“He’d want to protect me, then threaten you, then threaten anyone who might threaten me. Possibly in that order. Possibly all at once.”
“He’s too close to it.”
“Yeah.” Jace exhaled through his nose. “And if Rachel talks to him because Olivia needs someone who knows divorce and he has to sit there with his mouth shut, that’s already enough. I don’t want to make him our strategy department.”
I watched him, the effort in him to think beyond panic, beyond impulse. It wasn’t smooth. His fingers tapped the countertop. His gaze kept jumping to the window, the stove, his phone, my hands. But he stayed with the conversation.
“Tessa,” I said.
He stilled for half a beat.
Then he looked at me. “Yeah.”
“She understands the organization.”
“She understands media.”
“She knows what ownership reacts to.”
“She knows where bodies are buried,” Jace said. “Probably literally, with this team.”
“She separates logistics from emotion.”
“She also terrifies me a little.”
“She terrifies most competent people.”
Jace reached for his coffee, missed by an inch, corrected, and held the mug in both hands. “Do we tell her everything?”
“We tell her enough to get real advice. Not details she doesn’t need.”
“Serious relationship. Timing. Olivia knows. Vanessa knows. Roman suspects or knows?”
“Roman knows enough. We don’t use his name unless we have to.”
“Okay.” He swallowed. “And we don’t make her responsible for fixing it.”
“No.”
“We ask for advice.”
“Yes.”
He looked at me over the rim of his mug. “Today?”
“If we wait, we’ll invent reasons not to.”
“That sounds like me.”
“It sounds like both of us.”
His mouth twitched, then faded. “Okay. Today.”
I sent Tessa a message after breakfast.
Need a private conversation today. Sensitive. Not urgent in the public sense, but important.
Her reply came nine minutes later.
