Chapter One #2
"I can do it remotely," Kinsley offered quickly, stepping forward, her clumsiness forgotten in her fierce need to protect her sister.
"I can hack into the boardroom display and just cast the data directly to their screens.
You don't have to look at them. You don't have to let them look at you like... like that."
"No, Kins," Marcy said, her voice barely above a whisper, with an exhaustion that ran deeper than bone. "If I avoid them, it just gives them another reason to call me a coward. I just have to hand over the tablet, explain the margins, and leave."
She had given up trying to prove her innocence.
In the beginning, she had cried. She had begged Aunt Ginny’s old friend, Sherry Lancaster, to believe her.
She had looked into Kade’s eyes—the eyes of the man she had loved her entire life—and begged him to see the truth.
But Kade had only looked back with a chilling, hollow void, turning his back on her without a single word.
Now, she was just tired. So impossibly tired.
Gabriela had been beautiful, yes. But she had never been a saint.
Marcy knew the truth. Kinsley knew the truth.
They both knew how cruel Gabriela could be in private, how venomous her whispers were when the men weren't looking, particularly toward Kinsley.
Look at the little charity case, Gabriela used to sneer, ensuring Kade and Cruz were out of earshot.
Always tripping over her own feet, trying to get Cruz to look at her.
He wouldn't touch you if you were the last breathing thing on earth, Kinsley.
But in the coma, Gabriela was a martyr. And Marcy was the devil.
"Okay," Kinsley said softly, reaching out to hug Marcy tight. "Okay. But if they are mean to you... I am going to throttle their bandwidth. I swear to God, Marcy, I will make the Wi-Fi in that tower buffer for the rest of eternity."
Marcy let out a genuine, albeit weak, laugh. "Please don't. Kade would probably have you arrested for corporate sabotage."
"Let him try. He’d have to catch me first, and I’m very slippery." Kinsley stepped back, offering a determined nod. "Call me the second you get back to your desk. Promise?"
"I promise."
***
The elevator doors on the fiftieth floor of Lancaster-Tate Industrial slid open with a soft, muted chime.
Marcy stepped onto the thick, noise-absorbing carpet of the executive level.
The air up here was different—filtered, temperature-controlled to a precise degree, smelling faintly of expensive leather and Kade’s signature bergamot and cedar cologne.
Every step she took felt like wading through wet cement.
The executive assistants at their sleek, minimalist desks didn't even look up as she passed.
It was a mandated shunning. To acknowledge Marcy Dane was to disrespect the grief of the CEOs.
She was a ghost haunting the corridors of a company she was only allowed to work at because human resources feared a wrongful termination lawsuit based on unproven accusations.
She reached the frosted glass doors of the primary boardroom. She took a breath, holding it in her lungs for three seconds, bracing her fractured heart, and pushed the doors open.
The vast room was imposing, overlooking the sprawling city below. Kade was seated at the center of the table now, leaning back in his leather chair, a tablet resting in his hand. Cruz was standing near the digital display wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw set in a rigid line.
Neither man looked at her as she entered.
"The Q3 analytics, gentlemen," Marcy said. Her voice was steady. It took every ounce of her willpower, but it was steady.
"Put them on the table, Ms. Dane," Kade said, his voice devoid of inflection. He didn't use her first name. He hadn't used her first name in two years.
Marcy walked forward, her sensible heels clicking softly against the polished floorboards bordering the carpet. She set the encrypted tablet down, sliding it precisely to the center of the table.
"The Pacific sector shows a slight lag in the autonomous routes due to the recent storm systems," Marcy began, adhering strictly to her professional script. "However, the infrastructure expansion in the European division is exceeding projections by two point one percent. If you look at the—"
"We know how to read the data, Ms. Dane," Cruz interrupted.
His voice was a razor blade, wrapped in silk.
He finally turned his head, his dark eyes locking onto hers.
The sheer, unadulterated contempt in his gaze was enough to make her skin burn.
"Your commentary is unnecessary. We require the raw numbers, not your interpretation of them. "
Marcy swallowed hard, keeping her chin level. "Of course, Mr. Tate. The compiled metrics are on the second tab."
Suddenly, the encrypted tablet on the table beeped, and the screen flashed bright blue. A small window popped up on the interface, overriding the corporate logo.
Connection established. Remote Tech Support initiated.
Kinsley’s voice, slightly distorted by the tablet’s small speakers, rang out in the quiet boardroom. "Hey, Marce, the European data didn't sync properly on that device, I noticed it on the backend. I’m pushing the update to the tablet right now. Just give it a sec."
Cruz’s posture instantly went rigid. The air in the room, already suffocating, became violently oppressive.
"What is this?" Kade demanded, his voice dropping to a dangerous, lethal register. He stared at the tablet as if it were a venomous snake.
"It's... it's just Kinsley, sir," Marcy said quickly, her heart hammering against her ribs. She moved to touch the tablet, to shut the connection down, but Cruz was faster.
He stepped forward, his tall frame looming over the table. He didn't look at the screen; he looked directly at Marcy. "Did you authorize an external remote connection to an executive-level device?"
"It's not external!" Kinsley’s voice piped up again, a hint of nervous, chaotic energy bleeding through the speaker. "I’m on the encrypted company server, Mr. Tate! I just noticed the data packet was corrupted, and I didn't want Marcy to get in trouble for incomplete metrics, so I..."
"Silence," Cruz said. It wasn't a shout. It was a command delivered with such chilling authority that the tablet seemed to vibrate with it.
He looked down at the small interface where Kinsley’s audio waveform was bouncing. "I do not recall asking for the input of a remote technician. Let alone one whose continued employment is a matter of pure administrative oversight."
On the other end of the line, Marcy could hear the sharp intake of Kinsley’s breath.
The cruel dismissal—the erasure of her value—cut deep.
Kinsley had spent her entire adolescence looking at Cruz Tate like he hung the stars in the sky.
And Cruz looked at her like she was the dirt beneath his custom-made oxfords.
"Mr. Tate, she was only trying to ensure the data was accurate," Marcy intervened, her protective instincts overriding her exhaustion.
She stepped closer to the table, positioning herself slightly between Cruz and the tablet.
"The fault is mine. I should have double-checked the sync before I came upstairs. "
Kade finally set his own device down. The quiet click echoed like a gunshot.
He looked at Marcy, and for a fraction of a second, she saw the boy she had grown up with—the boy who had taught her how to ride a horse on the Lancaster estate, the boy who had laughed with her in the rain.
But the phantom vanished instantly, replaced by the ruthless CEO whose heart was encased in steel.
"You are a Data Analyst, Ms. Dane," Kade said, his tone flat, empty, and devoid of any shared history. "Your job is to bring the data. Not to bring your... associates into our boardroom, virtually or otherwise. Shut the connection down."