She walks out flanked by two guards, her back rigid with humiliation. I watch until she's through the revolving door and into a waiting taxi before returning to the elevator and pulling out my phone.
A text to Dominic:Mattaniah's mother just tried to access the building as "Mrs. Hale." Handled. She's starting to realize her position isn't what she thought.
His response comes thirty seconds later:Good. Let her sweat.
The elevator opens on the executive floor and I nearly collide with Mattaniah. He's standing three feet from the doors with a folder clutched to his chest, his eyes wide, his cheeks still carrying that permanent flush. The folder is the same prop he's been using all week, last month's interdepartmental memos that serve no purpose other than giving his hands something to hold.
"Amos." He says my name like he's been caught doing something wrong. "I was just—the filing system—"
"Niah." I step out of the elevator and let the doors close behind me. "You don't need a prop with me either."
His face goes redder as he lowers the folder an inch.
"What happened?" He's looking at the elevator like he can see through the floor to the lobby below. "Tamsin said security called you down. She said there was a woman claiming to be—" He stops. His face shifts from embarrassed to something harder. "My mother."
"Your mother," I confirm.
"She came here?"
"She tried to access the executive floor as 'Mrs. Hale' and demanded to see Richard about a household matter." I lean against the wall, keeping my posture casual. "Security calledme because Dominic wasn't answering and Richard was in a meeting."
Mattaniah's jaw tightens. "What did she want?"
"Access. And the status that comes with it." I watch his face as the information lands. "I sent her away. She doesn't have building clearance, and I wasn't about to escort her up to Richard's office so she could play devoted wife in front of his staff."
"She's never shown this much interest in her marks before," he says after a long moment, his grip on the folder gone white-knuckled. "Usually by now she's settled into the routine, spending money and ignoring me and waiting for the payout. She doesn't insert herself like this."
"Maybe this mark is smarter than she planned." I push off the wall and close the distance between us, stopping close enough to smell the chemical edge of his blockers straining against the warmth of his scent underneath. "Or maybe she's finally realized she's not as secure as she thought."
"That's worse." His voice drops. "When she scrambles, people get hurt. Usually me."
"Not this time." I reach out and let my thumb trace the curve of his ear before I catch myself and drop my hand. "She doesn't have access to this building, she doesn't have access to Richard, and she definitely doesn't have access to you while you're here." I take a step back. "Go back to work, alright? Let me worry about your mother."
"You shouldn't have to worry about her at all."
"I worry about everything, Niah. It's what I do." I take another step toward the elevator. "Besides, watching her realize she's not as clever as she thinks she is? That's not a burden. That's entertainment."
The corner of his mouth twitches. It’s not quite a smile, but close enough.
"You're kind of scary sometimes," he says. "You know that?"
"Dominic likes to remind me." I press the elevator button. "Now go file your prop folder before Tamsin comes looking for you."
I watch Mattaniah disappear across the floor to his cubicle before heading back to my desk and pulling up the security footage from the lobby. I save it to a secure folder and add a note to the file I've been building on her since the day she arrived, cross-referencing it against the spending patterns and the timeline of previous marks that Mattaniah has mentioned in passing.
Something about her visit doesn't sit right. She's worried about something specific, worried enough to show up at Hale Industries in person and risk the humiliation of being turned away. A woman who's simply coasting on a mark's money doesn't insert herself into his workplace.
My phone buzzes. Dominic:Dinner tonight? Just the three of us. Father has a board function.
I type back:You’re paying this time.
A smile cracks across my face because I don’t pay for shit. Even with the paycheck that drops into my bank account every two weeks, Dominic takes care of me as my Alpha, absurd as that is.
Mattaniah
It’sbeenthreedaysafter the subspace incident and I've developed a new routine that involves pretending I'm not looking for excuses to be near them.
The pretending is going badly. Tamsin has started giving me a look every time I get up from my desk that says she knows exactly where I'm headed, and I've burned through every plausible cover story for why the CEO's assistant needs to visitthe twelfth floor six times in a single workday. Yesterday I told her I was delivering interoffice mail and she pointed out that Hale Industries has a mail room. I told her to mind her own business and she laughed at me.
