The thing was, I hadn’t ordered any bribes. I ran a multi-billion-dollar empire built on the principle that shortcuts were expensive mistakes in disguise. But I employed thousands of people and couldn’t personally oversee every handshake on every job site. If someone in my organization had paid off a city inspector, I needed to know about it.
And apparently, Emilia Rivera had already found out.
There was something almost clarifying about that. She’d walked into my gala with evidence I didn’t have about my own company, and instead of briefing me from a distance like any reasonable source would, she’d stood in a service corridor and told me — in her oblique, combative, entirely infuriating way — exactly what she had. She’d given me the shape of the problem before I’d even known to look for it.
I wasn’t sure if that made her reckless or generous. Possibly both.
“Get me everything you can on her sources,” I said. “And have Legal prepare for potential scrutiny. I want us audit-ready within the week.”
Daniel made a note. “Should I also have PR draft a response strategy?”
“Not yet.” I moved to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lake Michigan, the same view I’d been chasing since I was seventeen years old and desperate to escape a house that had nothing to do with home. The water stretched gray and endless toward the horizon. “I want to know what she has first.”
“And how do you propose to find that out?”
I turned back to face him. The plan had been forming since the moment I’d watched her set down her champagne glass in that ballroom — since I’d seen the fury in her eyes and recognized it for what it was underneath. Not just professional. Personal. She felt deceived. She had every right to.
The least I could do was face that directly.
“Set up a meeting.”
Daniel’s stylus paused. “Sir?”
“A meeting. With Ms. Rivera.” I returned to my desk. “Offer it through official channels. Tell her I want to discuss her findings before they go to print. Standard opportunity-to-respond courtesy.”
“You want to meet with the journalist who’s trying to expose corruption in your company.”
“I want to understand what she knows.” True, and approximately forty percent of my actual motivation. “And I want her to pick the location.”
Now Daniel’s carefully neutral expression cracked entirely. “You want her to choose the meeting place.”
“Is there an echo in here?” I kept my voice mild. “Yes. Her choice. Wherever she feels comfortable.”
Daniel stared at me for a long moment — the look he reserved for the rare occasions when I did something he couldn’t categorize. Then he nodded, professional neutrality reassembling itself.
“I’ll reach out to her editor this morning.”
“Do that.”
After he left, I turned back to the window, but I wasn’t seeing the lake. I was seeing a ballroom, and a woman at the back of it reaching for her pen with the steady hands of someone who had just decided something irrevocable.
She was coming for my empire. She had every tool and every right and every reason. And I had sat in my office all morning turning a gold ring around my finger and thinking about the way she’d laughed on a balcony in November like it was something I was entitled to hear again.
I’d left to think. I’d thought. The thinking had made it worse.
For now, she’d agreed, when I’d said it. Like she understood the game and was willing to play it. Like she was the kind of woman who could match any move I made and not lose her footing.
In thirty-six hours, I’d find out if that was still true now that she knew my name.
I found myself hoping it was.
The café she chose was nothing like I expected.
Two days after my instruction to Daniel, I found myself standing on a sidewalk in Logan Square, staring at a narrow storefront called Margot’s that looked like it might collapse if someone sneezed too hard on the neighboring sidewalk. The windows were fogged with steam, and through the glass I could see mismatched furniture, exposed brick, and approximately zero people who looked like they could afford my shoes.
A test. Obviously.
The Sebastian Laurent the press wrote about wouldn’t be caught dead here — didn’t conduct business anywhere without glass walls and a view, didn’t sit in rickety chairs, didn’t drink coffee that came in chipped mugs. She’d chosen a place that stripped all of that away before I even walked through the door.
