Chapter 15 #2
He lifted one hand. “Do not make a face. I am capable of nuance when properly cornered.”
“You think this is nuanced?”
“I think this is catastrophic.” He paused. “I also think anyone with a working pulse and the misfortune of watching the two of you breathe the same air can see there is more happening than simple stupidity.”
I looked away.
Benjamin sighed. “As your assistant, I must advise that you are placing the company at risk.”
“As my friend?”
His mouth tightened, as if the word had inconvenienced him.
“As your friend,” he continued quietly, “I am forced to admit that I understand the lapse in survival instinct.”
I stared at him.
He looked irritated by my silence. “She is intelligent. She is quick and funny. She works harder than she wants anyone to notice. She looks at you like you personally invented both gravity and consequence, which is unfortunate because you respond to it like a man being shown sunlight after fifteen years underground. And yes, before you threaten me with bodily harm, she is beautiful.”
“Benjamin.”
He leaned back in his chair. “One does not simply say no to that, Callum. One creates governance, minimizes exposure, and prays no one with a camera catches the elevator door closing.”
A cold thread moved through me at that.
“Why would you say that?”
Benjamin’s expression flickered with something I didn’t quite recognize.
Before he could answer, Dana’s office door opened. She came out carrying a file and a mug of coffee that had almost certainly gone cold hours earlier. “Because someone already had a camera.”
The floor went quiet around us, or maybe I only heard it that way.
I turned to her. “What?”
Dana crossed the hall and stopped beside Benjamin’s desk.
She had the grim satisfaction of a woman who hated being right but enjoyed being competent about it.
“PR received an anonymous tip this afternoon. It isn’t public yet and it wasn’t sent to any journalists that we know of, but it’s enough to let us know someone is sniffing around. ”
Benjamin picked up his tablet and turned it toward me.
The photo was grainy, taken from across the street at street level.
I swallowed hard, seeing Avery outside Rowe Tower two nights ago, after I had kissed her for the first time.
Her coat was pulled tight, her hair loose in a way I remembered too vividly, her face turned slightly away from the camera.
It was not damning on its own. A young employee leaving an office building after hours. Nothing more.
Unless someone wanted it to be more.
Another photo showed my car at the curb outside her apartment from the dinner night. Dark, angled, imperfect, but clear enough if someone knew where to look.
I went very still.
Benjamin watched me carefully. Dana did too.
“It has to be Lang,” I said.
“Likely,” Benjamin replied.
“Find out.”
“Already on it.”
“Who else has seen this?”
“PR. Me. Dana. Elise because risk needed to assess. Tom because legal needed to hyperventilate in Latin.”
Dana crossed her arms. “No one else.”
“Not Avery?” I asked.
“No,” Benjamin said. “Not yet.”
“Good.”
Dana’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t get to protect her by keeping her ignorant.”
“I’m not keeping her ignorant. I’m keeping her from spending the weekend alone wondering if she has destroyed my company because Lang hired a man with a telephoto lens.”
Benjamin tilted his head. “That was almost emotionally articulate.”
I ignored him.
Dana did not. “He’s right to wait until there’s something actionable. But she needs to know soon.”
“She will,” I assured her.
“When?”
“When I decide she should know.”
“It should be before she walks in here and gets blindsided by a rumor,” Dana returned. “I meant what I told her. Be the woman I can defend without lying. That includes giving her the facts before she has to hear them from someone other than you.”
I looked at the photo again, seeing Avery’s face in the evening light. Anger rose in me, clean and violent. It wasn’t directed at her, but at Lang. At the anonymous little coward across the street that had taken her picture.
Benjamin must have read it in my face because he said, “Do not murder the photographer before your trip. It will disrupt the mood.”
I handed the tablet back. “I’m not ending it.”
The sentence surprised even me with its clarity.
Dana stared at me for a moment.
“I wasn’t aware anyone had asked you to,” Benjamin said.
I turned toward him.
He lifted his shoulders in a small, irritated motion. “I am not pleased. Let the minutes reflect deep displeasure. I am professionally horrified, morally exhausted, and personally preparing for a variety of stress rashes. But I am not asking you to end it.”
Dana’s mouth twitched. “I might.”
“No, you won’t,” Benjamin said.
She looked at him and he looked right back.
After a second, she sighed. “No. I won’t.”
I looked between them, these two people who had spent years telling me the truth in opposite dialects.
Benjamin with his theatrical doom and unwavering loyalty.
Dana with her brutal practicality and reluctant care.
Neither of them approved, not fully anyway.
Maybe not even mostly. But they were still standing here. By my side.
“Let me be clear,” Benjamin continued. “Acceptance is not the same as endorsement. If you hurt her, Dana will kill you first, and I will handle disposal with tasteful efficiency.”
“I never agreed to that order,” Dana objected in what would have been an amusing retort if I didn’t halfway believe they were arguing something entirely within the realm of possibility.
“You are better at initial violence. I am better at logistics.”
“Fair.”
“Enough,” I barked, though the corner of my mouth almost moved.
Benjamin pointed at me with the tablet. “And if you hurt the company, I will not kill you; I will do something worse.”
“Which is?”
“I will let Tom lead the crisis response.”
Dana winced. “Jesus, Ben.”
“I know. I frightened myself.”
The absurdity of it cut through the anger for half a second, and I exhaled.
Then Benjamin, because he was Benjamin and incapable of leaving even one moment uncontaminated by his stark sense of humor, said, “I believe the vulgar phrase is bros before hoes.”
Dana closed her eyes. “Mercer…”
“I apologize to all women, Ms. Hale, and my mother,” he offered. “I am using the phrase only as a cultural shorthand for loyalty in the face of romantically induced litigation.”
“Never say it again,” I ordered.
“Gladly. It tasted like a fraternity basement.” He straightened his tie. “But the point stands. Against my better judgment, and possibly against the advice of every insurance carrier in North America, I am with you.”
Dana set the file on his desk. “So am I. For now.”
“For now,” I repeated.
Dana stared at me for a long moment. “For now, she earns her place. You stop making decisions with your dick. We document reporting lines, move her formal evaluations under me, and keep her out of anything that looks like favoritism.”
“She stays in my office,” I added.
Dana’s eyebrows rose.
Benjamin made a small choking sound.