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“I don’t know if I would say bad… intense maybe but not bad.”

“Is this about to ruin my Monday?” I narrowed my gaze at him, but didn’t give way to what I was feeling inside. I wanted to curse myself for bracing, but I would never let that outwardly show. Hating surprises is one thing, but I hate not knowing the most.

A flash of concern crossed his features and I wasn’t sure if it was for me or for himself. “I’m going to grab that coffee first. Then we can discuss. Plain black, right.”

I nodded and watched as he scrambled out the room and closed my door behind him. Once I was completely alone, I threw my head back and let out a low growl because if I was picking up on what Nico was putting down without explicitly saying, my carefully planned Monday was about to get thrown into a proverbial blender and I wasn’t sure what was going to be spit out.

3

CAIN

The security guard at my headquarters knew better than to speak to me. He’d been in that position for three years, and in that time, I’d exchanged maybe a dozen words with him. This morning, like every morning, he simply nodded as I passed through the polished steel turnstile at 6:04 a.m. Four minutes past six, not on the hour was done on purpose. People who arrive exactly on schedule are trying too hard to appear punctual. The truly disciplined arrive when they arrive, and the world adjusts accordingly.

The executive elevator opened as I approached, because of course it did. The system was programmed to track my driver’s arrival and calculate exactly how long it took me to cross the lobby. Thirty-eight seconds from vehicle to elevator, give or take two seconds depending on whether I stopped to check my phone. This morning, I didn’t stop, which meant the doors parted precisely as my hand would have reached for the button.

I stepped inside and the elevator rose without me touching anything. Forty-seventh floor. The entire level belonged to Ashcroft Group’s executive operations, a space I designed with the same philosophy I apply to everything else: remove the unnecessary until only function remains. No art on the walls pretending to humanize a corporate environment. No plants struggling to survive under fluorescent lights and water. Just clean lines, glass, steel, and the understanding that we were here to work, not to feel comfortable.

The doors opened onto a reception area that was empty at this hour. My assistant wouldn’t arrive until 7:30, which gave me an hour and a half of uninterrupted time to work through the items that required my complete focus. I moved past the sleek reception desk and through the glass doors that led to the inner offices. My office occupied the corner, with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides offering views of Manhattan that most people would kill for. I barely noticed them anymore. The view was just another asset, another signal of position that reinforced what everyone already knew about where I stood in the hierarchy of this city.

As I walked into my office and closed the door, my lights automatically turned on and I noticed my desk was exactly as I left it yesterday evening. Its clean surface gleamed under the glow, but it remained pretty bare. I didn’t keep personal items, like family photos, mementos or souvenirs from travel excursions or deals closed in my office. The space existed for work and not being reminded of my accomplishments at every turn made it easier to remain hungry for the next thing I intended to conquer.

I woke my computer and scanned through the overnight emails that accumulated when I logged off for the night. Forty-seven new messages, which I sorted through in under four minutes. Most of what people sent didn’t require a response at all or could be handled by someone on my executive team. I would say 90 percent of the emails that I skimmed through were seeking validation, reassurance, permission to make decisions they should be able to make themselves. I’d built an organization that should function without me having to approve every minor detail, but people still sought my input because they were afraid of being wrong.

Fear is useful. It keeps people sharp, prevents them from getting comfortable enough to make stupid mistakes. But it also creates dependency, which I tolerate only to the extent that it serves my purposes.

I worked through three action items before the rest of the world started to wake up and get on with their day. At 6:41, my phone buzzed with a text. It was from Declan Royce, who had worked for me long enough to know the etiquette: no unnecessary niceties, no cryptic phrasing.

Complete.

That was all I needed to know after eleven years of working together.

Declan is not a friend, per se, because I don’t have those. He’d tell you the same about himself if anyone thought to ask. Then again, it’s not as if they would because most people don’t know he exists. What we have is something more durable than friendship and considerably more useful: history. He knows how I operate. I know what he’s capable of. The arrangement has never required more explanation than that after all these years. He handles certain matters for me when I don’t want to handle some things myself and I pay him handsomely for it.

This instance involved someone who made the mistake of positioning himself between me and an overseas deal that needed to be completed. He needed to be relieved of his duties.

Permanently. And Declan had no problem carrying it out.

I picked up my phone and sent one word back:

Good.

Once that was taken care of, I placed the device face down on my desk and got back to the document on my screen. At 7:32, I heard the soft sound of someone getting settled just outside my office. I could guarantee it was my assistant arriving right on time, as she had every morning for the past six years. A few minutes later, there was a gentle knock on my door.

“Come in,” I said, still not looking away from the words on the screen.

My assistant entered quietly, set a cup on the left corner of my desk, then retreated without a word. I didn’t thank her because that would suggest the action was above expectation, when in reality it was simply what she was paid to do. I reached for the cup and took a sip. Absolute perfection because I would expect nothing less.

I spent the next hour and a half working through these documents I needed to review before a 9 a.m. meeting, but it was more difficult than I thought it would be given my mind kept drifting back to talking to Sutton one on one for the first time. Three acquisitions in various stages of completion and one board member who’d been asking too many questions about a subsidiary’s accounting practices.

At 8:55, I closed the files and pulled up the agenda for this meeting. I debated with myself about showing up several minutes late to the conference room before nixing that idea. It was time to switch things up to keep people on their toes. I snatched my phone off my desk along with my coffee and planned on being the first person there to watch everyone as they assembled for this meeting.

I took a seat at the head of the table and waited for my team to file in. I never looked up from my phone. Let them walk in and see me because this didn’t cost me a thing yet it communicated everything.

I wasn’t reading anything important. I already knew everything on this agenda. What I was doing was making a decision that wasn’t on it.

Prescott Vantage.

I’d been circling it for months, deciding when to make my move. The strategic rationale was sound, the timing was reasonable, the preliminary groundwork already quietly in motion. It was the kind of acquisition that made sense on paper and I had been treating it accordingly. I approached it the way you tend to something you will have eventually and feel no urgency about.