Chapter 2
THE PROBLEM WITH PUZZLES
Ezra Kittredge
Idon't lose sleep over women. I haven't in years.
Not since Allison taught me that wanting something too much is just another vulnerability waiting to be exploited. Since then I've kept things simple and controlled.
I prefer to be transactional, in the way that protects everyone involved. It requires nothing from anyone that they aren't prepared to give.
So the fact that it's 2 AM and I'm standing at my office window watching the city instead of sleeping is not about Summer Knoll. It's about the story she's building.
That's what I tell myself.
The gala is six hours behind me. The donors have been thanked, the quarterly targets discussed, the necessary conversations navigated with precision.
I've spent fifteen years perfecting every interaction, every outcome anticipated in advance. Except her.
I turn from the window and pour two fingers of Macallan I don't particularly want. The glass is heavy crystal.
My mother decided at some point that I needed to perform wealth even in private. An old habit, inherited like the rest of the things I've spent my adult life deciding what to do with.
I set it down without drinking.
Summer Knoll.
I walked into my own gala tonight, and she walked into me. Literally.
Full head-on collision, champagne on the marble, my name on her lips before she registered she was saying it. I remember the specific heat of her through silk against my chest, for the length of exactly one breath, before she stepped back.
I'd read her work before I ever saw her face. Of course I had.
When an investigative journalist starts circling your portfolio companies, you do your research.
Her Meridian piece was sharp and disciplined. Not at all how I described it.
It's the kind of writing that makes corporate lawyers nervous, which is exactly the kind I respect, even when it's pointed at me. She broke the Hartwell scandal two years ago and put three people in front of federal prosecutors.
She doesn't write to impress. She writes to prove.
What I hadn't anticipated was her face when I called it substance-free.
Most people flinch when I push. I find that attractive.
They recalibrate, soften, locate the angle that gets them back in my good graces. It's tedious but predictable, the currency of every room I walk into.
She lifted her chin instead.
I cross to my desk and pull up the file Diana assembled on Summer. The first thing that loads is her byline photo.
Professional, arms crossed, the expression of a woman who has decided something and isn't revisiting it. I look at it longer than I need to.
Long enough to notice I'm looking at her mouth.
She's beautiful. I shut the thought down with the briskness of a man pretending he doesn't find the subject attractive.
Back to the documents.
Brooklyn apartment, freelance contracts, a credit history that tells a story she hasn't volunteered. Someone did a number on her finances.
Significant damage, a few years back. The kind that doesn't happen by accident.
She's rebuilt methodically since. The slow grinding recovery that requires a specific species of stubbornness most people don't have and don't develop.
I recognize it. I spent my early twenties doing the same thing, just with different weapons.
She's twenty-eight years old.
I open the Meridian piece and read it again. Not for substance this time. For her voice.
The way she moves through the evidence with the patience of someone who isn't in a hurry to be right, because she already knows she is. The way the final paragraph lands without ornament.
She never takes the easy shot when the precise one is available.
Something happens in my chest. Somewhere under my ribs, uncomfortable and specific.
Not arousal exactly, though she is sharp and smart and pretty, and those things together are their own particular problem. It's closer to the sensation of being read accurately by someone who has never met me.
The precise discomfort of recognition when I haven't opened the door to it.
I close the document.
My phone buzzes. Diana.
NDA in your mailbox. Good to go. Shall I send it?
I stare at the message longer than necessary.
The NDA is standard protocol. Any journalist with this level of access is asked to sign one.
Twelve pages of protection for the company, for our portfolio partners, for the hundreds of employees whose livelihoods depend on controlled information flow. Nothing unusual and nothing personal. Just business.
So why am I staring at it instead of signing off.
Because Summer Knoll is not going to sign it.
I know this the way I know market movements before the analysts catch up. Pattern recognition operating below conscious thought.
She'll read every clause and find the buried non-compete. She'll come back with demands.
And I'm going to give them to her.
I type back: Send it.
Then I sit down and do something I rarely do. I think about why.
The answer I give myself is strategic. She's good, and her credibility adds legitimacy to the profile.
Controlled access with the right journalist is better than a hostile piece built from leaked documents and anonymous sources. This is calculated risk management, nothing more.
She looked at me like I was a puzzle she intended to solve. She was genuinely curious about me.
She didn't treat me as a resource, or a stepping stone, or content, which is how the press usually looks at me. They see a revenue generator, the way the board does.
Or a legacy to be managed, the way my mother does. Summer looked at me the way she reads evidence, with the focused patience of someone who wants to understand.
Nobody looks at me like that anymore.
My father looked at me with disappointment. Allison looked at me like a project she eventually decided wasn't worth finishing.
The world at large looks at me like a number, a name, a story they've already written. Summer Knoll looks at me like she hasn't written the story yet.
She hasn't decided I'm the bad guy. She actually wants to know me.
I pour the Macallan down the sink and go to bed.
I don't sleep.
The collision replays behind my eyes in a loop I can't shut off. Her shoulder meeting my chest, the heat of her through the silk.
The instant she recognized my voice and her whole body went still against mine, for the length of one breath, before she stepped back. I was aware, in that half-second, of exactly where every point of contact was.
I'm still aware of it now, three hours later, in the dark.
I turn onto my back and look at the ceiling. This is the part that concerns me.
Not that I want her. Wanting is ordinary.
I can want things and put them aside. I've done it for decades without difficulty.
What I can't put aside is the sensation of being seen. I stay with that thought longer than I should.
Then I put it aside too, because that's what I do, and I look at the ceiling until something that isn't quite sleep arrives.
By six AM I'm back at my desk, which is not unusual.
The city outside is pale gray. That particular Manhattan dawn that looks like the world running a systems check before committing to the day.
I've always liked this hour, before the performance starts. Before anyone needs anything.
Marcus Vale has sent three emails overnight. I read them in order, noting the escalating urgency with the detachment I reserve for men who confuse volume with leverage.
His concerns about the Baythorne acquisition are noted. His suggestion that I'm losing focus is noted.
He's right about one thing. I'm getting bored.
His third email contains an attachment. A photograph I don't recognize, timestamped 2019.
I look at it for a moment without context. I forward it to legal with a single line asking for a review.
Something about it sits at the edge of my attention. I move on.
Diana arrives at seven-fifteen with coffee and the morning brief. She sets both on my desk with the efficiency of someone who knows I don't need pleasantries before nine.
"The NDA was delivered to the reporter's office," she says. "Courier confirmed."
"Good."
"She hasn't signed it."
"I know."
Diana pauses. She is not a woman who pauses without reason. "Should I follow up?"
"No."
She picks up her tablet and moves to leave. I've worked with her long enough to read the silence she's carrying.
"She'll push back on the terms," I say to her retreating back. "Let her. The access is genuine."
Diana turns in the doorway. "And the profile?"
"Well done. Thank you."
She studies me for exactly one second longer than necessary. The fractional recalibration of a woman updating her model.
Then she nods and leaves without saying the thing she isn't saying.
I turn back to the window.
The thing about building an empire from the ground up is that it eventually becomes self-sustaining. The machine runs, the deals close, the returns compound.
And somewhere inside the machinery, the man who built it becomes another component. Necessary, load-bearing, no longer the point.
I built Kittredge Ventures to prove something. I'm no longer entirely sure what.
My phone lights up with an unknown text. A number I assume is Summer's, since I wrote my cell on the back of my card last night.
Old habit, from the days before I had layers of assistants between me and the world. I've never quite broken it when I meet someone I genuinely want to know.
The text reads: Define "My world on the line."
I look at it for a long moment. She's been awake all night too.
I'd bet money on it.
I type back: Meet me and find out.
Three dots. Disappear. Appear again.
Okay, noon. But at the Honeyed Spoon, Williamsburg. Bring better conversation than last night.
I almost smile, which is not something I do at six-thirty in the morning over a text message from a journalist I met eight hours ago and have been thinking about for six of them.
I put the phone down. I pick it up again. I put it back down.
Outside, the city has committed to the day. The gray burns off into something sharper.
Summer Knoll is somewhere out there right now, reading my NDA. Finding every trap door I built into it, preparing her counterarguments with the focus of someone who has learned to fight for everything she has.
I should find that threatening.
Every rational calculation says this woman is a risk. To the company, to the narrative, to the careful distance I maintain between my public face and whatever is left underneath it.
Instead I think about the way she lifted her chin. The way she said consider me efficient, like she was doing me a favor by insulting me.
The way she didn't want anything from me except the truth. That last part is the problem.
That last part is why I'm sitting here at six-thirty AM thinking about a journalist instead of reviewing the Baythorne projections on my second monitor.
My phone buzzes. Diana: Baythorne call in thirty minutes.
I pull up the projections and focus. I do what I've always done. Put the work in front of everything else and let everything else wait.
But I make a note to have the good coffee sent to the Incubator before our first meeting. The beans from the place on Lexington. Nothing ostentatious.
Just the best available.
Some battles, I'm learning, are worth the preparation.