“I don’t have a choice,” I said again.
“You’re scary when you’re like this. Do you need me to come over? I’ll bring chocolate.”
The chocolate callback almost broke me. Almost. “No. I need to get back upstairs and start working. But thank you.”
“Sweetie.” Mia’s voice went soft. “You’re the smartest person I know. And the most stubborn. That man has no idea what he just unleashed.”
“Maybe a little sexy, but also dangerous?” I managed a small smile.
“You actually might be,” she said, and I could hear her grin. “Go. Build the thing. Save the world. I’ll be here when you’re done.”
“Love you.”
“Love you more. Now go.”
I went back inside and didn’t leave.
By eight p.m., the building was nearly empty. The cleaning crew came through, vacuuming around me without comment—they were used to finding me here at odd hours. I barely looked up.
By ten, I’d torn apart every assumption I’d made about SEAS’s path to market. The civilian applications I’d always considered secondary were actually stronger than I’d given them credit for. Oil rig safety alone was a multi-billion-dollar market. Deep-water construction was growing exponentially. Environmental monitoring was gaining federal support.
By midnight, I’d built a new deployment model from scratch. Three phases. Twelve target clients I could approach within sixty days. A testing protocol that leveraged our existing data without starting over.
The coffee maker in the break room became my best friend. I ran the numbers twice, then a third time, until I was sure they held up under scrutiny.
At two a.m., I hit a wall. Not a technical one—an emotional one. I was sitting in the blue light of my monitors, surrounded by empty coffee cups, and the silence of the building pressed inon me. I was alone in a lab at two in the morning, fighting for a project that might not survive the week.
I shook it off. Opened a new spreadsheet. Kept going.
By four a.m., the plan was done. Not just done—it was the best work I’d ever produced. The kind of plan that comes from knowing your subject so deeply that you can rebuild it from memory in a single night. Twenty-three pages. Executive summary, technical specifications, deployment timeline, cost projections, risk assessment, staffing requirements. Everything he’d asked for, and three things he hadn’t.
I printed it, collated it, and set it in a clean folder.
Then I went to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and looked at myself in the mirror. Dark circles under my eyes. Hair escaping its knot.
I looked like hell.
I changed into the spare blouse I kept in my office closet for exactly these situations—the third time this month I’d needed it, and tried to do something with my hair.
At five forty-five, I stood outside the conference room.
The building was starting to wake up—a few early arrivals trickling in, coffee brewing somewhere down the hall. Through the glass walls, I could see the conference table where everything had fallen apart yesterday morning. Same table. Same chairs. Different game.
The folder was in my hands. Twenty-three pages that said I’m not going anywhere and I dare you to find a flaw.
I’d been up for almost twenty-four hours. I was running on coffee and fury and the stubborn refusal to let anyone—not Richard Sterling, not Asher Pierce—decide the fate of my work without me in the room.
Fifteen minutes until he walked through that door.
I straightened my spine,smoothed the wrinkled blouse, and waited.
7
ASHER
Iwas in the conference room by five thirty, coffee in hand, reviewing the SEAS documentation for the third time. My notes filled the margins of the printed specs, questions highlighted in various colors based on priority. An hour of sleep and a cold shower hadn’t done much to clear my head, but I was sharp enough. Sharp enough was all I needed.
Mike let himself in at quarter to six, setting a fresh stack of reports on the table along with a coffee from the good place downstairs. The bastard.
