It all feels too coincidental. This isn't professional rivalry. This is active, targeted sabotage. And now that... Garrett... is a factor, I'm terrified.
I've moved past reactive. I'm done being a target. If I'm going to protect my career, I need to know why she's so threatened by me.
I toss my heels onto the rug and head to my office, the adrenaline from the dinner still thrumming in my veins. Sleep is impossible.
I'm not just curious about Vivian's past. I'm a strategist gathering intelligence. And the only clue I have is that single photograph on her monitor—her standing next to Jake Morrison, her expression hollow and bitter, like someone carved out from the inside. I remember that Morrison usedto play for the Columbus Blue Jackets, so that must have been where she worked before. She never talks about it.
I type a search into Google:Vivian Lamore Columbus Blue Jackets
The first three pages give me nothing but generic press releases and archived game recaps. I refine the search, add quotation marks, try different combinations.
On page six, buried beneath layers of irrelevant results, I find it.
A staff photo from the Columbus Blue Jackets' 2019 holiday party. The image quality is poor—clearly taken from an old website slideshow—but I zoom in anyway. There's Vivian, younger but wearing that same controlled expression. I scan the other faces, looking for anything that might—
My breath catches.
Three people down from Vivian stands Anna Reyes, one of the junior coordinators from marketing operations, the one who never speaks in meetings and always looks terrified of her own shadow.
Not might-be Anna. Not someone who looks like Anna. It's unmistakably her—same delicate features, same dark hair. But the woman in this photo is different. Confident. Open. Her smile reaches her eyes in a way I've never seen at the Mammoth Center.
I screenshot the image, my pulse hammering. Anna worked in Columbus. With Vivian. Could there be something there?
