Page 40 of Mane Rival in Store

The Colemans ate at a long oak table in a dining room filled with art and candlelight and the accumulated warmth of three generations of meals served in the same space. The pernil was carved at the table—Harrison wielding the knife with theatrical flourishes and running Spanish commentary on the quality of the crust. The rice was perfect. The tostones were crisp and salty. The Brunello was poured with appreciation, and Harrison’s toast— “To new colleagues and good wine”—carried the specific weight of a man who had not yet decided whether the word “colleague” was accurate and was giving Rune the space to prove it.

Vivienne ate with impeccable posture and the patience of a litigator letting her target get comfortable before the cross-examination began.

It began over the tostones.

“Rune.” She set down her fork. The table quieted. Lark’s spine straightened. Oliver’s thumb moved to his phone beneath the table. “Lark tells me you lead one of the oldest lion prides in Northern Europe.”

“That’s correct.”

“She also tells me you assumed leadership at twenty-two. Very young for that level of responsibility.”

“My father retired. The succession was—orderly.”

Vivienne’s eyebrow rose a fraction. The fraction communicated: I am a professor of law at Columbia. I have cross-examined senators. The word ‘orderly’ is doing a great deal of work in that sentence, and I intend to find out what it’s hiding. “Orderly.” She repeated the word as if placing it in evidence. “And the transition was smooth? No challenges to your authority?”

She knows. Not the specifics. But Vivienne Coleman had done her research, or she had the instincts of a trial attorney who could smell an incomplete narrative from six words, and Rune had offered her six words that practically waved a flag.

“There were challenges. They were resolved.”

“Resolved.” Another placement. The word entered the record. “And the business? Sterling & Mane’s expansion under your leadership has been impressive. But rapid growth in specialty retail carries risk. How do you manage overextension?”

“Mom.” Lark’s voice carried a warning.

“I’m not interrogating him, baby. I’m conducting discovery.” Vivienne sipped her wine. “There’s a difference.”

“The difference is plausible deniability,” Oliver offered from across the table, thumbs moving beneath the table’s edge. Sybil placed her hand over his phone without looking. Oliver kept typing.

Rune set down his fork. Addressed Vivienne directly. “Overextension is managed through conservative debt ratios and a diversified revenue base. The Pride’s real estate holdings provide stability independent of the retail operation. I don’t expand into markets I can’t sustain through a two-year downturn.”

Vivienne studied him. The examination was thorough, unhurried, and stripped of pretense. She was not playing hostess. She was evaluating whether this man posed a threat to her daughter, and she was doing it with the skill set of someone who had spent thirty years separating truth from testimony.

“You’ve done this before.” Not a question.

“I lead a Pride council that includes a woman who makes your cross-examination look gentle. I’ve had practice.”

The table went still.

Then Harrison laughed—that deep baritone again—and reached for the Brunello. “¡Wepa! He compared you to a lion council elder and survived. I like him.”

Vivienne’s mouth twitched. The Coleman version—the microexpression Lark had inherited, the fissure in the composure that signaled genuine reaction beneath the performance. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“You decided when he brought the Brunello,” Harrison countered. “You’re conducting discovery for entertainment purposes now.”

“A thorough examination is never merely entertainment.” But her tone had shifted. A degree warmer. The cross-examination wasn’t over, but the hostility had downgraded from opposing counsel to cautious colleague. Rune recognized the gradient. Yara’s approval moved in the same increments.

Across the table, Lark caught his eye. Her expression was complicated—apology and amusement and pride tangled in the set of her jaw and the brightness in her gaze. She mouthed two words at him: “You’re welcome.”

He almost smiled back. Not the guarded one. The other—involuntary, startled out of him that she’d been cracking open since a stockroom floor and pad thai and a vault full of first editions.

The study smelled like leather, old paper, and cigars.

Harrison had pulled him aside after dessert—flan, perfect, the caramel still warm—with a hand on his shoulder and a “Let me show you something” that carried the conspiratorial weight of someone about to share classified intelligence. The rest of the family had exchanged a look that Rune couldn’t parse until Lark rolled her eyes and Vivienne sipped her wine with an expression of magnificent forbearance.

The study was Harrison’s sanctuary. Books lined three walls. Financial journals stacked on the desk beside a Wharton diploma and a framed photograph of a Washington Heights bodega with a young couple standing in front of it—Harrison’s parents, Rune guessed, from the jaw and the smile. A vintage Omega Seamaster sat in a leather tray. The room radiated the particular authority of a self-made man’s private archive.

And in the corner, a locked glass cabinet.

Harrison produced a key. Glanced at the study door. Opened the cabinet with reverence, as if approaching a sacrament.