“If he’s already talking to you,” I say, “then he’s already talking to someone at my level.”
His eyebrows climb. The elevator glides upward, so smooth it makes every ugly word inside the car feel polished and expensive.
“My, my,” he says. “Aren’t we full of sass today?”
“If you paid attention, you’d know I’m full of sass every day.”
The doors open on thirty-eight. A courier boards with a stack of padded envelopes and the desperate expression of a man who has lost a fight with Midtown traffic. Todd waits until the doors close again, then leans close, dropping his voice into the hiss he uses when witnesses are present.
“Where is my report?”
My fingers grip my leather binder. Every number inside belongs to me. Three weeks of late nights. Two hundred tabs open at once. One glacial dinner I found on my counter at midnight and ate over the sink because sitting down meant surrender.
“Myreport,” I say, “is right here.”
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
The word slips out before fear can catch it. Todd goes still. The courier becomes fascinated by the floor numbers.
“Excuse me?” Todd says softly.
“I sent you the executive summary last night. You have enough to present your version.” I squeeze the binder tighter. “This is the complete analysis. Source notes, projections, methodology, and the expense discrepancies. If Ak Layn asks questions, I’ll answer them.”
His razor-thin smile could cut paper. “Don’t play games with me, little girl.”
A cold pressure clamps around my stomach, but it is not fear. Not exactly. Todd has called me a lot of things in two years. Quiet. Reliable. Emotional. Not a team player. Difficult when I asked him not to put his name on my work. Little girl is new. I look at his shellacked hair, his expensive tie, and hands that have never once cleaned up the messes they made.
“No,” I say again.
The elevator opens on forty-seven. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, and step forward.
Let’s go.
The hallway is nothing like downstairs. No beige carpet. No sample books stacked against the walls. No birthday balloon tied to someone’s filing cabinet because Marcus from accounting turned thirty-nine and refused to suffer alone. Just pale stone floors, recessed lights, and the kind of silence that costs serious money to maintain. My flats click against the stone with every step, far too loud for a place this quiet. Each one lands like I have knocked something over in a church.
Todd walks ahead of me with fury tucked under his suit like a switchblade. Folded away, but still waiting to stab someone in the back. The double doors at the end of the corridor are open. He enters first. I follow, and the room swallows me. Windowsrun floor to ceiling on three sides, and New York spreads below in hard morning layers, glass towers flashing under a clean white glare. Traffic crawls between buildings like blood through narrow veins. Far off, the Hudson lies flat and bright as a blade left on a table.
The air is different up here, colder and cleaner than downstairs. Under the polished metal and recycled cool, there’s a scent. It’s warm, dark, and deep. It’s roasted coffee and the lingering wood smoke from a sunset bonfire. Inside my body heats and lights.
My pulse trips once, hard, at the base of my throat. A low pull starts beneath my ribs, slow and deliberate. I know the edges of this feeling. I’ve felt them every month for the past seven years: distant, muted, and manageable. My suppressants keep my omega body quiet, a background frequency that lets me work through deadlines, staff meetings, subway crowds, and every other insult adulthood has put on the calendar.
Right now, it is not a background frequency. I keep walking because stopping would be embarrassing, and I refuse to give Todd that joy.
Skylor Ak Layn stands at the far end of the room with his back to us, hands clasped behind him, watching the city. His shoulders fill the dark suit with no visible effort. He is genuinely tall, not camera tall, not dating-app-profile-says-six-two-and-hopes-nobody-brings-a-tape-measure tall. He is the kind of tall that changes the geometry of the room. There’s power in how still he holds himself, the kind no one can fake.
He turns, and I stop breathing.
Loora is getting sushi.
No photo has ever come close, and no photo ever will. Skylor Ak Layn makes beauty an irrelevant word. It's too soft and human. His jaw is sharp, his cheekbones high, and his skin is a muted blue that catches the morning glare like deep water undera winter moon. Not painted. Not tinted. Alive with undertones my eyes don’t know how to sort. Amber eyes hold the room and give nothing back. He’d look carved from cold stone if not for the sheer intensity behind them.
He does not look cold at all.
His gaze moves from Todd to me, then stops. A nostril flare is quick, controlled, and immediately suppressed. His pupils expand before he blinks once. Slow and deliberate, like a man forcing a machine to reset. He curls his fist, grinds his teeth, and flattens his lips. The scowl that pulls at his mouth is aimed inward.
He is annoyed with himself. Good. At least I'm not the only one. I'm annoyed that every nerve in my body just sat up and begged. If I were a dog, my tongue would hang out of my mouth while I panted and drooled. Down, girl. Down.
