26. The Offer
Chapter twenty-six
The Offer
Idrag the file box out of the back of my hall closet and set it on the living room floor.
It should be bigger.
It should need two people and a dolly to move. It should be neon red screaming itself as the radioactive Portland nightmare that rearranged my life. Instead, it’s an ordinary file box with a warped cardboard lid and one strip of packing tape holding down the cover.
That feels obscene.
“You know, we don’t have to do this tonight,” Doc says sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees.
I do.
Admiral is waiting for whatever I can give him. And I’m going to need something stronger than my word against Ian’s charm when I take this to Alvarez.
And Coupeville is on the line. The town meeting is in two days. And all that stands in the way of the town being pilfered by Ian is me and the contents of this twelve by fifteen inch file box.
So, I cut the tape with a pair of scissors and take off the lid.
Paper.
That’s all it is. I expected the Boogeyman to pop out like a jack-in-the-box and punch me in the face.
File folder after file folder. I kept everything. Articles, old printouts, copies of letters, a brochure with a glossy front. And then there’s the flash drive, secured in a plastic bag clipped to the inside of a folder. I’ve got everything I know about Ian and me on this. It was my salvation once.
Now it has to be Coupeville’s too.
Doc looks over the contents, then back to me. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
I sit cross-legged on the floor and reach for the first file.
“Don’t let me chicken out and put it away.”
He looks surprised. “Okay.”
“I mean it. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to touch anything.” I slump my shoulders and drop my head. “If I start making excuses or decide this can wait, don’t let me.”
“I won’t.”
The brochure is smooth under my thumb. Eight years old and still too pretty. A brick building on the front, lit for evening, all tall windows and promise. My image is on it, right there, beside Ian’s. His hand is at the small of my back.
We look happy.
Worse, we look trustworthy.
I open the brochure and all of it comes racing back so fast I don’t have time to brace.
One night.
One file I was never supposed to see.
Ian’s office was on the fifth floor of a renovated building. He loved it because the lobby still had old tile and a brass elevator that made investors feel like they were in business with history.
It was raining hard that night. I was meeting him to go to a reception. He picked out the blue dress for me to wear, said when I wore it, it made people relax.
He wasn’t there when I arrived. His assistant had let me in and then left. I went to his desk to get the remarks he wanted me to review. He said he had printed them out for me. But nothing was on the desk.
I opened his top drawer. There were several files there, the project logo was on the tab of several, so I pulled out the one on top.
I wasn’t snooping.
The folder held the engineering report Ian had sworn we were still waiting on.
I knew the firm. He told me it had not come back yet.
Yet here, in my hand, was the report, dated six weeks earlier.
JUDGMENT: STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND
The building could not be restored under the specs and plans Ian was selling.
The supports were too damaged. The remediation costs were too high. The residential units he kept promising would never pass occupancy without a full structural rebuild.
Behind the report was the investor packet we used at the fundraiser.
Same week. Same project. Same language about historic preservation, affordable units, local jobs, and community space.
Ian had known none of it was real and still pulled me beside him, in front of a room full of people and sold it anyway.
The part I hate most?
My first thought was that I had misunderstood.
I thought there must be follow-on reports that had found ways to fix the issue close to budget. I started pulling out more files. More lies. Material shifts to cheaper products with worse safety records. Donor receipts for the monies he was already collecting.
My heart sank, and I hate myself for it, but my mind went to Ian’s side before mine. I was trying to justify all the reasons he would be doing this. It must be wrong.
I must be missing something.
The door opened behind me and Ian walked in shaking rain from his coat, his phone in one hand, a smile already on his lips.
“There you are,” he said. “You look beautiful.”
I held up the folder. “What is this?”
His smile changed only a little.
If I hadn’t loved him, maybe I would have seen how fast he measured the room. The folder in my hand. The drawer open behind me. He didn’t panic. Ian never panicked.
He set his phone on the desk. “Where did you get that?”
“It was on your desk.”
“That doesn’t answer why you’re reading it.”
My skin went cold. “There are notes in here about delaying payments.”
“Development has payment schedules. Contractors know that.”
“And cheaper windows?”
“Alternate supplier. Not cheaper.”
“That’s not what this says.”
He sighed. Soft. Patient. The kind of sigh that made me feel like I was a child who needed things explained simply.
“Annie, this is exactly why I didn’t want you involved in the ugly administrative side.”
“I’m on the brochure.”
“You’re on the brochure because you believe in the project.”
“I do.”
“Then believe in me.”
He came around the desk and took the folder from my hands. Not roughly. Ian was never rough when gentle worked better.
“You’re a clinician,” he said. “You see blood and panic and bad news, and you make sense of it. This isn’t that. Construction has delays. Vendors posture. Contractors threaten liens to get faster movement. Donors get nervous. It’s not pretty, but it’s normal.”
“I don’t understand. This doesn’t make sense.”
His eyes softened.
I can still see it. God, I can still see the exact expression.
“Because you care too much,” he said. “And I love that about you, but you don’t know how to let business be business. You’d take every delay home with you. You’d lose sleep over windows and invoices when all I need from you is to keep believing in the good part.”
I wanted that to be true.
I wanted to be the woman who believed in the good part.
“Ian.”
He put the folder back on his desk and stepped close enough to touch me.
“The reception starts in twenty minutes. There are people coming tonight who can keep this project alive. People who believe in us because you help them believe. Don’t let a file full of routine ugliness scare you out of doing something good. ”
Routine ugliness.
I let those words sit in my head long enough to become an explanation.
Then he started what I now know as his deflection technique, spell-casting if you want to call it that. He pressed into me, unbuckling his belt and unzipping his trousers. “Let’s use the time wisely.”
Gentle words in my ear, kissing and caressing my neck as his hands hiked up my dress, hands gripping my thighs, urging them to open. Kissing along my jaw, casting his spell, whispering how badly he wanted me, needed me.
God help me.
I was willing.
I wanted him. Stroking his cock as he moaned in my ear, begging to let him in, to bury his seed deep. Completely under his spell, I opened my legs wide and took him. I wanted every inch he gave me.
I wrapped my legs around him and begged him to fuck me harder. He thrust and growled telling me how badly he needed me to take it deep.
I didn’t climax. I rarely did during business-hours fucking. That was reserved for quickies he said he needed to get through the day… but made it sound like my pussy was the only energy source on earth that could keep him going.
And it did.
We were great at fucking.
Now, I know it was only for an endgame, like everything else about him.
We went to that reception. I stood beside him in the blue dress, a smile on my face and cum soaking my panties while he told a room full of people that old buildings could become new futures if the right people had the courage to invest in them.
His hand touches my shoulder. “Annie.”
When I turn to look up at him, it's Doc.
I’m back on my living room floor with the brochure open in my lap and my thumb pressed over my smiling face.
“Hey, you okay?” Doc gently shakes my shoulder. “I lost you for a minute.”
I close the brochure.
“Sorry, just got sucked back to Portland for a minute.”
Doc sits beside me and puts an arm around my waist. “Okay, how about I just anchor you right here.”
I kiss him on the cheek and go back to the box.
“He made it sound like asking questions meant I didn’t understand how the world worked,” I say. “Or I didn’t believe enough. Or I was too emotional to handle the practical pieces.”
I set the brochure on the floor between us. “Do you think Admiral can help? Really?”
“What I can tell you is I’ve never known him to fail. If there’s information out there, he’ll find it.”
“But what if Ian is really good at hiding his secrets.”
“We’ll have to be prepared for that. But I’m putting my faith in you and Admiral. I’m not willing to give up hope until the bitter end, if necessary.”
Doc looks at me and leans over and bumps his shoulder into mine. “We got this. Stay positive.”
‘We.’ We’ve got this.
I’m part of a ‘we.’
I reach in and pull out the flash drive. The whole ugly Portland business sits in the palm of my hand.
“Okay, lets get this Admiral,” Doc says. “I’ll write the text and you upload? Deal?”
“Deal.”
I slide the drive into my computer and upload it to an email meant for Admiral. Doc writes his note and we both hit send.
“Now what?” Doc asks.
“So I have a plan.” I pause to look at him. “But I don’t think you are going to like it.”
Doc gets serious, then he takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Okay. What are you thinking?”
“I think Ian needs to believe I’m scared enough now to make a deal.”
“And just how exactly, do you propose letting him know that?”
“I need to arrange a meeting with him.”
Doc's eyes close briefly. When they open, panic is there, but it is leashed. “I’m listening, cautiously.”