Chapter 13 Ray
Ray
Miles reads case files the way other people scroll their phones — constant, automatic, like he can't help absorbing information. He's been at it since he got in the car, flipping pages with one hand, the other resting on his thigh. He hasn't looked at me once.
That's fine. I didn't expect him to.
I drive and I don't try to make conversation, because I've learned this week that Miles's silence isn't always hostile.
Sometimes it's just how he prepares. He goes inward, builds a plan, and then he walks into a room and executes it.
It's kind of terrifying to watch, actually.
Like sitting next to someone loading a weapon.
My car is small. I never thought about it before — it's a car, it gets me places — but with Miles in the passenger seat it feels tiny.
I can smell him. Not the stripped-down, unscented version he's been projecting at the office all week.
Something warmer, leaking through despite his efforts, especially in this enclosed space with the heat running.
It's faint but it's there and my body recognizes it instantly, and now I'm gripping the steering wheel harder than I need to and trying very hard to focus on the road.
The last time we were in a space this small together, he was burning up and I had my palm on his forehead. The last time I could smell him this clearly, he was under me.
I am not going to think about that while driving. I'm not.
"Shaw's going to test you on the timeline," I say, because I've been reading the file too, and also because talking about work is safer than sitting in silence smelling him. "Whitfield wants six weeks. Crane's board is going to push for ten. Shaw will side with his client."
Miles turns a page. "I'm aware."
"I'm just saying, the guy's got a reputation for—"
"I've read his deposition history, Garcia. I know how he operates." He closes the file and sets it in his lap. "Your job today is to observe, take notes, and not speak unless spoken to."
"Got it. Silent and pretty."
His jaw tightens. For a second I think he's going to snap at me, but instead the corner of his mouth does this tiny, involuntary thing — not a smile, not even close, just a twitch — and he turns to look out the window. I won a prize and he'll never admit it.
We stop at a red light and the car is very still and very quiet.
His hand is resting on the case file in his lap and I can see his fingers — long, precise, the same fingers that fisted in my shirt and grabbed the back of my neck and dug into my shoulder hard enough to leave marks of his own.
He shifts in his seat and his knee is an inch from the gear shift and an inch from my hand and neither of us moves and neither of us acknowledges the distance or the lack of it.
The light turns green. I drive.
We're on the freeway and the morning light is hitting the passenger side of the car and it catches the edge of his jaw and his eyelashes and the sharp line of his collar.
He looks like he was built to wear a suit.
Every line precise, every detail intentional.
But I've seen what's under the suit now.
I've seen the scar on his ribs and the way his face looks when he can't hold his expressions in place anymore.
I've heard him say my name like it's the only word he knows.
You can't unsee that. You can't go back to just noticing the suit.
The Shaw firm takes up three floors of a brownstone building in the old financial district.
No glass, no steel, no modern art installations in the lobby.
Just dark wood paneling, leather furniture, a carpet so thick my shoes disappear into it.
There's a chandelier. An actual chandelier.
It smells like old books and money and gardenias, like someone's been putting fresh flowers in here since the building was erected.
"Welcome to old money," Miles murmurs, and I almost laugh because it's the most human thing he's said to me all week.
The receptionist is a woman in her sixties with silver hair and reading glasses on a chain, and she looks at us like she's been assessing people's worth since before we were born. I give her my best smile. "Ray Garcia and Miles Covington, here for the nine o'clock with Mr. Shaw."
"Of course." She gives me a look that's half suspicion, half amusement. "I'll let them know you're here. Please, have a seat."
We don't sit. Miles stands in the middle of the lobby, fingers in his pockets, scanning the space like he's reading a room before entering it.
I wander toward a wall of photographs — firm history, founding partners, award ceremonies.
And there, on a shelf near the hallway, a silver frame: Lawson, Kole, and a baby Noah, maybe six months old.
Lawson's grinning. Kole's looking at the baby.
It's the kind of photo that doesn't belong in a law firm lobby, which is probably why it matters so much that it's there.
I don't point it out to Miles. But I clock it.
Richard Shaw enters the conference room like he owns it, which, to be fair, he does.
He's in his sixties, silver-haired, tall, with the kind of lean build that says he still plays tennis or rows or whatever rich old alphas do.
I clock the watch first — thin, gold, the kind you inherit, not buy.
His handshake is firm without being aggressive — he's not trying to prove anything.
He already knows he's the most powerful person in the room.
"Mr. Covington." He shakes Miles's hand and holds it a beat longer than necessary, his eyes doing a quick assessment.
I see the moment he registers Miles's designation — a micro-expression, the slightest widening of his eyes that passes so fast most people would miss it.
An omega. Leading a deal this size. From Richard Shaw's generation, that's unusual.
Miles doesn't flinch. He meets Shaw's eyes with the calm, flat stare of someone who's been sized up by alphas his entire career and stopped caring a long time ago.
"Mr. Shaw. Thank you for making time." Miles's voice is perfectly modulated. Warm enough to be professional, cool enough to say I'm not here to make friends. He takes the chair at the center of the table, not the end, positioning himself as an equal rather than a supplicant.
Shaw's team files in — two associates and a paralegal — and the meeting begins and I get to watch Miles work.
I've seen him in the office. I've seen him sharp, cutting, efficient behind his desk. But this is different. This is Miles in combat.
He takes apart the Whitfield-Crane deal structure piece by piece, identifying risks and opportunities that Shaw's own team hasn't flagged yet.
At one point, Shaw brings up Crane's outstanding environmental liability — a remediation issue at one of their manufacturing sites — and frames it as a minor disclosure item.
Miles doesn't blink. "It's not minor," he says, and pulls out a secondary filing that Crane buried in their last quarterly — a pending EPA inquiry that could delay the closing by months if it surfaces during regulatory review.
Shaw's paralegal starts flipping through her own file.
She didn't have it. Miles did. Shaw leans back in his chair and looks at Miles the way you look at someone who just showed you a card you didn't know was in the deck.
He anticipates Shaw's objections — I can literally see it happen, Shaw opens his mouth and Miles is already addressing the point before the old man finishes forming the question.
He's respectful but relentless, precise without being cold, and he's doing it in a room full of alphas without raising his voice once.
I forget to take notes. I'm just watching him.
He does this thing when he's making a point — fingers spread on the table, pressing down slightly, like he's anchoring his argument to the wood.
His voice drops half a register when he's delivering something he knows is strong.
He makes eye contact with Shaw and holds it without blinking.
I'm sitting here in a conference room at a law firm watching someone argue about merger acquisition thresholds and regulatory compliance, and my pulse is elevated because he's so goddamn smart.
This is a problem. This has been a problem since the day I met him but it's worse now because I know what he sounds like when he comes, and the combination of that knowledge with watching him take apart a room full of lawyers is short-circuiting my brain in ways that can't be healthy.
Shaw pushes back on the timeline. His associate — a tense guy named Whitaker — digs in on a due diligence provision, and the temperature shifts.
Miles gives a technical answer that's legally perfect and completely fails to acknowledge that Whitaker's real issue isn't the provision, it's that he feels steamrolled.
The conversation stiffens. Whitaker crosses his arms.
I read the room — who's tense, who's checked out, who needs to feel heard.
"That's a fair concern," I say, and everyone looks at me because I've been invisible for the last forty minutes.
"The timeline is aggressive. But if we structure the diligence in phases, your team gets breathing room on the front end without delaying the closing.
We could build checkpoints into the schedule.
" I look at Whitaker directly. "Would that give you what you need? "
Whitaker uncrosses his arms. "That's... actually, yes. If the phasing is reasonable."
"We can draft that into the framework," Miles says smoothly, absorbing the idea without missing a beat. He doesn't look at me. He doesn't acknowledge that I just unjammed his meeting. But his hand, the one closest to me under the table, uncurls from the fist I didn't realize he was making.