8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Demetrius
The phone rings at exactly the wrong moment.
I have papers spread across the entirety of Cornelius's old desk, and I am deep in a line-by-line of the Windemere asset transfer schedule that has required every functioning neuron I own.
There is coffee going cold at my elbow. There are three separate memos from Patel I haven't answered yet because Patel, bless his efficient soul, has decided that more communication is always more helpful.
I am, in short, a man buried by work.
"Yeah." I nearly shout into the receiver.
"Mr. Thornwood. I hope I'm not interrupting."
Gertrude's voice is startled and high-pitched and I immediately regret my impulsiveness. I'm not normally quick-tempered, but this deal has me all in knots.
"You're never interrupting, Gertrude." This is true. Gertrude calling means something has happened that requires my attention. She never calls when something doesn't require my attention. She is constitutionally incapable of wasting my time. It's one of the things I respect about her. "What is it?"
"I have Hartley on hold." A pause, precise as a period. "He says it's the Windemere agreement."
Of course it is. He's one of my best lawyers and the one I put in charge of the Windemere acquisition legal team.
I put down my pen. "Put him through."
The line goes quiet, then Hartley's voice comes through.
James Hartley has been my corporate counsel for nine years.
He is an elf with the cadence of a tenured professor delivering bad news to undergraduates, which is to say he never uses one word when four will do, and he never delivers the problem before he has delivered the extensive, fully annotated preamble.
I let him have the preamble, grunting at the appropriate intervals while he rambles about the three-hundred-page contract Adelaide Windemere sent him.
"The gist of it is," Hartley finally says, what feels like an hour later, "Miss Windemere's counsel has introduced one additional condition."
I frown, suddenly focused on the conversation. "What condition?"
"Personal relocation of the new majority owner." The word falls into the receiver like a dropped stone. "She wants you physically present at the Long Beach facility. On-site. For five years."
I go still. That, I didn't see coming.
"She is citing workforce protection concerns and a desire to ensure operational continuity. Their exact words, not mine."
"She can't be serious," I say, hearing myself getting angrier by the second. "This is an egregious overreach."
"Let me assure you that I've pushed back and told her counsel that her latest condition was unacceptable, but I'm afraid she's standing on principle. She wants it or she walks from the deal. Rumor has it that a few kraken investors from China have made her a competing offer."
Something shifts in my chest, cold and sharp, and my hand tightens around the pen until I hear my own knuckles crack.
"She has a board seat," I say. "She has naming rights in perpetuity.
She has the assurance that I'm not going to drive the Windemere workforce into the ocean the week after signing.
Now she wants my physical body on the West Coast for five years as a term of sale or she'll sell to some foreign kraken investor? "
"In essence." A pause. "Yes."
I breathe out through my nose.
The thing about Adelaide Windemere is that she has nothing left to stall with and she knows it.
Every demand has been met or gracefully declined.
The signing is two weeks from today. She is a woman standing at the edge of a pool she has been circling for years, and she has just invented a reason not to jump.
She is not wrong, exactly, that an absentee owner could hurt the old Windemere Maritime workforce.
I've already agreed not to lay off employees for six months, but I already have corporate offices in Boston and I hadn't planned on keeping that particular part of her operation on the payroll.
If I'm relocating to Long Beach, then I would definitely want the new administrative office close to my vest. The first few years after an acquisition are always delicate and I love to monitor everything closely.
I understand the tactic. I might even, on another morning in another life, respect it.
"Fine. I'll agree to those terms," I say with a bite. "With one clause. I retain the right to four months of absence per calendar year at my discretion. I have a multinational company to run, not just a terminal concession in Long Beach. Four months out of twelve. Non-negotiable."
Hartley is quiet for a moment, making a sound that means he is writing. "I'll convey the response."
"Do it today. I want this finalized as soon as possible."
I hang up.
The study is very quiet.
I stand and walk to the window. The ocean lies out beyond the estate grounds, silver-grey under an overcast sky, and I stare at it without registering what I am looking at.
I growl at nothing and go outside.
The grounds of Stronghold in late May carry a particular smell, salt and new grass and the faint sweetness of something blooming somewhere out past the kitchen garden. The paths here are old stone, worn smooth, and my feet know them well enough to carry me without any conscious direction.
I find myself in the rose garden.
My mother's rose garden. Eloise Thornwood, who tended it herself every spring, early morning before breakfast, kneeling in the soil. I was twelve when I started coming here when things were heavy and the walls of Stronghold felt like they were leaning in.
And now I'm back.
There is an old cast iron bench at the center of the garden. I sit on it and take in the view.
The roses are just starting, deep red and dusty pink, and they fill the air with their perfume. I sit there and stare at them as time passes. I'm not sure how long, and to be honest, I don't care. It had been too long since I came here last.
I hear footsteps on the stone path behind me and I know instantly who they belong to.
She has a particular way of walking. Unhurried, but purposeful. I am completely aware of how unhinged me knowing the sound of her footsteps is.
I don't turn around.
She comes around the bench and sits beside me, leaving several inches of cast iron between us.
She is in her off-duty clothes, which means jeans and a worn oversized grey sweater that keeps sliding off one shoulder, and her dark hair is loose and slightly windblown.
She is carrying what I now understand is her permanent accessory at all times outside of working: a mug of coffee.
No, not true. This morning she's carrying two mugs.
She hands me one as she takes a sip.
I take it with a nod of thanks.
"Your grandmother," Maddie says, "staged a coup at the Knitters Club."
I look at her.
"She's like Machiavellia with a crochet hook," she continues.
"She sits in the good chair, the one by the window, and she just, presides over the meeting.
I feel like everyone is terrified of her.
She even told Evelyn Primrose her tension was uneven and I expected a riot, but nope.
Evelyn just nodded and ripped her work and then started again. "
"Was Evelyn's tension uneven?"
"Appallingly." A pause. "But so was Agatha's. Not that anyone would dare tell her that."
Something comes loose in my chest and I laugh. The laugh comes out bigger than I expected. It travels out into the rose garden and disperses into the blue sky and I sit there for a moment, surprised by it.
Maddie looks at me. There is a bloom of warmth in her expression and it churns something deep in my chest.
"You should do that more," she says.
I look at her. "Do what?"
"Laugh." She tips her mug. "You look like the old you when you laugh. You should do it more often."
I take a long, deep breath. "I wish I did."
She turns the mug in her hands. "While I've got you. I'm going to need a day off, not this Sunday but the next. I'm telling you early so you can line up cover for Agatha, though she'll be well enough by then to go without me for a day."
"Done," I say. "What for?"
"Dad is throwing my mom a cancerversary party. A year since they told her she was clear. He wants to celebrate it properly. He invited the entire neighborhood."
"Of course," I say. "Take the weekend if you want it."
She cuts me a look. "A day's plenty."
She looks out at the roses and I take the opportunity to look at her profile. I've always loved her profile. There's just something about the elegant shape of her neck, the graceful curve of her nose, that fascinates me.
"How did you know to find me here?" I ask.
She turns back to me, a smile threatening at her lips, and something in my chest trips over its own feet.
"This is where you go when you're upset." She tilts her head. "You're not all that unpredictable, mister great CEO."
She is watching me with her eyes so soft I forget who I am for a second. I've always felt that way when Maddie gave me her full attention. Comfortable and exposed simultaneously, like standing in warm sunlight that shows up all the dust in my mind.
"I'm having some trouble that I wished I didn't have to deal with," I say, after hesitating just a little. "Thornwood Industries is acquiring Windemere Maritime and the heiress of the Windemere family is proving quite the negotiator."
Her brow goes up another fraction. "Wow! That's a huge deal. Isn't Windemere Maritime the biggest player on the West Coast?"
"You're well informed." I turn the coffee mug in my hands. "Or they were, a few decades ago. They're running on fumes and reputation now." I shake my head. "But once I take it over, I'll turn all that around."
"That's incredible." She is quiet for a moment. "I'm sure it's a lot of work."