2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Demetrius
Adelaide Windemere is a pixie, and pixies, in my experience, lie with their wings.
I've been watching hers flit for the past fifteen minutes, ever since she stepped into my office. The upper pair holds position just fine and I know it's a trait she rehearsed. Pixies are excellent politicians and most master the art of keeping their top wings completely still.
It's the lower pair that gives her away. Their tips flutter fast as a mouse's heartbeat.
She's dressed the part in an ivory pantsuit, tailored perfectly to her slender figure. The color does marvels for her complexion and offsets her emerald hair, eyes and wings. Her painted red lips are stretched into a smile that is just a tad too wide.
But good looks won't save her here.
Her foot taps the carpet in sync with the flutter of her lower wings. The vibration carries through the floor, like an invisible stampede.
"Mr. Thornwood," she says, and the half-register climb on my name is the tell of someone who pretends not to be intimidated. "I appreciate you making the time to see me today. I know how valuable it is."
"It is." I keep my voice even.
She waits for more. I don't give her more. I let the silence sit between us like a negotiating tactic. She's going to dig her own grave one word at a time and she doesn't even know it.
I'll let her.
"Right." Her smile holds, though the edges strain a little. "I believe there are still some outstanding items to resolve before we can move forward with the acquisition."
"There are three." I open the folder at my elbow.
I know every word inside it, but I let her watch me look.
"Voting control. You've raised it each time we've talked.
My answer has not changed in the past and it will not change today.
Thornwood Industries is acquiring Windemere Maritime.
This is not a partnership and I will not accept anything less than total and universal control over a company that I spend nearly eight hundred million buying. "
Her lower wings still. That alone tells me she expected a longer conversation about it.
"The Windemere name has opened doors for well over a hundred years." She squares her shoulders and I watch her composure snap into place like the mask it is. "Retaining some measure of family influence over the company's strategic direction seems reasonable, given my family history."
"Your family's history is just that, history.
" I close the folder with a dry snapping sound of paper on paper.
"What your company brings now is a terminal concession up for renewal in five years, an infrastructure backlog that would make an accountant weep, and a name that is guaranteed to make investors run the opposite direction.
Voting control is not on the table for you, Adelaide. "
The room descends in a deadly kind of quiet. Her foot stops tapping.
Then, because she is smarter than her stubbornness suggests, she moves on.
"A permanent board seat, then." She shifts her posture by a fraction, the shift of someone recalibrating. "Lifetime appointment."
It was never going to be a surprise. A board position is a grace I can easily extend to the heiress of one of the most influential families on the West Coast. She may be an heiress in dire need of liquidity, but despite what I told her, her name can still be useful to me.
"Agreed."
She blinks like she expected another fight, then her shoulders relax and some of the tension around her mouth loosens.
A board seat is an easy concession for me to make. It's mostly cosmetic, anyway. She can sit on it for the rest of her natural life and feel like Adelaide Windemere of Windemere Maritime while I run the actual company.
Everyone wins something. Despite what the tabloids like to say, I'm not a monster.
"The naming rights," she says, and there's a steadier quality to her voice now. She's found her footing. "In perpetuity. The Windemere name stays on the buildings."
"Agreed." Another easy concession.
She opens her mouth, then closes it. She was braced for a fight on that one too. This is making her nervous.
I'm not. I know exactly where I stand and where to push. Naming rights, board seats and the likes are just ornamental distractions for me.
Plus, I actually want the Windemere name. It opens doors in Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and Shanghai that Thornwood Industries alone cannot open.
I have no intention of telling Adelaide this. She'd only use it to get more out of my very deep pockets.
"Do we have a deal, then?"
Adelaide Windemere's wings go fully still for the first time since she sat down. All four of them.
She looks at me across the desk the way people look when they've been braced for a long war and the other side has just surrendered the territory they wanted most.
She has nothing left to stall with. She knows it.
It takes her forty seconds. I give her the time. She sits with whatever grief lives under the business veneer, and comes back to herself. She is not stupid. She knows what she is doing and what she is giving up.
"We have a deal, Mr. Thornwood." She nods, like she needs to tell herself this is the right thing to do. "Congratulations are in order, I believe."
"My lawyers will be in touch about final documentation," I say, keeping my face and voice blank.
"I'm sure they will." Her voice is clipped and professional and almost entirely without affect.
She stands. Her wings rearrange themselves into perfect position, composed as a painted portrait. She picks up her bag and extends her hand to me.
I engulf it inside my much larger one. Her grip is firm for one so small.
"Mr. Thornwood." She holds my gaze.
"Miss Windemere."
She walks to the door. I watch the door close behind her.
The room is quiet when I'm finally alone.
I've achieved what my grandfather couldn't.
I sat across from Cornelius Thornwood at a desk very much like this one when he told me that the next century of logistics was in the Pacific. He had blueprints, diagrams, notes in that cramped handwriting of his that was impossible to read unless you had known it your whole life.
He said: someday, boy. Someday we'll take the Thornwood name all the way to the West Coast.
Cornelius ran out of somedays, but I never forgot.
My eyes go to the photograph on the left of the phone.
It's small, set in a delicate silver frame.
Cornelius Thornwood stands proud and tall, looking straight into the camera with the shrewd gaze that made our family's fortune.
His horns are long and polished to a high shine, offsetting the salt and pepper fur at his temples.
My grandmother's hand rests on his shoulder, her elegant snout stretched in a proud smile.
And me. Eighteen years old, cap and gown, tall, awkward and lanky the way every young minotaur is before his frame fills in. My horns too wide for my body. My hooves too thin.
I've done it, old bull. I took us to the Pacific.
I should feel something stronger than this. I keep waiting for it and it doesn't come. What is here instead is something that takes up space in the chest. Like finishing a sentence someone else started and realizing the room they were speaking in is empty.
The intercom clicks.
"Afternoon, Mr. Thornwood." My secretary's voice comes through immediately.
"I'm ready for the afternoon docket, Gertrude. You can come in."
The next moment, Gertrude walks in. She is an orc woman of impeccable style and poise and even after ten years I still haven't gathered the courage to ask her age. Not that I think she would answer.
It doesn't matter. She is as efficient as a hell hound and as clever as a sphinx and I pay her generously enough to ensure I will never have to find out what the alternative looks like.
Her spring green skin is offset by a charcoal skirt and ivory blouse, her polished tusks gleaming under the harsh office light.
Her black hair is worn in a tight chignon at her nape.
She carries a tablet under one arm and a coffee in the other.
She sets both at the right corner of my desk and takes a step back.
"How was Positano?" I ask before she can take another step toward the door.
She turns with a surprised expression. Then her lips stretch in a genuine smile.
"It was wonderful, sir. Thank you."
I nod, satisfied with the answer, then reach for my coffee.
"I still don't know how I'll make it up to you," she says. "It was so generous of you."
"It was a wedding gift. You have nothing to repay me." I frown, then take a sip. Perfect. Gertrude is truly a gem. I'd send her to Fiji for two weeks every year just to have the pleasure of drinking her coffee on a day like today. "All I wanted to know is if you and your mate had a good time."
"It was the best two weeks of my life."
"Then that's all I need to know."
She turns for the door. She is almost through it when she stops and looks back.
"Sir, one more thing. There's a Mrs. Fairweather on the second line. She's called twice. She said it was urgent both times. I told her you were in an important business meeting and I'd put her through the moment you were free."
I put the coffee down.
Mrs. Fairweather is the housekeeper for my family's estate in Saltford Bay.
She has worked for my grandmother for over thirty years.
In those thirty-plus years, Mrs. Fairweather has called this office exactly three times.
Twice about my grandmother's seventieth birthday party.
Once when the Stronghold's north wing caught fire in 2019.
If she called, she has a reason.
"Put her through. Close the door."
Gertrude nods and closes the door.
The line picks up before the first ring finishes.
"Demetrius." Mrs. Fairweather's voice is shaky and thin. It puts me on high alert.
"What is it, Mrs. Fairweather?"
"Your grandmother fell this morning. The landing at the top of the main stairs," she says all of that in a single breath, and my body goes cold, from the tip of my horns to the bottom of my hooves. "They're taking her to Elven Mercy in Portland as we speak."
That cold feeling spreads to my ribcage and I have to force air into my lungs to keep breathing.
"Is she..."
"She'll be fine, Demetrius. She asked me if I had remembered to turn the kettle off before the ambulance took her away."
Of course she did. Agatha Thornwood is like Stronghold itself. Immovable.
"Thank you, Mrs. Fairweather. I'll be on my way now."
"Demetrius?" The old woman sounds close to tears. "Will you keep me in the loop about your grandmother's health?"
"Of course, I will."
She hangs up. I press the intercom.
"Gertrude."
"Sir?"
"Ready the jet now and clear my afternoon." I think better of it a second later. "Clear tomorrow as well. Heck, clear my entire week. My grandmother is in an ambulance on the way to a hospital. Push the Rotterdam meeting to Patel. Don't let anyone bother me before I give you the green light."
"Yes, sir."
I get up and pick up my coat. No business deal, large or small, is as important to me as Agatha Thornwood.