Chapter 10 Gregory #2
Mutual benefit. Symbiosis.
Except I’m nothing like the trees that are actually supporting the network. Nothing at all.
I’m the mining operation that rips the whole thing apart.
We take, and we leave behind only scars.
No. There’s nothing symbiotic about what I do.
“But either way,” she continues, “they help each other. That’s the beautiful part. Whether it’s pure altruism or enlightened self-interest doesn’t really matter. The cooperation happens. The forest functions as this interconnected whole instead of individual competitors.”
Cooperation instead of competition.
Interconnection instead of isolation.
Everything my father taught me to avoid.
She’s quiet for a moment, staring at the page. Then she looks up at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“You know what I thought when I first found out who you were?” Her voice is soft but there’s steel underneath.
“I thought you were just another mining CEO. Another guy who sees the earth as something to mine until there’s nothing left.
Someone who either didn’t understand the damage or didn’t bother to think about it. ”
“But you’re not,” she continues. “You’re not ignorant at all. You asked intelligent questions about my research. You listened to an hour of my ecology lecture. You... you understand exactly what you’re doing.”
She sets the book down, and her eyes meet mine with devastating clarity. “And that makes it so much harder to forgive you.”
The words hit like a physical blow.
The silence that follows is absolute. Just the fire crackling and my own breathing too loud in my ears.
She’s right.
Absolutely fucking right.
I’m not unaware.
Not ignorant.
I’m worse.
I’m an intelligent man who’s made conscious choices to prioritize profit over people. Who signed off on extraction methods knowing they’d poison the groundwater. Who chose to corner the rare earth market regardless of the cost to communities like her grandmother’s village.
Willful blindness isn’t ignorance.
It’s complicity.
“I really thought you were going to be easy to hate,” she says quietly. “Some cartoon villain I could dismiss. But instead you’re this person who takes care of sick strangers and practices making coffee and genuinely wants to understand mycorrhizal networks. And I don’t know what to make of that.”
Neither do I.
I want to defend myself.
Want to explain about market pressures and shareholder expectations and the impossible choices of running a global corporation. Want to detail all the jobs my company provides, all the green technology that wouldn’t exist without our minerals.
But those justifications just evaporate on my tongue.
Because she’s right.
I knew better and I did it anyway.
“I’m... I’m sorry,” I hear myself say. “For... all of it. Brazil. Your grandmother’s village...”
It’s not enough. Can never be enough. But it’s all I have.
Her eyes widen slightly. Like she wasn’t expecting an actual apology.
“Thank you for saying that.” She picks up her book again. “Even if it doesn’t change what happened.”
She’s right about that, too.
She turns her back on me, and just like that my little mycorrhizal education session is done.
The rest of the afternoon passes in a strange, charged quiet while the storm rages outside.
She reads while I tend the fire and try not to watch her too obviously.
But my eyes keep drifting back. To the curve of her neck when she bends over the book.
To her lips moving slightly as she reads.
To those small gestures I’m cataloging like a mining survey, mapping every detail.
As the light outside shifts to the gray of winter dusk, my stomach reminds me we haven’t eaten since lunch.
“I’ll get something for dinner,” I say, standing.
She looks up from her book. “I’ll come with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” She’s already setting the book aside. “But I should check the storage anyway.”
We bundle up and trudge back out to the north side.
The temperature has dropped even further than earlier.
The wind tears away my breath before mist can even form.
Snow drives horizontally into my face, stinging exposed skin like thrown gravel.
It finds every gap in my clothing, sneaking under my collar, beneath my hood, melting against my neck in icy rivulets.
Within thirty seconds my cheeks are numb. Within a minute I can’t feel my lips.
It’s the kind of cold that makes you understand how people die out here. How quickly the mountain stops caring about your net worth.
We move quickly. The bins are undisturbed. Sorrel does her methodical check while I grab one of the chickens Vin left. Whole bird, frozen solid.
Back inside, we both head straight for the fire. I drop the chicken on the coffee table and hold my hands out to the flames. The warmth feels like needles pricking my frozen skin.
Sorrel pulls off her gloves with shaking fingers, her cheeks bright red from windburn. She crouches close to the hearth, practically climbing into the fireplace.
“Christ,” she mutters. “That was brutal.”
“Yeah.” I flex my fingers, trying to work feeling back into them. The tips are white, bordering on frostbite territory despite the gloves I’d worn. Not quite there yet, but close enough to be concerning. “A lot colder than earlier.”
We stay there for several minutes, neither of us speaking, just absorbing heat. Gradually the shaking stops. Color returns to her face. My fingers start cooperating again.
“Okay,” she says finally, standing and rubbing her arms. “I think I can actually use my hands now.”
She takes over the kitchen again. Runs the frozen chicken under cold water from one of our melted snow containers to start the thawing process.
“This is going to take a while,” she says. “Maybe an hour before I can cook it properly.”
“I’ll build up the fire.”
By the time the chicken is ready, full darkness has fallen outside. The blizzard continues its assault on the windows, but in here the fire makes everything feel almost normal.
Almost.
She lights the gas range with the same easy competence as at lunch, seasons the chicken with herbs from Vin’s collection, and gets it roasting in a pan. The smell fills the great room, rich and savory and making my mouth water.
When it’s done, she carves it efficiently and we eat at the coffee table by the fire. The meat is perfectly cooked, tender and juicy despite being frozen earlier.
“Merry Christmas,” she says, raising a forkful of chicken like a toast. “Not exactly a traditional feast. No turkey, no stuffing, no cranberry sauce. Just chicken roasted on a gas range by firelight in a blizzard.” She pauses. “Actually, that sounds kind of badass when I say it out loud.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Beats the catered affairs I usually sit through. Ten courses I don’t want while making small talk with people I can’t stand.”
“Oh, you poor billionaire,” she teases, but there’s warmth in it now instead of bite. “Suffering through your gourmet Christmas dinners like a champ.”
“You joke, but this is better.” And I mean it. “This is... real.”
Her expression softens. “Yeah. I suppose... I suppose it kind of is.”
We eat in comfortable silence. Even though the storm is howling outside, for a moment, it almost feels like we’re just two people sharing a meal instead of a billionaire and the woman who hates what he represents.
“I miss them,” she says suddenly, setting down her fork. “My friends. My parents. My advisor. All of whom are probably having a meltdown thinking I’m dead in a snowdrift somewhere.”
“We’ll get communications back soon.” I’m making promises I can’t guarantee again. “The storm has to break eventually.”
She nods, then devours a forkful of chicken.
“How did your parents die?” she asks suddenly.
The question catches me off guard.
I could deflect. Could give some vague non-answer and change the subject.
Instead I find myself saying, “Mother first. Cancer. I was fifteen. Ovarian. She fought it for two years. Every treatment, every experimental drug. Father threw money at it like that would make a difference. Hired the best oncologists in the world. Flew her to clinics in Switzerland, Germany, wherever they promised hope. He couldn’t comprehend why his money wasn’t enough.
Why he couldn’t just buy her survival. It was the worst two years of my life. ”
She’s quiet, just listening.
“When she died on Christmas morning, something in him died too. He became... harder. More focused on the company. Like if he couldn’t save her, he’d at least build something that would last. An empire no disease could touch.
” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “He died thirteen years later. Heart attack at his desk on Christmas fucking eve. Working on quarterly projections. Worked himself to death, basically. I was twenty-eight, barely starting to understand what running the company actually meant, and suddenly it was all mine. The struggling business. The debt. The pressure to prove I wasn’t going to let his life’s work collapse. ”
“And you proved it,” she says. “You built an empire from that struggling company.”
“Yeah. I did.” I meet her eyes. “But somewhere along the way, I became exactly like him. All extraction, no connection. Money as the solution to every problem. People as resources. I told myself I was honoring his legacy, but really I was just... repeating his mistakes.”
Sorrel is quiet for a moment. When she speaks, her voice is gentle. “It’s true, isn’t it? Money isn’t enough for most things that matter.”
No shit.
Eight billion in assets and I’m sitting here by a fire, stuck with a woman who hates what I represent, realizing that every choice I made to build that wealth was probably wrong.
“My parents work so hard,” she says softly.
“Like your used to. Dad does landscaping. Mom teaches elementary school. They immigrated from Brazil when I was five. Gave up everything for opportunities here. They wanted me to be a doctor or lawyer. And so here I go and dedicate my life to cleaning up messes made by mining companies, because we all know there’s a ton of money in that, right? ”
I don’t answer, just eat my chicken. I’m still feeling guilty as hell.
“They must be proud of you,” I finally offer. “The PhD program. The research. So what if it doesn’t rake in money? You’re making a difference.”
“Am I?” She pulls the hoodie tighter around herself. “I don’t know. And I certainly hope they’re proud of me.”
I straighten. “Look, I’m telling you... your research matters. Even if people like me are the reason it’s necessary.”
She looks at me then and I see something in her expression that wasn’t there before. Not forgiveness exactly. But maybe... understanding? Or the beginnings of it, anyway.
“We should sleep,” she says finally, finishing her chicken. “It’s getting late. And it’s been a long day.”
“It certainly has.” I take our empty plates to the kitchen, and clean them with the melted snow water.
When I return I find her already lying in her sleeping bag on the far side of the sectional. She’s moved my own sleeping bag to the opposite end. This morning, we’d left both sleeping bags in the center of the sectional after getting up.
Wants to make sure I take the hint.
I slip inside it and close my eyes. Still, I’m aware of every movement she makes, every rustle of fabric as she settles in.
This morning we woke up tangled together.
I’m wondering if it will happen again.
Hoping it will even though I shouldn’t.
It won’t.
I can’t sleep.
The fire burns low between us.
With a sigh I get up and feed it more wood. Then I return to the sleeping bag.
Outside, the storm continues its relentless assault.
I close my eyes and concentrate on her steady breathing, letting it lull me toward sleep.
Tomorrow the storm might very well break.
And we might get communications back.
And this strange suspended reality might end.
But tonight, on Christmas night in a chalet buried by snow, I let myself have this.
The closeness.
The impossible connection to someone who sees the real man beneath the billionaire facade.
The man I’ve spent ten years trying to forget I could be.