22. Sloane
Sloane
Marcus doesn't look up when I stop outside his office door.
For a few seconds, I remain where I am, watching the quiet rhythm of the room through the open doorway. Not because I'm reconsidering the decision to come here, but because I want to understand the moment before I interrupt it.
He’s standing beside his desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, one hand braced against the edge of a folder while he studies whatever is spread open in front of him.
There are three neat stacks of documents arranged across the desk, a legal packet open near his laptop, and a tablet glowing beside his phone.
Everything about the office is controlled, organized, and carefully contained in the precise way Marcus prefers. He isn’t. Not completely.
The exhaustion is subtle, but I know how to see it now.
It’s in the tension at the back of his neck and the stillness of his shoulders, in the way he reads the same page longer than necessary before turning it.
He looks like a man forcing himself to move carefully through a room full of things he could break if he let himself reach too fast.
That should not make my chest ache, but it does anyway.
I knock.
Marcus looks up immediately, and the moment he sees me, everything in him goes still. Not coldly or distantly, but carefully, as if even reacting too much might become another kind of pressure.
More than anything else, that is why I open the door.
“Do you have a minute?” I ask.
His gaze holds mine. “Yes.”
No hesitation or calculation. Just yes.
I step inside and close the door behind me.
The office is familiar in ways I’m not prepared for after the other night.
The dark wood. The clean lines. The built-in coffee bar along the far wall.
The couch I am absolutely not looking at because I am a professional woman with excellent self-control and no interest whatsoever in remembering the exact sound Marcus made when that self-control failed us both.
Unfortunately, my body remembers anyway, and Marcus notices the half-second my gaze avoids the couch.
He doesn’t comment. If he had, that might be worse.
“Dana said legal finished the supporting timeline,” I say, because practical is safer and practical is why I came here. At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself since I left my office.
Marcus turns the tablet toward me. "I was just reviewing it."
I glance down at the screen. The Apex statement sits alongside the distribution chain, response path, investor exposure analysis, and partner questions, each piece arranged with the same deliberate precision as everything else on Marcus's desk.
Every possible branch has already been mapped out.
“We’ll need to hold the line on Apex,” I say. “If they keep shifting the language toward executive influence, the best response is documentation, not emotion.”
Marcus’s mouth moves faintly. “That sounds familiar.”
“It should. I’ve only said it approximately sixty-seven times.”
“Seventy-two.”
Despite myself, I almost smile.
Something eases between us, not all the way, but enough that the room stops feeling like a fragile object balanced between us.
My gaze drifts back to the tablet and the neatly organized stack of supporting materials spread across his desk. Every angle of the situation has already been analyzed, documented, and filed into place.
You always do that,” I say quietly.
His hand pauses on the tablet. “Do what?”
“Try to stop things before they happen.”
The words come out softer than I intend. They're not accusatory.
Marcus looks at me for a long moment, and I can see him deciding whether to give me the easy answer. Habit moves across his face first. Then restraint. Then something more honest.
“I’ve found that things are easier to manage before impact.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.”
The admission is quiet.
I step closer, not all the way around the desk, but enough to make the conversation feel less like a briefing.
"You were already planning for the next problem before I walked through the door."
"That's usually how planning works."
"Marcus."
His mouth closes, and there's something almost disarming about watching him catch himself. A week ago, he would have explained why the preparation was necessary. Today, he seems to understand that the preparation isn't what I'm questioning. It's the need behind it.
“You said something on the rooftop,” I say.
His expression shifts, just slightly.
“My father used to say,” I continue. “Then you stopped.”
The room seems to stand still around us. I don’t push when the silence stretches between us, and I hope Marcus understands that the restraint is intentional.
Marcus looks down at the open folder, though I doubt he sees a word of it now. “I remember.”
“So do I.”
The silence stretches long enough that I think he might leave it there. And for once, I know I would let him.
That’s the difference, maybe. I came here because I wanted to. I’m asking because I want to understand, not because I need him to give me an answer before I can decide whether I’m allowed to stay.
Marcus exhales slowly and closes the folder.
“My father used to say everything was handled,” he says.
His voice is even, but something underneath it has changed.
“He said it often?” I ask.
“Constantly.”
The word carries more weight than it should.
Marcus’s gaze moves past me toward the windows, where the city sits bright and indifferent beyond the glass.
“The debt was handled. The missed payments were handled. The phone calls late at night were handled. The men who came by the house and waited outside in cars my mother pretended not to notice were handled.”
The sight of it hurts more than I expect as he continues staring out at the city.
“He always sounded certain,” Marcus says. “That was the worst part, I think. If he had panicked, maybe everyone else would have understood the danger sooner. But he had this way of making chaos sound temporary. Like it was already under control because he said it was.”
I barely move as the pieces snap into place.
Not every detail. Not every scar. But enough.
A boy raised in a house where instability arrived wearing confidence.
A child who learned that calm voices could still lie, and a man who eventually decided the only safe world was one where no variable went unmeasured.
“When did you know it wasn’t?” I ask.
His jaw tightens once. “I was twelve when my mother found the second mortgage paperwork.”
God. “She didn’t know?”
“No.”
The single word carries more hurt than his controlled tone can quite hide.
I move around the desk carefully, giving him every opportunity to step back if that's what he wants. He doesn't, and when I stop beside him, the space between us feels deliberate rather than uncertain.
“What happened?”
“He left for three days.” Marcus’s voice stays quiet. “Came back with flowers and a plan and a promise that it would never happen again.”
“Did it?”
His eyes shift to mine then.
“No.”
The answer is simple and devastating.
“Not that exact thing,” he adds after a moment. “He was too intelligent to repeat the same mistake in the same way.”
There is no bitterness in his voice, and that almost makes it worse.
“Marcus.”
“I learned early that reacting after damage arrives is usually too late.” He looks back toward the desk, at the neat stacks of paper arranged like order can still save everyone if given enough time. “By the time people admit something is wrong, someone has usually already been hurt.”
The meaning behind his words becomes impossible to ignore, and suddenly I can see him differently.
Not the billionaire. Not the executive who walks into rooms and takes control before anyone else can.
Just a boy who learned too young that if he didn’t see the disaster coming first, the people he loved would end up paying for someone else’s certainty.
My throat tightens.
“You were trying to stop history from repeating itself.”
Marcus goes very still, and I have the distinct impression he wasn't expecting the observation any more than I was. He looks at me slowly, and whatever I see in his face is so unguarded for half a second that it steals the air from my lungs.
“Yes,” he says.
There is no defense or excuse attached to the single word. Just truth.
I reach for his hand then, and this time I'm the one who closes the distance first. His gaze drops to where my fingers curl around his, but he doesn't move to take over the moment or guide it somewhere else. He simply lets me choose it.
That matters more than it should.
“I understand it better now,” I say.
His hand tightens carefully around mine. “That doesn’t make it fair to you.”
“No.”
He nods once, like he expected that answer and respects it anyway.
Good. Because I am not here to absolve him.
I’m not here to turn childhood pain into a key that unlocks every bad decision and makes the fallout disappear.
Understanding is not the same as erasing.
But it’s something. And right now, something feels like more than we had yesterday.
“I’m not your mother,” I say softly.
Pain crosses his face before he controls it.
“I know.”
“And I’m not something you have to protect by taking over before I know what happened.”
“I know that too.”
“Do you?”
The question is gentle, but direct enough that he doesn’t get to hide inside agreement.
Marcus looks down at our joined hands, thumb moving once against mine before stilling. “I’m learning.”
That answer does more to me than a perfect one would have. Because it isn’t polished, it isn’t complete. It isn’t a promise wrapped so tightly it can’t breathe. It’s honest.
“I can work with learning,” I say.