I opened the door to the main conference room. One final inspection. Screens tested, name placards lined up, cables tucked out of sight, and fresh legal pads waited with pens spaced in neat intervals.
My lungs found the rhythm before my mind caught up.One. Two. Three. Again. Another of Read’s tricks—breath as anchor.
Sarah orchestrated the whole thing with that easy efficiency of hers, confirming arrival times with one hand while adjusting the room lighting with the other.
By nine-thirty, we were ready.
Or close enough to pretend.
Margaret’s pen tapped somewhere in the back of my skull. Three beats. Pause. Three beats. The old panic stirred, stretching claws.
No.
I reached for the trick Read had given me—one of those late, anxious nights when my mind wouldn’t stop and he’d stayed on the other side of the screen until it did.
Five things you can see,Read’s words echoed in memory, low and steady.Four you can feel. Three you can hear.
I obeyed.
Glass wall. City skyline beyond it. Jennifer’s tablet, angled just so. David’s neatly stacked folders. Kevin’s half-drunk coffee, a brown ring drying at the base.
The edge of the table under my palm. The smooth fabric of my dress against my knee. Heat radiating from the laptop fan by my wrist. The cool strip of skin at the back of my neck left exposed by my ponytail. The projector humming above. Shouts from people on the street. Laughter down the hall. The tapping in my head softened. The wild, jittering rush inside me eased from hurricane-force to something I could stand upright in.
“Are you all ready?” I asked.
Jennifer, razor-focused in charcoal, her notes layered with contingencies and sub-contingencies. Kevin with charts stacked in color-coded order, faint scruff where he’d clearly prioritized slides over shaving. David turning pages with that silent, methodical assurance that made me believe in contracts again.
Three shoulders straightened. Three murmurs of agreement.
“Let’s give them a show.” David closed his folder with a muted click.
I stepped into my persona and onto the stage. “Then we do this.”
The intercom crackled. “Ms.Sinclair?” Sarah’s voice. “Your guests have arrived.”
“Thank you, Sarah. Please bring them in.”
Heels approached down the hall in an unhurried rhythm. Low conversation. No raised tones. And one notably absent pompous baritone.
No Nathan Bell.
Across the table, Jennifer glanced at me.One less variable.
The door opened.
Sarah’s polished smile appeared first. “It was a pleasure meeting you.” She stepped aside.
Tessa Morgan entered first. Her presence read as warmth at first glance, but anyone paying attention could see the cunning woven through it. Honey-blond hair twisted into a sleek knot. Amber eyes that took in the room and filed it, fast. Her charcoal slip dress was billowy but still professional; everything about her aimed at ease, not display. A small scuff marked the back of her heel.
Human, I noted. Good.
Maria Chen followed. Dark hair cut clean at her shoulders. Ivory jacket over a crimson blouse. Small gold earrings that stayed perfectly still when she moved. Her focus swept the hardware on the table, quick and precise, like she’d already taken it apart in her head and reassembled it for efficiency.
Then Damien Holt stepped through the doorway.
He filled it. Tall—half a head above Kevin, at least—with broad shoulders that tapered to a lean waist, the kind of frame that made expensive tailoring look inevitable rather thanaspirational. Dark hair caught between deliberate and unruly. A short beard framing a jaw drawn in clean lines. The navy suit moved with him like it had learned better than to resist. He carried the easy assurance of someone accustomed to rooms turning when he entered—and the self-control not to lean on it.
What struck me more was his focus. Alert but not hunting. He looked like a man present in the moment, not one ticking off meetings on a mental list before dessert.
