21. Marcus #2
I think about my father before I can stop myself. Not the whole of him. Just one memory.
A kitchen table. A phone ringing. My mother standing too still with one hand braced against the counter while my father promised, again, that he had it handled.
Everything was always handled, according to my father. The debt. The missed payments. The angry phone calls that came too late at night. The car idling outside the house while my mother stood at the kitchen counter pretending not to notice it.
He always said it with enough confidence that for years, I believed him. Then I got old enough to understand that confidence was not the same thing as competence, and promises were sometimes just panic dressed in a better voice.
I learned early that chaos arrived through people who insisted nothing was wrong.
So I built a life where everything could be tracked, measured, prevented, and controlled.
And somehow, even knowing that, I still let the same old fear drive me until Sloane became another variable I tried to protect by managing.
My phone vibrates on the desk, the sound cutting sharply through the quiet office. I turn toward it before I can stop myself as one buzz becomes another, and for half a second, my entire body reacts like a man being handed oxygen.
I cross the room and pick it up, already knowing it isn't Sloane.
It's Graham.
Need you in my office. Julian development.
Disappointment lands with enough force that I almost laugh.
There are several things wrong with that.
The first is that Julian remains an active threat and should probably rank above my personal uncertainty. The second is that some part of me still expected Sloane. The third is that I have no right to expect anything from her at all.
I answer Graham’s message with one word.
Coming.
Then I set the phone down again and refuse to check her contact. Progress, apparently, can be pathetic.
Graham’s office sits at the opposite end of the executive floor, larger but not warmer, with a view that takes in the river and enough of the skyline to remind anyone sitting across from him that Crossridge does not operate on a small scale.
Adrian is already there when I arrive, standing near the conference table with a tablet in hand.
Declan is on speaker, his voice flat with irritation.
“Say that again,” I say as I step inside.
Graham looks up. “Apex is denying involvement.”
“Of course they are.”
“More than denying,” Adrian says. “They’re implying the consulting firm acted independently and that Crossridge is manufacturing the connection to deflect from internal misconduct.”
I take the tablet from him and scan the statement. It is polished, careful, and cowardly, just like Julian. His fingerprints are all over it without his name appearing anywhere.
“Legal response?” I ask.
“Drafting,” Graham says. “But we have another issue.”
I look up.
Adrian’s expression tells me enough before he speaks. “They included a line questioning whether senior communications leadership at Crossridge has sufficient independence from executive influence.”
Sloane again.
My grip tightens around the tablet as the conversation circles back to her, and with it comes the familiar return of every instinct I've spent the last several days trying to keep in check.
Apex just handed us a line of attack, and every part of me knows how to answer it. Publicly. Cleanly. Hard enough to make sure the next outlet repeats our framing instead of theirs.
My mind starts building the response before anyone asks.
Then I catch myself.
Not because we should do nothing, but because I am no longer willing to make decisions about Sloane's response to an attack on her independence without her in the room.
"Send it to her," I say.
Graham watches me carefully. "I planned to."
"I mean send it to her before we draft anything that references communications leadership."
Adrian's attention shifts. On the speaker, Declan goes quiet.
Graham nods once, slow enough to tell me he understands exactly what just happened. “Agreed.”
The meeting continues, but part of me stays fixed on that small decision.
Send it to her. Let her see it before we shape the response around her. Let her decide for herself how she wants to stand inside the fallout instead of trying to protect her from the impact before it lands.
The choice feels wrong somewhere deep in my instincts, which is probably the clearest sign yet that it matters.
By the time I leave Graham’s office, the day has shifted into evening. The building is still full, but the energy has changed. People move more quietly after crisis stretches past business hours. Less performance. More endurance.
On my way back toward my office, I pass the communications side of the executive floor. I shouldn’t slow down, but I do anyway.
Through the glass, I can see Dana at her desk with two monitors glowing in front of her and a coffee cup balanced dangerously close to a stack of folders. A few members of Sloane’s team are still there, heads bent together over something on a shared screen.
Sloane’s office door is closed, but the lights are still on. My hand tightens slightly around my phone as I slow near the glass.
I could walk in. No. Not walk in. Knock. Ask whether she saw the Apex statement. Ask whether she needs anything. Offer to leave the second she wants space. Reasonable. Restrained. Easy to frame as professional concern instead of what it actually is.
I should keep walking.
Instead, I find myself slowing as I pass the communications wing, my attention drawn to the light still burning behind Sloane's office door.
Most of the floor has emptied out by now.
The conversations are quieter. The urgency has changed shape.
What remains is the kind of work that only gets done after everyone else goes home.
For a moment, I tell myself I'm only looking because the lights are still on.
Then the door opens.
Sloane steps into the hallway with a folder tucked against her side, scanning a page as she walks. She doesn't notice me immediately. When she finally looks up, surprise flickers across her face before settling into something more careful.
"Marcus."
The sound of my name in her voice shouldn't affect me as much as it does.
"It's late," I say.
A faint smile touches her mouth. "Communications doesn't really recognize business hours."
The answer is familiar enough to loosen something in my chest, and for a second neither of us says anything. The silence isn't uncomfortable. It just feels crowded with things neither of us seems prepared to unpack in the middle of a hallway.
Sloane shifts the folder against her side and glances toward the conference room behind the glass wall. "Did Graham send you the Apex statement?"
There it is. The safe ground.
"The latest version? About an hour ago."
She nods. "We're finalizing the response now."
I tell myself that should be enough. A normal conversation. A professional conversation. The kind we've had hundreds of times before.
The problem is that nothing about it feels normal anymore.
For one brief, reckless second, I consider asking the question I've spent most of the day refusing to ask.
Instead, I watch her tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear and say nothing.
The moment stretches just long enough to feel dangerous before she glances back toward the folder in her hand.
"I should get back to this," she says eventually.
"Yeah."
Neither of us moves right away. Then she gives me a small nod, turns back toward her office, and disappears behind the door.
A few seconds later, I continue walking.
By the time I reach my office, the ache beneath my ribs has become something steady and unpleasant.
I don’t like knowing she is only a short walk away and might be hurting, angry, exhausted, uncertain, or all of those things at once while I deliberately choose not to intrude, because reaching for her cannot become another version of reaching for control.
This is what giving space feels like, apparently. There is nothing noble or peaceful about the restraint. It just feels costly.
I sit behind my desk and open the folders waiting for review. For the next two hours, I work. Not cleanly and not with the kind of focus that usually makes time disappear, but steadily enough to keep my mind from circling the same thoughts over and over again.
Legal language. Partnership updates. Apex response. Notes from investor relations. A draft holding line I delete twice because it sounds too much like something designed to sound human instead of simply being honest.
At 8:41 p.m., an email arrives from communications.
Subject: RE: Apex Statement — Comms Response
Sloane’s name is copied on the thread.
The response comes from Dana, which means Sloane either approved it from behind the scenes or told Dana to handle it. I read the message twice.
Crossridge will not validate allegations designed to distract from verified unauthorized access, manipulated evidence, and financially linked distribution activity.
Communications leadership remains independent, and all public responses will continue to be governed by documented findings rather than anonymous implication.
It’s good. Very good. The response sounds like Sloane without using her voice publicly, sharp enough to hold the line without giving Apex room to redirect the narrative.
I type a reply.
Strong. Approved.
Then I stop.
My cursor blinks after the word approved while the impulse to add something settles in almost immediately.
I delete the unfinished thought before it fully forms, then erase the entire message and send approval back through the formal chain instead.
No personal note. No attempt to hide something real inside professional language.
No reaching through Dana because I’ve decided direct contact is off-limits, but still want the comfort of knowing my words found their way to her.
That might be the first truly honest restraint I’ve managed all day.
When I finally lean back, my office is dark except for the desk lamp and the glow of the city beyond the windows. The building has quieted around me. Somewhere down the hall, the cleaning crew moves softly, vacuum muted behind closed doors.
My phone sits beside the keyboard, and there is still nothing from Sloane.
The silence no longer arrives as a fresh disappointment every time I look. It's settling into the shape of the day instead, and somehow that feels worse.
I pick up the phone, not to check for notifications this time, but to turn it over in my hand and acknowledge what I have spent the day avoiding.
I cannot know what she's thinking, and for once I have no way to predict what she'll choose or manage the outcome into something less painful for either of us.
All I can do is leave the space open and trust that if she wants to cross it, she will.
And if she doesn't...
The thought lingers at the edge of my mind before I push it away. Not because I'm refusing to acknowledge it. Because acknowledging it won't change anything.
I set the phone down and look toward the darkened doorway, past the empty desk where Evan used to sit, past the systems that failed, past the habits I am only beginning to understand.
I could try to fix this.
The urge is still there, familiar and immediate, which is exactly why I leave it alone.
The choice costs more than I expected, but I make it anyway.