20. Harrison
HARRISON
I didn’t think it would feel like this. I didn’t think saying it out loud would make the air go this still, this sharp. Like a storm passed through and forgot to take the lightning with it.
But I said it. And the silence that follows is so deep, it hums.
Gavin stares at me like he didn’t hear it right. Like if he doesn’t speak, maybe it won’t be true. His jaw’s tight, his hands fisted at his sides, his posture frozen—too still to be neutral.
Jack’s already halfway to the next thought, pacing near the floral wreckage of the bar, lips parted like he’s got a list of theories he’s been waiting to unload.
Parker?
She’s still. Seated at the edge of the riser, eyes down, like she’s trying not to absorb the explosion about to go off in front of her.
Gavin’s voice breaks the silence first. Cold. Controlled. “It’s not possible.”
I nod once. “You saw the same evidence I did.”
He shakes his head. “She hates Icon.”
“She owns thirty percent of it.”
“That’s. Not. Possible.”
“She did it through two shell corporations and a bridge investment portfolio in Zurich. It took a lot of work to trace it cleanly, but it’s all there. Dated transfers. Legal structures. Her financial manager’s signature.”
“No,” he snaps. “Vivian wouldn’t?—”
“Why?” Jack cuts in, hard. “Because she’s your mom?”
Gavin’s eyes flash. “Because she knows what they are. Because she’s the reason this company even exists—because she built VT Global from the bones of my father’s affair and his mistress’s rehab PR stunt.”
“She’s also a part of that same PR firm,” Jack says. “The one you’ve been fighting your entire career.”
“She hated Vanessa,” Gavin says.
“Until she didn’t.” Jack stops pacing. He folds his arms. “Come on, man. Think about it. She’s been griping about how you run things for years.
Complaining about Parker. Whining about Heather retiring when it wasn’t on her timeline.
The woman’s bored, bitter, and still connected to half the board.
Who benefits most from this leak? From this chaos? ”
“She wouldn’t sabotage me.”
“You sure?” Jack’s voice sharpens. “You sure she didn’t just pick the longer game?”
Gavin doesn’t answer.
I watch him closely. And I see it—the denial. The fury. But not aimed at Jack. Not really. It’s aimed inward. He just hasn’t figured out how to aim it yet.
I step in. Calmer. Slower. I know I have to tread carefully. “I didn’t want to believe it either.”
His eyes swing to me. Jack quiets, letting me talk. Parker doesn’t move.
I swallow. “Vivian…she helped me when no one else would. You know that. I didn’t just work my way up here—I started at the bottom. I didn’t even have a bottom. I was couch surfing at friends’ houses, family. I had nothing, outside of a scholarship to a prep school with no housing. Where I met you.”
Gavin doesn’t blink.
“You’re the one who told her about my living situation.
The one who invited me to move in. And then she hired me.
Gave me a job when I had no experience, no references, and no address of my own.
Saw I had a head for numbers and pushed me into finance.
Got me mentors. Sent me to training seminars I couldn’t afford.
I owe her a debt of gratitude.” The words taste like rust. “But I owe you more.”
Still nothing. I keep going. “I owe you this. All of this. What we built. You. Jack. Parker. Everything I care about now started with her handing me a chance and expecting me to outgrow it.”
Jack watches me, quiet now.
“She opened the door,” I say. “But you two— we —we built the damn house.” It’s the most I’ve said about this out loud. Ever.
And Gavin’s still not breathing right. He shakes his head again, slower now. “Which is why it doesn’t make sense. Why would she be involved with them? Why do this now?”
Jack exhales. “Maybe she wants back in. Maybe she wants to tank the current structure so she can ‘rescue’ it again. Or maybe she’s just sick of not being the queen.”
“She gave me the reins.”
“And she’s been yanking them back one strand at a time ever since,” Jack says.
“I need to talk to her,” Gavin mutters.
“Do you?” Jack challenges.
“She’ll have a reason.”
“You mean a story. An angle. A spin. ”
“She’s my mother.”
“And she wields your loyalty like a weapon. She always has.”
The silence after that is thicker. Harder. And I know—this is just the beginning.
“She’s my mother,” Gavin says again, his voice harder now. More brittle. Like repeating the words could change reality.
Jack’s eyes flash. “And what the hell does that have to do with the evidence?”
Gavin rounds on him. “Everything. You think I don’t know she’s capable of being manipulative? Of playing power games? That doesn’t mean she’s capable of funding a competitor to destroy her own company. It makes no sense.”
“Her former company,” Jack shoots back. “You think she still sees it as hers?”
“She passed it to me. It’s named for her initials—Vivian Thatcher Global is the legal name. Why would she trash the company?”
But Jack’s had it with his denial. “She passed you a grenade and waited to see when you’d blow yourself up.”
The words slap the air like a door slammed too hard.
Gavin stiffens. His mouth opens, then clamps shut again.
I take a step between them, palms out. “Hey. Let’s back it down.”
Neither of them does.
Gavin’s eyes narrow on Jack. “I don’t need to be lectured by you.”
Jack snaps, “Then listen to Harrison. You trust him, right?”
Gavin’s jaw tightens. “He sat on this.”
I feel that. More than I want to admit. “I didn’t sit on it. I verified it. Verification takes time. I’m not about to make accusations against Vivian half-cocked. I combed through every holding structure three times. I didn’t want this to be real, Gavin. But it is.”
Gavin looks at me like I’ve gutted him. And it’s not just betrayal. It’s grief. Like something in him is unraveling and he doesn’t know how to hold it in place. “You should’ve told me the second you knew.”
“I told you when I was sure,” I say.
He shakes his head. “You knew before tonight.”
I pause.
And that’s the only answer he needs. He steps back from me like I’m contagious. He mutters under his breath, “Jesus.”
Jack rakes a hand through his hair. “Gavin. Come on. You’re not actually mad at him.”
Gavin’s eyes are burning at me now. “No?” he says. “Because it sure feels like a knife in the back.”
The words land, cold and hard. I take a breath. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“But you did.”
Silence.
Jack looks between us, jaw working.
I try to speak again, but Gavin’s already turning away, hands on his hips, pacing in a tight line like he’s about to explode.
And maybe he will. Because everything in him is cracked right now.
He’s not just angry. He’s trying not to fall apart in front of the only people who’ve seen him broken before.
Jack watches him. I watch both of them. And for a second, everything in the room is heat and tension and unspoken grief.
No one says anything else. The worst part isn’t the yelling. It’s the silence after. When no one knows what to say next, because everything that could have been said was said too loud, too fast, and too damn personal.
Gavin’s back to pacing, but slower now. Like his body still hasn’t figured out how to calm down. Jack’s near the catering carts, arms crossed, jaw flexing like he’s chewing on restraint. Neither of them looks at me. Not directly.
I’m not sure if it’s because they’re still pissed, or because they feel how close we all came to something that couldn’t be walked back. It wasn’t a fight. It was a fracture. And we don’t know how deep it runs yet.
I lean against one of the columns near the edge of the ballroom, trying not to relive that moment when Gavin looked me in the eye and told me I stabbed him in the back.
It wasn’t true. But it wasn’t nothing either.
I held back. I waited. I ran the numbers, built the proof, checked it three times. And I waited to drop it until it was clean. I thought I was protecting him. If there was a mistake somewhere along the line, I didn’t want to permanently damage his relationship with Vivian.
Now I’m not sure if that makes me smart—or just cowardly.
“You still think she didn’t mean for this to happen?” Jack says suddenly, voice quieter now, but still sharp. “She owns thirty percent of the firm trying to kill yours. That’s not a passive investment.”
“I know.” It’s the first thing Gavin’s said in a while.
Jack studies him. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
None of us say anything to that. Not because it’s the wrong answer—but because it’s the only honest one.
Vivian gave me my first shot. She put a roof over my head when I didn’t have one. She didn’t ask questions. Just gave me a job and expected me to prove I could keep it.
I did. I proved it a thousand times over. And still—I didn’t see this coming. Or maybe I didn’t want to. “She’s not going to stop. Not until her goals are met. We need to know what they are.”
Gavin rubs a hand down his face, weariness pulling at his posture now. Like the adrenaline has finally burned out, and what’s left is ash. “I need to talk to her.”
“You won’t get a straight answer,” Jack warns.
“I know.” But he’s still going to try. Because he’s Gavin. And that’s what he does. He makes people give him their version of the truth, then filters it through ten years of experience and instinct. But this?
This is different. Vivian isn’t just a legacy problem. She’s his mother. And I know how that kind of betrayal hits. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you about my mom.”
Their expressions match—a frown line down the middle of the brow. Gavin says, “You always shut up when we asked. So, we stopped asking.”
“That’s because it’s not a good story.” I smile, but it’s wan.
“My father took off before I was born. I never met him. She never talked about him.” I shrug.
It’s not that it doesn’t bother me. I would have liked to know my father.
But that dream died a long time ago. “My mom was barely around. Until, one day, she wasn’t. ”
Jack asks, “She died?”
“Possibly. She just stopped coming home. Wherever she went, she didn’t tell anyone. Her johns still showed up, expecting a session?—”
“She was a sex worker?” Gavin asks.
I nod. “You know that scar on my left shoulder, the one you said looks like a bullet wound?”
“Yeah.”
“One of their cigarettes.”
“Fuck me,” Jack murmurs.
“Without Mom around, I had to fend for myself. I used my scholarships to pay rent for a while, but when it came time to renew the lease, I was only fifteen. I couldn’t legally do it, so I ended up couch surfing for a long time and dodging Child Protective Services like the fucking plague.
I knew a kid who went through the system, and I wasn’t doing that.
I’d rather live in a cardboard box than deal with that shit.
” I take a breath, trying to ignore the wave of memories that comes with admitting all of this.
Gavin blinks. “And that’s when my mom told me to invite you to stay with us.”
“Yeah. She saved my life, Gavin. That’s also why I couldn’t tell you right off the bat. I had to know for absolute certain that I was right about this. Because I couldn’t live with myself if I talked shit about the woman who saved me.”
Jack looks at me like he wants to say something else, then doesn’t.
Gavin finally walks over to one of the half-cleared tables and pours himself a glass of water. He takes a long drink, eyes closed, like it might cool down whatever’s still burning in his chest.
No one else moves. No one else speaks. There’s nothing left to say right now. Just the sound of vacuum cords dragging across the floor somewhere, and a few soft laughs from catering staff in the far kitchen. The ballroom is half-dark now.
One spotlight still glows near the archway where the contortionist performed earlier. A janitor hums quietly in the far corner while he folds up chairs and lines them against the wall. Glass clinks softly in a bin. Outside, I can hear a truck engine start.
The circus is over. And it feels like it’s just getting started.
Jack’s leaning against a column now, head tilted back, watching the ceiling like it might offer wisdom.
Gavin hasn’t moved from the table. He’s staring at his water glass like he can see something in it the rest of us can’t. His knuckles are white where they press into the table’s edge.
No one’s talking. We’re past talking. The fire burned out hours ago. What’s left is the scorched ground.
I should say something. About what we do next. About Vivian. About Icon PR and the board and Parker and all the ways this thing is slipping out from under us.
But I don’t. Because right now, I’m not sure what to do. I take one slow walk around the ballroom, because I can’t stand still anymore. I need motion. Direction. Even if it’s only to retrace my steps.
I pass the riser. The lounge entryway. The curtain where Vanessa ate marble and regret. And then I glance toward the cluster of tall cocktail tables near the exit.
The last place I saw Parker.
The stool is empty.
No heels under it. No bag looped over the back. No Parker, flipping through her phone or watching us with those wide, dark eyes that see everything and say nothing.
I check the next table. Nothing.
Then the corner where she was standing before the blowup started. Gone.
I walk the perimeter twice. Bathroom. Hallway. Service corridor. “Hey,” I say finally, turning back toward the others. “Where’s Parker?”
Jack looks up, confused. “Wasn’t she sitting behind you?”
Gavin turns, scanning the room.
I already know the answer. I take another step. A faster one this time. Down the short hallway behind the curtain. Into the kitchen. I poke my head through the exit door that leads to the rear alley where the performers packed up.
No sign of her. I try her phone. Voicemail.
No missed texts. No note left behind.
She didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t ask for help. She didn’t ask anything.
I stand there for a long moment, phone still in hand. And I finally say what we’re all too slow to admit.
“She’s gone.”