I knew. That was the part that kept me up at night—not just what Richard had done to the company, but what he’d done to her. A brilliant woman, kept small. Given just enough to keep her working, never enough to let her succeed. I’d spent a decade building something from nothing, too. I knew what it cost. I knew the nights you spent alone wondering if you were insane for believing in something no one else could see yet. I knew the way it hollowed you out, running on fumes and stubbornness, until one day you looked up and realized you’d built an empire but forgotten how to live in it.
She was still in the running-on-fumes stage. And someone needed to make sure she didn’t burn out before SEAS got the chance it deserved.
That someone was not going to be me in any personal capacity. That was clear. Whatever had happened at the bar was over.
But professionally? I could give her the resources, the facility, the budget. I could get out of her way and let her work. I could be the thing Richard never was—a partner who actually wanted her to succeed.
“She reminds me of someone,” Mike said.
“Don’t.”
“You. Ten years ago. Before you stopped letting people in.”
“Mike.”
“I’m just saying.” He pushed off the doorframe. “The facility offer was good. The car was ... a choice. But the way you looked at her when she was presenting that plan?” He shook his head. “That’s not a man evaluating a company asset.”
I turned back to my laptop. “Is there anything else?”
“No, sir.” But he was smiling as he walked away.
I pulled up Charlie’s plan again. Twenty-three pages. Twelve hours. No sleep.
She’d built this the way I’d built Pierce Construction. Alone. Underfunded. Refusing to quit.
I was in so much trouble.
8
CHARLIE
Three weeks since the acquisition—and two weeks since we’d moved to San Diego—and I still wasn’t used to the silence.
The new lab was gorgeous. Spacious. Ocean views through floor-to-ceiling windows that made me feel like I was working inside an aquarium. Fully stocked with equipment I’d only ever requested in grant proposals that went nowhere. Everything Asher had promised, delivered without fanfare, like outfitting a multimillion-dollar research facility was just another line item on his Tuesday.
And still, I missed the hum of my old space. The cramped chaos. The way the fluorescent light above station three flickered when the AC kicked on. The coffee maker that only worked if you hit it at a forty-five-degree angle. The memory of how hard we’d worked just to keep things running with duct tape and stubbornness.
What unsettled me more than the luxury was how easily I was adapting to it. How naturally I’d begun to expect the resources, the efficiency, the way problems simply ... disappeared. A requisition that would have taken six weeksunder Richard appeared in forty-eight hours. A calibration issue I’d flagged on Monday was resolved by Wednesday with equipment I hadn’t even known existed.
I caught myself humming in the lab on Thursday. Humming. Like I was happy.
That scared me more than anything Richard had ever done.
“Beautiful view, isn’t it?” Jason appeared at my elbow, offering a paper cup of coffee from the good machine downstairs—another Pierce Construction upgrade. “Any word on this morning’s test results?”
“Still processing.” I accepted the coffee gratefully, grateful for the interruption. “The pressure chamber data looks promising, but I want to see how the sensor array handled the temperature fluctuations before I get excited.”
“You’re pushing it hard.”
I shrugged. “That’s the point. Better it fails here than in the field.”
Jason leaned against the railing. “You know, for someone who got everything she asked for, you don’t seem particularly thrilled.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“No,” he agreed. “But you earned it. There’s a difference.”
I let that sit. Jason wandered back inside, and I stood at the railing a little longer, watching the Pacific do what it always did—move without asking permission. There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but I wasn’t in the mood.
