"For any commercial developer. A shooting range on forty acres in the middle of nowhere. A bar and garage on a back road. These aren't acquisition targets. They're not profitable, they're not scalable, they're not located near anything that would justify development." He's looking at me now with the full weight of that attention — the same focus he brings to the spreadsheets, directed at the question underneath the question. "So why is my company flagging them?"
I hold his gaze. He's asking me. Not rhetorically — actually asking, like he thinks I might have an answer he doesn't.
"That's the question," I say. And I don't give him more than that. Not yet. Not because I don't want to. Because I need to see what he does with the question on his own.
He holds my gaze for a beat longer than comfortable. Then he nods again — slower this time, like he's filing something away — and goes back to his booth.
Silas turns a page. Doesn't look at me. Doesn't need to.
"I know," I say quietly.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking it."
"I was thinking that he just told you the truth about Delgado's range without being asked." A page turn. "I was also thinking that trust has to start somewhere."
"What if I'm wrong?"
"Then you're wrong. But the alternative is being right and alone, which isn't better."
Silas and his books. Silas and his devastating, quiet observations that land like stones in still water. He's going to say something someday that destroys me, and I won't see it coming, and it'll probably be a quote from a novel I should have read.
* * *
Four-thirty. Nicholas packs up. The routine.
But today he pauses at the bar on his way out. Doesn't sit --- just stands there, laptop bag over his shoulder, and looks at me.
"When I understand the pattern," he says. Not if. When. "I'd like to take you up on your offer. The spreadsheet help."
"I'll be here."
"You're always here."
"That's the job."
"Is it?" He looks at me. Not the professional look --- the other one. The one that asks questions his mouth won't say. "I don't think this is just a job for you. I don't think any of this is just a job."
He leaves before I can answer. The door closes. His footsteps on the gravel, the rental car starting, the engine fading.
He's right. None of this is just a job. Not the bar, not the books, not the spreadsheet I've been building in secret. Not him.
I open my laptop. Pull up my Coldwell spreadsheet. The one with seven SEC filing acquisitions and Delgado's five confirmed properties.
I add a new column: NICHOLAS'S THREAD.
I don't fill it in yet. I don't know what he's found. But the column is there, waiting, the blank space where his data will go when he's ready to show me.
Trust has to start somewhere.
I close the laptop. Lock up the bar. Go upstairs.
My lion is no longer silent. It's purring — low, steady, the deep vibration that meanspatience.Not the urgent purr of desire. The quiet one. The one that sayshe's coming. Give him time. He's coming.
For the first time in three days, I sleep before midnight.
Chapter 14
