Chapter 8-Cracks Beginning
Iforget to check the lock.
I realize it halfway through my first coffee, standing at the kitchen counter while Richard makes eggs.
He doesn't ask if I want any. The ritual I've followed every morning since things fell apart—hand on the deadbolt, testing it's locked, turning it back, counting to three—I don't remember checking it.
My fingers tighten around the mug.
"You okay?"
Richard is watching me with that look. Like he's already figured me out but is keeping it to himself.
"Fine."
He doesn't move. Doesn't push. Just goes back to the eggs.
Somehow that's worse.
The office still feels different with him in it.
Not bad, different. Just—different. Like I can't pretend I’m not noticing things anymore.
He sits in the chair across from my desk. The one clients usually take. Reading through the Mercer files with the same focused quiet he brings to everything. The shell company formation documents, probably. The ones that don't quite line up with the timeline.
I try to work.
Last maybe forty minutes before I catch myself watching him instead of the deposition transcript in front of me.
Page forty-seven. The same paragraph I've read three times without absorbing a single word.
The way he holds his pen. The small line that appears between his eyebrows when he finds something that doesn't quite make sense.
"What?"
I blink. "Nothing."
"You've been staring at the same page for ten minutes."
"I'm thinking."
"About the deposition?"
"Among other things."
He sets down the pen. Leans back in the chair. "Talk to me."
"About what?"
"Whatever's making you look like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you're trying to solve an equation that keeps changing."
I should change the subject. Should smile and say something about the contracts, about the Mercer lead, about anything that isn't the truth lodged in my throat like something I'm not ready to talk about.
Instead, I hear myself say: "I forgot to check the lock this morning."
Silence. Not empty—heavy.
"Okay," Richard says finally.
Just that. Okay.
"I always check the lock." My voice comes out too level. Too controlled. "Every morning. Before coffee. Before anything."
"How long?"
"Since things fell apart." I stop. Let the words sit there.
The answer feels strange in my mouth. Like admitting something I promised myself I’d never say out loud.
"And today you didn't."
"No."
Another pause. This one longer.
"Is that bad?" he asks.
The question catches me off guard. "What?"
"Forgetting. Is it bad?"
I open my mouth. Close it.
The answer won't come.
"I don't know," I say.
And that—admitting I don't know, can't separate it into good or bad—is harder than I expect.
Richard stands. And walks toward me.
For a second, I think he's going to touch me. Reach for my hand, my shoulder, or something.
He doesn't.
Just stands there. Close enough that I can see the small scar above his left eyebrow. The one I noticed during the Hendricks trial and filed away with all the other details I'm not supposed to care about.
"You want to know what I think?" His voice is quiet. Careful.
"Not particularly."
"I think you've been holding yourself together with duct tape and spit for so long you forgot what it feels like to just—be."
The smart thing would be to get angry. To tell him he doesn't know me, doesn't have the right to say things like that.
But the air has gone thin, and all I can think is that he's right.
And worse—he knows he's right. He can see it in my face and knows I can't control it.
"I don't know how to just… exist like this." The words come out rougher than I intend. Stripped raw before I can stop them.
I can hear the change in his breathing—not quite steady anymore, not quite controlled.
Near enough that if I lean forward—just an inch, maybe two?—
I don't.
"Then don't," he says.
I look up. Meet his eyes.
"Don't what?"
"Don't know how. Not yet." He shifts his weight. Almost imperceptibly. Like he's fighting the same gravity I am. "You don't have to figure it all out right now, Blaire."
My name in his mouth. Like he's handling something that might shatter.
I want to see if he'd reach for me first or make me be the one to break.
Want to know if his control is as thin as mine feels right now.
My fingers curl against the desk edge. His hand shifts at his side—just barely, just enough that I can see the tension in his fist. The way his thumb presses against his index finger like he's stopping himself from reaching for me.
Neither of us moves.
I can smell his cologne. Something subtle and expensive that I've noticed every morning this week without letting myself think about it. I can see his pupils dilate. Watch the exact moment his gaze drops to my mouth before returning to my eyes.
The air between us feels charged. Electric.
I want to press my head against his chest and hear his heartbeat and stop thinking for five goddamn minutes about all the ways this could go wrong.
But my hands stay on the desk.
His stay at his side.
The space between us feels like the edge of something. A cliff I've been standing on for years without realizing how high up I am.
"I should get back to work," I say.
My voice comes out quieter than I mean it to. Almost breathless.
"Yeah." But he doesn't move.
Neither do I.
My hand twitches against the desk.
His jaw tightens.
Then he reaches for me.
Not slowly. Not asking permission. Just wraps his hand around my wrist and pulls me to him.
His mouth finds mine, and something inside me gives way all at once—relief, want, exhaustion, all tangled together. My hands fist in his shirt, pulling him closer, and he makes a rough sound low in his throat that goes straight through me.
This isn't like the first time in my office. That was desperate, frantic, me kissing him to make him stop talking.
This is deliberate.
His hands frame my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones as he kisses me like he's been thinking about it all morning. Like he's thought about every way he wants to touch me and is finally allowed to try.
I shift back against the desk, and he follows, one hand dropping to my waist. The pressure of his fingers through the fabric of my blouse makes me arch into him.
"Blaire." My name comes out rough. A warning or a question.
I answer by pulling him closer.
His hand slides up my ribs. Slow. Controlled. Giving me time to stop him.
I don't.
His fingers find the buttons of my blouse. One. Two. The fabric parts and his hand is on my skin—palm hot against my ribs, thumb stroking up toward the edge of my bra.
When his thumb brushes the underside of my breast, I gasp against his mouth. He makes that sound again—low and wanting—and he's hard against me.
"We're in your office." But his hand keeps moving. Higher. Slipping beneath the lace edge of my bra, palm covering my breast, thumb stroking across my nipple.
"I know." I can't catch my breath. My hands find his belt, fingers fumbling with the buckle because I need?—
His other hand finds the small of my back, pulling me flush against him. The desk edge presses into my thighs. His knee slides between mine, spreading my legs, and I make a sound that should embarrass me.
It doesn't.
I get his belt unbuckled. My hand flattens against his stomach—just above his waistband—and his breath hitches.
His mouth leaves mine, trailing down my jaw to my neck. I tilt my head back, giving him access, and feel his teeth scrape against my pulse point.
"Richard—"
Then his phone buzzes.
We both freeze. The spell breaks—sharp, sudden. Reality crashes back in.
His forehead drops to my shoulder. His breathing is hard, fast. Tension coils through his body as he forces himself to step back.
The space between us feels like a loss.
He pulls his phone from his pocket, jaw tight. Checks the screen.
"Mercer filed a motion to dismiss."
I blink. Try to shift gears. Try to be the version of myself that can compartmentalize, focus, and not feel like the ground just moved beneath my feet.
"When?"
"Twenty minutes ago."
"Let me see."
He hands me his phone.
I read through the motion. Once. Twice. My brain is finally catching up to the present moment.
"This doesn't make sense," I say. "Why file for dismissal now? The discovery phase hasn't even?—"
"I know."
I look up. "Either he's panicking or?—"
"Or someone told him to." Richard takes his phone back. "The motion's too clean. Too precise for panic. Mercer's following instructions."
"You think there's someone else."
"I think Mercer's a middleman. And I think whoever's running point just made a mistake."
I stare at the motion on his phone screen. Something about the timing nags at me—the shell companies, the sudden motion to dismiss before discovery's even complete.
I've seen this before.
Not exactly this. But something close enough that my brain is trying to make connections I can't quite grasp yet.
"What is it?" Richard asks.
"The shell company formations in the Mercer files." I hand him back his phone. "The way they're layered. The timing of the motion. It's?—"
I stop. Because the memory is right there, just out of reach. A case from years ago. Before Rowan. Before everything fell apart.
First-year associate work. Document review. Someone is coaching me to look past the obvious paper trail.
"It's familiar," I finish.
Richard goes still. "Familiar how?"
"I don't know yet." My hands are cold. "But this pattern—someone's used it before. Successfully."
He watches me for a long moment. "You want me to have Declan pull your old case files?"
"No." The word comes out sharper than I mean it to. "Not yet. I need to remember it first. Figure out if I'm just seeing patterns that aren't there."
But I know I'm not. The unease sitting in my chest isn't paranoia. It's recognition.
And if I'm right about the pattern—if this connects to what I think it connects to?—
Then Crowe isn't just fabricating evidence. He's running someone else's playbook. The name Declan surfaced, the intermediary Richard still couldn't place with certainty — and here it was, buried in my own history, in a case I'd worked before I knew enough to understand what I was looking at.
Relief should have come first. Focus on the case, on the pattern, on anything except the way my heart is still pounding from a moment that almost went further than it did.
But all I can think about is the lock I forgot to check.
And the man standing three feet away who makes forgetting feel less like failure and more like?—
Something that hums beneath my skin.
Maybe I don't need a word for it.
"We should loop in Declan," I say. "If there's a larger play here?—"
"Blaire."
I stop.
Richard is watching me. Something soft in his eyes that I don't know what to do with.
"Yeah?"
"The lock." He pauses. "It's okay that you forgot."
My throat feels tight.
I nod.
Don't trust myself to speak.
Because what am I supposed to say to that?
That I've checked the lock three times every night before I could sleep, then once more every morning to make sure — for longer than I want to admit, longer than I've let myself count?
That forgetting the morning check feels like losing my grip on the only thing I could control?
That having him tell me it's okay—not that it doesn't matter, not that I shouldn't worry, but that the forgetting itself is okay?—
That feels more dangerous than any threat Crowe could manufacture.
He holds my gaze for another beat. Then turns toward the door.
"I'll call Declan. You want coffee?"
"Please."
He leaves.
I sit down at my desk.
Pick up my pen.
Put it down again.
The shell company pattern keeps circling in my head. That nagging sense of recognition I can't quite pin down yet.
And underneath it—the lock I forgot to check. The way Richard's mouth felt on mine. The fact that I unbuckled his belt in my office and didn't care who might have heard us.
All of it tangled together. Control slipping through my fingers in ways I can't separate anymore.
If I'm right about the pattern—if this connects to what I think it connects to?—
Then Crowe has been planning this longer than we thought. And I handed him the ammunition years ago without even knowing it.
I force my eyes back to the Morrison contracts. Force myself to keep reading the same paragraph over and over until the words start blurring together.
But my hands are still shaking.
And some part of me knows that remembering that old case will be worse than forgetting the lock ever was.