My phone buzzed. Mia.
Mia: How’s paradise?
Charlie: It’s not paradise. It’s a lab with better lighting.
Mia: And ocean views. Don’t forget the ocean views.
Charlie: The ocean views are irrelevant to my work.
Mia: Sure, whatever…and how are things with him?
Charlie: Professional. Distant. Exactly what I wanted.
Mia: That’s good, right?
I put my phone away before I said something I’d regret. Mia had a gift for finding the one thread I didn’t want pulled and yanking on it with both hands.
The Monday status meeting was in the new conference room—glass walls, a table that could seat twenty, and a screen the size of a small cinema. My entire old lab could have fit in here twice.
Asher was already seated when I walked in. Jacket off, sleeves rolled to his forearms, reviewing something on his tablet with the kind of focus that made people forget to breathe. Not me. I was fully breathing. Very normal breathing.
Priya slid into the chair next to mine. “He’s been here since six,” she murmured. “Jason says he does this every Monday. Flies in Sunday night, reviews everything before we even get here.”
“Controlling,” I said.
“Thorough,” Priya corrected, giving me a look.
I ignored it and opened my own folder. I had data to present. That was all this was—data, delivered by a professional, to her professional employer, in a professional setting. The fact that said employer had once held her against a bar stool while his eyes made promises his mouth hadn’t was irrelevant.
Completely irrelevant.
“Ms. Winters.” Asher glanced up. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Ms. Winters. Two weeks of this. Two weeks of the careful formality he’d adopted the morning after the takeover, like the man at the bar had been a different person entirely. Which, in a way, he had been.
I walked them through the sensor calibration results, the pressure tolerance data, the deployment simulation outcomes. Clean. Efficient. Fourteen slides, no filler.
“The failure rate on the deep-pressure tests is still at three percent,” Asher said when I’d finished. Not a question. Anobservation, delivered with the precision of someone who’d memorized my numbers before I’d presented them.
“Down from seven percent last month,” I said. “Which you’d know if you’d read the appendix.”
Something flickered at the corner of his mouth. “I did read the appendix. I’m asking what gets it to zero.”
“Nothing gets it to zero. We’re working with ocean currents and variable pressure at depth. Three percent is exceptional by industry standards.”
“I’m not interested in industry standards.”
“Then you’re not interested in physics.”
Nobody moved. Jason studied his coffee intently. Priya developed a sudden fascination with her pen.
Asher held my gaze for a beat longer than was comfortable. Then: “Two percent. By the Roatan field tests. Can you do it?”
I shouldn’t have felt the flare of heat that shot through my chest. It was a challenge, not a compliment. But the way he’d said it—can you do it?—like he already knew the answer and wanted to hear me say it.
“One point five,” I said. “Give me the right testing conditions and I’ll beat your number.”
He leaned back in his chair. The almost-smile was back. “Done.”
