14. Gideon
GIDEON
Hargrove opens his mouth for the third time in twenty minutes, and I decide I’m done being patient.
“Miss Valeen’s access to acquisition financials seems—” he pauses, choosing his word like he’s doing me a favor— “irregular. Given her role.”
The conference room goes the specific kind of quiet that happens right before something expensive breaks.
I set my pen down.
Cassie is seated two chairs to my left with a legal pad, three color-coded folders, and the composure like a person who has been quietly running this company’s logistics while men like Hargrove argued about golf handicaps in the break room.
She doesn’t flinch. She never flinches. But I catch the almost imperceptible stillness that moves through her — the way she stops writing mid-sentence.
That’s the tell. That’s the one that finishes it.
“Her role,” I say.
Hargrove blinks. “I simply mean?—”
“I heard what you meant.” I turn to face him fully.
Twelve years of boardrooms and I know exactly what this posture does to people.
“Cassie identified irregularities in vendor contracts that your entire acquisitions team missed across four quarterly reviews.” A beat.
“Which role exactly concerns you? The one doing your department’s job, or the one doing it better? ”
Nobody moves.
Hargrove’s jaw works silently. Across the table, Mitchell and Payne are both studying their notepads with intense professional interest.
“I wasn’t suggesting incompetence?—”
“You were suggesting she doesn’t belong in the room.” I keep my eyes on him until he looks away. It doesn’t take long. “She belongs in every room. That’s not a discussion.”
The silence afterward has a different texture. Heavy. Loaded with everything nobody is willing to say out loud.
I don’t look at Cassie. I want to. That’s precisely why I don’t.
“Page twelve,” I say to the room. “Revised resort projections. Let’s continue.”
Papers shuffle. Someone clears their throat. The meeting grinds forward.
Later, I feel it more than I see it — Cassie glancing at me sideways while I review the projection charts. Brief. Careful. The kind of look that carries weight she won’t put into words yet.
I keep my eyes on the page.
The room heard everything I said. They’ll be talking about it before dinner. I already know what the rumors will sound like by morning.
I find I can’t make myself care even slightly.
My father calls at six-seventeen, which means someone from the executive team talked before dinner. I almost respect the efficiency.
“I’m hearing things, Gideon.”
I step onto my suite’s private balcony and close the door behind me. Below, the marina lights are coming on one by one, reflecting off the water in long gold ribbons. “You’re going to need to be more specific.”
“Don’t do that.” His voice carries the particular exhaustion of a man who spent his best years building something and then watched himself burn it down. “The assistant. People are saying?—”
“I defended a competent employee against a board member who was out of line.” I don’t let my voice betray me. “That’s called management, not scandal.”
“That’s called exposure, and you know it.” A pause. “I made mistakes because I let personal matters compromise my judgment. You watched what that cost this family.”
There it is. He’s been saving that one.
“I remember exactly what it cost,” I say.
“Then act like it.” His voice tightens. “Distance yourself. Quietly, before the board formalizes anything. She’s talented — reassign her, give her a generous package, protect the company.”
The marina is filling with evening walkers below. I can see the dock lights swaying slightly in the breeze.
“Goodnight, Dad.”
I hang up before he can answer.
Cassie is already at the far end of the main dock when I find her, sandals in one hand, bare feet on the weathered planks.
Her dark curls are loose tonight, which she almost never allows during working hours, and she’s watching a sailboat navigate out of the slip with the focused expression she usually reserves for impossible spreadsheets.
She hears me coming and doesn’t startle. She never startles around me anymore.
“How bad was the meeting fallout?” she asks without turning.
“Manageable.” I stop beside her. Close enough. “My father called.”
That makes her turn. She reads my face the way she reads everything — quickly, accurately, with those amber-flecked eyes that catch more than they’re supposed to. “What did he say?”
“The usual.” I lean against the dock railing. “Cut ties. Protect the image. Choose the company.”
She looks back at the water. The sailboat clears the channel and its running lights disappear slowly into the dark.
“He’s not entirely wrong,” she says quietly.
“Cassie—”
“I mean it.” She turns to face me fully, and the marina light catches the worry she’s been carrying all day behind that composed exterior.
“I’m terrified, Gideon. Not of us. Of what us costs you.
” Her voice drops. “You rebuilt everything after your father. Everything. And if this relationship becomes the thing that cracks the foundation—” She stops. Presses her lips together.
“Then it cracks,” I say.
She stares at me. “You can’t mean that.”
“I mean it completely.” I turn toward her and close the remaining distance until she has to tilt that stubborn chin up to hold my gaze.
“I spent twelve years building walls because I decided vulnerability was a liability. I watched my father lose everything and I decided the solution was to need nothing.” I hold her gaze. “That worked fine until you.”
Her breath catches softly.
“You are not a liability,” I say. “You are the single best judgment call I have. Professionally and otherwise.”
“That’s not a love confession,” she says. But her voice has gone unsteady.
“No,” I agree. “It’s better. It’s a fact.”
She laughs despite herself — that small, reluctant laugh she always tries to suppress when I’ve genuinely caught her off guard. The sound does something to my chest that twelve years of calculated control never adequately prepared me for.
She leans her shoulder against mine. Just that. She doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I.
Below the dock, the water moves dark and quiet. Somewhere behind us, the resort hums with investors and executives and a thousand conversations I’m supposed to be managing.
Tonight, for once, they can manage themselves.
She’s quiet for longer than is comfortable after I say it, shoulder still warm against mine, watching the water like it might offer a more reasonable version of this conversation.
“You’d burn down careers,” she repeats slowly.
“Without hesitation.”
“Gideon.” She turns to look at me with an expression that sits somewhere between touched and genuinely concerned. “You can’t just — that’s not—” She stops. Tries again. “Normal people don’t say things like that.”
“I’m not particularly normal.”
“I’ve noticed.” She studies my face. “I just want to make sure we’re clear that burning down careers is not actually a love language.”
“It’s mine.”
That startles another laugh out of her. She shakes her head slowly, curls shifting against her shoulders, and for a moment the worry lifts completely off her face and she looks exactly like herself — the version of her that no one else in this company ever gets to see. Unguarded. Warm. Quietly unstoppable.
It costs me something, being this close to that.
“You’re serious,” she says softly.
“Hargrove questioned your authority in front of seven executives this morning.” I hold her gaze.
“Nolan has been running conversations about you behind closed doors for weeks. Anyone who decides you’re a useful target because of your connection to me will find out very quickly that was the worst decision of their professional life. ”
She’s quiet again. Processing.
“That should probably scare me more than it does,” she says finally.
“Does it scare you?”
She tilts her head slightly, hazel eyes moving across my face with that infuriating accuracy she has. “A little,” she admits. “The part where you’d do it without blinking.” A pause. “But mostly it—” She stops herself.
“Mostly it what?”
She looks away first, which almost never happens. A faint warmth moves across her cheekbones.
“Mostly it makes me feel like nobody ever has before,” she says quietly. Like the admission costs her something real.
The marina stretches out silent around us. I don’t fill the moment with words because some things land harder in the space between them.
I reach over and tuck a loose curl back from her face. Simple. Brief. She goes very still beneath the gesture, the way she does whenever I do something that doesn’t fit the version of me the rest of the world gets.
“Good,” I say.
She exhales slowly.
No one shifts to leave.