3. Tatum
TATUM
Ididn’t notice when he ordered the food.
One minute, we were going through the pricing model, his chair pulled close enough to the couch that his knee was a foot from mine, and the next, a security guard was knocking on the glass door with two bags and a stack of containers that smelled like something I couldn’t afford.
Sayer took the bags without explanation. He set them on the low table between my notes and my laptop and started unpacking.
“I didn’t say I was hungry.”
“You’ve been here three and a half hours.” He opened a container and the smell hit me. Something rich and buttery with herbs I couldn’t name. “When’s the last time you ate?”
I thought about lying. “Noon.”
“It’s 10:30.”
“I’m aware.”
He crossed to a low cabinet behind his desk, pulled out two white ceramic plates, and started plating the food without commentary.
Like it was obvious. Like of course there were plates in his office and of course he’d use them.
Seared scallops over something green and creamy, a slice of bread with oil already drizzled across it, a small dish of something dark and glossy that looked like it belonged in a magazine.
He set one in front of me and sat down with the other.
I stared at it. “This is not normal takeout.”
“I don’t eat normal takeout.”
“What is this, forty dollars a plate?”
He looked at me. He also didn’t answer. Which meant it was significantly more than forty dollars a plate.
I picked up the fork because I was starving. And because the scallops smelled like they’d ruin me for every meal I’d eat for the next month. I was right. They did.
He sat at the other end of the couch. Not across from me in the chair anymore. On the couch, one cushion between us, his own plate on his knee. He ate without making a big deal out of any of it. No commentary on the food, no watching to see if I liked it. He just ate.
I closed my laptop and moved it to the floor. The pitch book went on top of it. For the first time in three hours, there was nothing between us except a cushion and two plates of food that cost more than my weekly grocery budget.
“So,” I said. “Is this how you treat all your bankers, or did I earn the special service by embarrassing you in front of your CFO?”
“You didn’t embarrass me.”
“Your CFO’s face said otherwise.”
“My CFO’s face says a lot of things I don’t pay attention to.” He set his fork down. “You earned it by being right.”
“I’m always right.”
“I doubt that.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention.”
His mouth twitched. Not a smile. Just the corner pulling, held back. I was starting to learn that he controlled his expressions the way he controlled a room. Everything managed, everything measured. The almost-smile was a tell. He was enjoying this.
I took another bite. Chewed. Let the silence sit.
“Why fintech?” I asked.
“Why investment banking?”
“I asked first.”
He leaned back into the couch, one arm along the back of it. Not touching me. Close enough to feel the warmth of his sleeve near my shoulder.
“Because nobody was building it right,” he said. “Payments infrastructure was ugly. Clunky. Built by people who’d never missed a rent check, so they didn’t care if a transaction took three days to clear. I cared.”
My heart warmed a little. I knew what that sentence meant underneath the CEO polish. I knew what it sounded like when somebody built their whole life around never going back to a version of themselves that felt invisible.
I recognized it because I’d done the same thing.
“Your turn,” he said.
“Money.” I said it flat. “My dad worked doubles my entire childhood. Twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, and we still ate a lot of rice and canned vegetables in March because that’s when things got tight.
I didn’t pick investment banking because I love spreadsheets.
I picked it because I never want to count the days until the next paycheck. ”
The room was quiet. Outside the windows, the city was just light and distance.
Sayer didn’t say he was sorry. Didn’t nod with that tight, careful look people got when you told them something real and they didn’t know what to do with it. He just looked at me. Steady. Arms open for once, one hand resting on his knee, the other still along the back of the couch behind me.
“How old were you?” he asked. “When you started handling things.”
My throat tightened. Not because the question was hard. Because it was the right one. Nobody ever asked that. They asked what my dad did, where I grew up, how I got into Pleasure Valley Capital. Nobody asked when I started being the adult.
“Ten,” I said. “Maybe younger. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t.”
“Yeah.” He said it low, almost to himself. “I know what that’s like.”
I looked at him. Under the tattoos and the beard and the suit jacket draped over his desk chair, there was something I hadn’t expected. Familiarity. He knew what an empty kitchen sounded like at seven p.m. when you were the only one home.
“You don’t talk about this in interviews,” I said.
“Neither do you.”
“I’m not the one worth a billion dollars.”
“Doesn’t change what it took to get here.”
My breath caught. Just for a second. He heard it. I saw his gaze drop to my mouth and come back up.
The cushion between us felt smaller than it had ten minutes ago. His hand on the back of the couch was close enough that if I leaned back, my hair would brush his fingers. I stayed where I was. Didn’t pull away, either.
“Ask me something else,” I said. My voice was quieter than I wanted it to be.
“Why?”
“Because if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to do something unprofessional.”
His eyes held mine. Steady, intent, unmoving. The settled weight I was starting to recognize. Feet planted, shoulders square, jaw set. He wasn’t fidgeting. He wasn’t leaning in. He was just there, solid, waiting for me to decide what happened next.
“Define unprofessional,” he said.
I set my plate on the table. My hands weren’t shaking, but they were close.
“You’re my client.”
“I know.”
“This would be a terrible idea.”
“Probably.”
“Lawrence would lose his mind.”
“Lawrence isn’t here.”
I looked at him. At the ink disappearing past his collar. At the jaw, the mouth, the hands that had been still all night while mine had been busy with pens and laptops and forks and every distraction I could find.
I put my hand on his chest. His heart was pounding.
Something in his face shifted. Not the almost-smile. Something underneath it. Something real and unguarded that made my own pulse hammer so loud, I could hear it.
“Tatum.”
Nobody had ever said my name like that. And that was when I knew this man could seriously break my heart.