Page 27 of Mane Rival in Store

Admitting this required accepting help. Accepting help required proximity. Proximity required⁠—

Do not think about proximity.

“Fine.” He gestured to the second workstation. The one adjacent to his. Separated by eighteen inches of counter and a reference binder that he was beginning to suspect would define the rest of his professional life. “The forgery profiles are on the monitor. Provenance files are there.” He paused. Shifted from territorial to collaborative with the internal effort of shifting a boulder uphill. “I’ll brief you on the lab analysis. You contact your network about matching inventory.”

“Was that a yes?”

“That was an operational directive.”

“So a yes with extra steps.” She crossed to the workstation. Pulled out the stool. Sat down at that same narrow gap from his right arm and opened her phone. “Brief me, Your Majesty. I’m all ears.”

He briefed her. The findings, the seller discrepancies, the paper composition analysis, the timeline of seller infiltration that Dekel had reconstructed. She listened without interrupting—concentrated attention that made the back of his neck prickle, her thumb moving across her phone screen taking rapid notes, her eyes tracking between the monitor and the reference files with the quick, assessing intelligence he’d watched her deploy on her own store displays.

She is paying attention. The observation landed with more force than it deserved. He was accustomed to briefing people who listened politely and asked predictable questions. Lark listened the way she ran her business—with the full weight of her focus, missing nothing.

When he finished, she nodded once. Picked up her phone. “Give me an hour.”

She started dialing.

TEN

LARK

Rune Sterling worked how he stood in his store—still, focused, and with a physical intensity that made the air around him feel ten degrees warmer.

Lark had been in his back office for two hours. She’d made eleven calls to buyers across her network, identified six stores with suspicious inventory matching the forgery profile, and compiled a preliminary distribution map on her notepad.

She’d also cataloged, against her will and better judgment, the following: the way his sleeves pulled across his forearms when he reached for a reference binder. The pen he kept between his teeth while reading analysis data. The lock of hair that fell across his forehead every four minutes and twenty seconds—she’d timed it, because she’d lost all dignity and might as well be thorough—only for him to push it back with an absent gesture that did not improve the situation because the gesture itself involved his hand moving through his hair, which was a problem she had not anticipated when she’d volunteered for this investigation.

Four minutes, twenty seconds. Hair falls. Hand pushes. Forearm flexes. I am in hell.

She turned back to her notepad. Drew a line between two distribution points. Drew it again when she realized the first line was shaky because her hands were.

“Your distribution analysis.” His voice arrived from her left, low and focused. He’d leaned closer to study her notes, and the movement brought him into the edge of her space—close enough for her to catch his scent beneath the coffee and preservation chemicals. Clean. Cold air and good soap and an undertone she’d been leaning into for weeks without identifying. “The pricing pattern is consistent across all six stores?”

“Just below market.” She kept her voice level. Work mode. A woman discussing distribution data and not the fact that his shoulder was six inches from hers and radiating heat like a furnace. “Enough to attract bargain-hunters without triggering suspicion. The forger—or whoever’s running the distribution—understands collector psychology.”

“You think the forger and the distributor are separate.”

“Forgers are craftspeople. Distributors are strategists. The overlap is rare.” She tapped her pen against the notepad. “The production quality you described—months of aging per edition, professional materials, knowledge of verification chains—that’s an artisan. But the distribution? Multiple channels, geographic spread, strategic pricing, seeded sellers with two years of clean history? That’s a businessman with capital and a timeline.”

He leaned back. Crossed his arms. The movement created distance that her nervous system processed as both a relief and a loss. “Two operators. A counterfeiter producing the editions and a financier orchestrating the distribution.”

“And the financier chose your pipeline as the entry point because your authentication seal is the most trusted in the industry. A forgery that passes Sterling & Mane becomes gospel. It can be resold indefinitely without scrutiny.”

A muscle worked along his jaw. Not irritation—she’d learned the difference over three weeks of proximity. This was a man absorbing the full scope of a threat that had infiltrated the infrastructure he’d spent a decade building.

“Your reputation is the laundering mechanism,” she finished, quieter. “They’re not targeting your inventory. They’re exploiting your credibility.”

Silence. The equipment hummed. Through the wall, Villainette’s mid-morning playlist thumped softly—her staff running the floor while she sat in a rival’s back office helping him trace an attack on the thing he’d built his identity around.

“Thank you.” Two words. Stripped of the formal register. The voice beneath the voice—the one she’d heard on the stockroom floor when he’d stopped performing and started talking. “For the analysis. And the network access. You didn’t have to offer either.”

Don’t make it a thing, Lark. He’s grateful for the help during a business crisis. That’s all this is.

“Your crisis is my crisis.” She capped her pen. “Forged editions in the market hurt every dealer, not just you. This is self-preservation disguised as altruism. Don’t give me too much credit, Your Majesty.”

The corner of his mouth moved. The seismic warning. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”