Page 25 of Tough Luck

The word echoed in my chest, sending a strange, electric jolt through the numbness that had taken over my body. I nodded slowly, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Together,” I repeated, my voice finally finding a bit of its footing.

We packed up the presentation boards—stolen concepts or not, they were still our property—and walked out of the brewery in total, focused silence. The drive back to the office was entirely different from the ride down there. The nervous anticipation was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp anger and a renewed focus.

The moment the elevator doors slid open on the executive floor of Gold Standard Media, Rick stormed out like a man on a mission. I marched right beside him, my briefcase swinging at my side.

Elizabeth looked up from her desk, her hand hovering over her keyboard as she took in our grim expressions. “How did the⁠—”

“Elizabeth,” Rick interrupted smoothly, not even slowing down as he pushed open his heavy office door. “Cancel every single meeting I have on my calendar for the next week. Clear it completely and get our lawyers on the phone. I need to speak to them ASAP.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened, her jaw dropping slightly. “Every meeting, Mr. Mylonas? Even the corporate budget review on Tuesday?”

“Everything,” Rick commanded, turning to look at her from the doorway. “If it’s not related to Clear Creek Brewery, reschedule it. Sofia and I are going into lockdown after I have a chat with our lawyers. Unless the building is actively on fire, we are not to be disturbed. I’ll have Jax step up for the week if you need anything.”

“Understood,” she said, her fingers already flying across her layout matrix.

Rick turned to me, gesturing into his spacious office. “Bring your things in here, Sofia. We’re not doing this from separate rooms or setting up at the conference room where we’ll get interrupted constantly.”

I walked into his office, dropping my heavy leather bags onto the polished mahogany table in the corner. I kicked off my heels without asking, entirely past the point of caring about corporate decorum, and immediately began pulling out blank legal pads, my favorite felt-tip pens, and a fresh pack of sticky notes.

Rick shed his suit jacket, tossing it over his desk chair, and rolled his shirtsleeves up past his forearms.

Elizabeth’s voice came over the speaker phone. “John Hues from our legal team is on the line for you.”

Rick sat behind the desk and answered the call. While I listened to him relay what Leonard had done and Gold Standard’s legal stance, I sketched. I had other ideas I had come up with for the brewery. None were as good, but they were all mine. Not once had I shared these sketches or ideas with Leonard.

When Rick was done with the call, he walked over to the massive whiteboard that spanned the side wall of his office.

“All right,” he said, turning to face me. The competitive fire in his eyes was blinding. “Leonard Whistler thinks he can win dirty because he has a head start. But he’s playing a game with static pieces. He took what you built last week, which means he’s locked into that strategy. He can’t pivot. We can.”

I walked up to the whiteboard, taking a deep breath as the familiar, comforting rush of creative energy began to override the lingering sting of the brewery meeting.

“He has my first campaign,” I said, my mind racing as I stared at the blank white surface. “He has my trail maps and the creek targeting. If we try to just tweak those, it’ll look like we’re the ones copying him.”

“Exactly,” Rick agreed, stepping closer, his presence warm and commanding right next to me. “So we abandon the lifestyle angle entirely. We go bigger. What is the one thing Leonard could never steal from you, Sofia?”

I looked at him, a slow, defiant smile finally breaking through my exhaustion. “My imagination. And the fact that I actually know how to brew a story, not just paste pictures on a canvas.”

“That’s a true strategist,” Rick murmured, his voice dropping into that low, thrilling baritone that made my pulse do a dangerous little skip. He handed me the marker. “Now, let’s build something that makes his stolen pitch look like a high school project.”

By three o’clock, the whiteboard was a chaotic web of arrows and half-formed concepts, but my brain was starting to feel like mush. Not because the ideas weren’t coming, but because the universe seemed personally invested in breaking our focus.

Despite Rick’s lockdown order, the corporate machine didn’t care about our crisis.

First, it was one of the other department heads, who apparently hadn’t checked his email and barged right past Elizabeth to scream about a “scheduling oversight” on a completely unrelated account. Rick dealt with him with a terrifyingly polite coldness that had the guy backing out of the room in under two minutes, but it took us another five just to find our train of thought again.

Then, the printer on the creative floor jammed, and because I was apparently the only one who knew how to clear the internal rollers without throwing a code, I had to assist.

When I sat back down at the mahogany table, my dad called my cell phone to check on how the pitch went. I had to step out into the hallway, forcing a cheerful tone, assuring him we were just “Fine-tuning a few details” for next week.

When I finally walked back into Rick’s office, he was massaging his temples, staring at a flashing red light on his desk phone.

“Elizabeth says the compliance team needs my signature on an emergency labor audit before five o’clock or the whole floor gets flagged,” Rick muttered, letting out a dark, frustrated sigh. He looked up at me, his blue eyes tight with irritation. “We’ve been in here for four hours and we’ve barely managed to write down two coherent taglines. This isn’t working.”

“It’s the building,” I said, leaning my back against the edge of the table and crossing my arms. “Too many people know where you sit. Too many people know where I sit. Every time the phone rings, my brain resets.”

Rick was quiet for a long moment. Then he stood up, grabbed his cell phone off the desk, and jammed it into his pocket. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” I called out, but the heavy timber door was already clicking shut behind him.