10. Rafe #2
“Good. That’s good. Your father worries. We all do.”
We all do. As if his passive concern, invoking my mother’s illness in the middle of a ballroom, connected him more closely to the alpha and his family.
Quinn’s smile faded by a fraction.
Marco continued before I could redirect him. “You know, your father and I were reviewing the Newark routes last week. He still has the best instincts I’ve ever seen. Makes a man wonder how anyone can follow that.”
It wasn’t a direct challenge. Marco was too experienced for that. Just a weight set down gently enough that rejecting it would seem rude. A reminder: my father was a beloved, proven wolf. I was something else, and everyone was waiting to see whether I would fail.
My mother’s voice came back to me then, vivid as if she stood beside me in the ballroom in one of her old silk dresses. “When men wish to feel tall, they often stand on nonsense.”
She’d said it when I was sixteen, after a visiting pack elder spent an entire dinner asking whether dragon flight made me feel disconnected from the ground my father’s people protected.
I’d been furious and too young to hide it well.
My mother had tapped my wrist under the table until I looked at her.
“You needn’t win every room, Rafe,” she’d murmured later. “Some rooms are badly built.”
At sixteen, I hadn’t understood. I’d wanted to win every room precisely because so many seemed constructed to exclude me.
At thirty-three, I understood better. But understanding didn’t always help.
“My father’s instincts are excellent,” I said.
Marco smiled. “That they are. Big shoes to fill.”
Quinn shifted beside me, a subtle repositioning, Max’s leash changing from one hand to the other.
“Of course,” Marco said, taking another sip of wine, “you’ve got advantages your father never had. These days, a man can hire lawyers for everything.”
Quinn’s voice came in bright and smooth. “Oh, absolutely. We’re very useful. Like dentists, but with worse lighting and more PDFs.”
Marco looked at her. I did as well.
She smiled at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught what part of the Virelli business you’re involved with?”
“Transport,” he said, a little thrown by the pivot. “Fleet maintenance, routing contracts, customs coordination, secure cargo. The Virelli business moves what most companies can’t be trusted to touch.”
“That’s huge,” Quinn said, and somehow she made it sound genuine rather than flattering. “I worked in restaurants through school, and if one delivery was late, the whole night went sideways. I can’t imagine managing that at scale.”
Marco straightened. “Well, it takes a steady hand.”
“I bet.” She nudged Max with her knee and murmured something, a command in a language I didn’t recognize.
Max took two compact steps forward, then sat directly in front of Marco and raised one paw. The effect was immediate. Whatever point Marco had been preparing to make dissolved under the pressure of a dignified dog in formalwear offering a handshake.
“Well, look at you,” Marco said, laughing. He took Max’s paw. “Aren’t you a gentleman?”
Quinn turned to me and pointed across the ballroom. “Oh, there she is.”
I looked. There was no one I recognized in the direction she indicated.
“My auntie,” she added.
I looked back at her. She widened her eyes very slightly. Not enough for Marco to notice. Enough for me.
“Your auntie,” I repeated.
“Yes. She’ll be furious if I don’t introduce you.” She smiled at Marco. “It was so nice meeting you. I’m going to steal him before she starts waving. She’s a menace when ignored.”
Marco was still half-focused on Max. “Of course, of course. Rafe, we’ll talk later.”
“I expect we will,” I said.
Quinn touched my sleeve, and then we were moving.
She guided us away from Marco at a measured pace that didn’t make it seem like a retreat. Max fell into step beside her, his tail level, and his tie still immaculate.
Once we reached the far side of a large floral arrangement, I looked down at her. “Your auntie?”
Quinn kept walking. “Every crowded room has an auntie if you believe in yourself.”
“That is not how relatives work.”
“No, but it does allow for a graceful exit.”
Despite the sourness still lodged beneath my ribs, a huff of amusement escaped me. “You extracted me.”
“Well, things were turning sour.”
I stopped near the edge of the silent auction gallery, where the noise of the ballroom softened behind us. “Thank you. You’re very well attuned.”
Her expression shifted. The humor remained, but something more careful moved beneath it. “You’re welcome.”
I looked back across the room. Marco had joined another cluster of guests and was gesturing as he spoke, restored to his preferred size by a new audience.
“I could’ve handled him,” I said.
“I know.”
That wasn’t the answer I expected.
Quinn glanced up at me. “You didn’t look like you couldn’t handle him. You looked like you were tired of having to.”
The accuracy of it struck cleanly enough that I had to look away.
For once, I had no immediate rebuttal.
Max pressed his shoulder lightly against my leg, whether by accident or Quinn’s command, I couldn’t tell. His steady weight gave me a point of attention that wasn’t my own discomfort.
“You worked in restaurants?”
She turned to look at me, amused. “Did you think I owned one?”
The question startled me because, in some small and foolish part of my mind, yes. When she’d mentioned restaurants earlier, I’d pictured ownership, management, perhaps a family business. Not because that was the more likely explanation. Because it was the one my experience supplied first.
“No,” I said, then corrected myself because lying badly helped no one. “Possibly.”
Quinn laughed, and this time there was no sting in it. “I waited tables. Hosted. Catered weddings. Spent a deeply regrettable summer at a tapas place where the owner called everyone family right before asking us to cover unpaid side work.”
My jaw tightened. “Unpaid?”
“Technically, we were supposed to do it during paid hours. Logistically, the schedule was a crime scene. But I was paying for school, so my moral outrage had to fit between shifts.”
I disliked the casual way she said it. A person adapted to unfairness when refusing it cost too much.
“I assume law school is quite expensive?” I asked.
“And undergrad. Scholarships and students loans helped. Restaurant work filled in the gaps.”
She said it lightly, but I thought again of her building. The broken buzzer. The front door that failed to latch. The tote bag repaired rather than replaced. The dress she’d almost refused to let me pay for because accepting a business expense felt too close to owing someone.
“And your current internship?” I asked.
“Paid,” she said. “Technically.”
“That’s not encouraging.”
“It isn’t meant to be. Payton & Wallace pays better than some firms, which is a broad range.”
“Why stay?”
She glanced toward the ballroom, where the string quartet had moved into something livelier. “Because if I get one of the positions at the end of the internship, everything changes.”
Quinn took a breath, then took a sip of her champagne.
“And if I don’t, I’ll figure it out. People always say that like it’s empowering, but it’s mostly exhausting.
I have six months to become impossible to ignore.
Preferably in a way that doesn’t involve dropping coffee on senior partners, though I’m keeping my options open. ”
“You shouldn’t need to be impossible to ignore just to maybe get ahead in the end.
” I felt irritation rise, clean and focused now, no longer tied to Marco or the pack.
“If the firm benefits from your work, it should compensate you accordingly. If it expects excellence, it should pay for conditions that make excellence sustainable.”
For a second, she said nothing. Then she laughed, hard enough that I knew I’d missed something.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m sorry.” She pressed two fingers to the corner of her mouth. “I know you’re serious. It’s just… that was very beautifully put, and also you sounded like a man who has never had to choose between buying Max’s joint supplements and groceries.”
“I have not,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I guess you haven’t.”
“How much are your student loans?”
She blinked. “What?”
“You mentioned them. How much?”
“Rafe.”
“If they’re the reason you’re so worried about receiving an offer, why not eliminate them?”
She stared at me. Then she laughed again, but this time it was brighter, edged with disbelief. “Oh my god. You meant that.”
“Yes.”
“You mean pay them off?”
“Yes.”
“With what, the secret chests of gold I store in my closet?”
“I didn’t mean to imply?—”
“I know.” She held up a hand, still laughing a little. “I know you didn’t. That’s what makes it sweet and insane.”
“Sweet and insane,” I repeated. I watched her, then looked down at the dog. Max gazed back gravely, offering no legal opinion. “How much?” I asked again.
Her smile faltered.
The question had moved too close. I knew it as soon as I said it, but concern had a way of overruling tact if I didn’t watch it carefully.
My father called that leadership when it worked and interference when it didn’t.
My mother, on one of her clear days, had once called it love trying to put on armor before anyone had asked for protection.
I didn’t know what to call it with Quinn.
She shifted her weight in the satin heels. “A lot.”
“That’s not a number.”
“It’s the closest you’ll get from a number out of me.”
“Quinn—”
“No.” She said it softly, but firmly enough that I stopped. Then she smiled, saving us both from the edge of whatever had opened beneath the conversation. “I appreciate the concern. Truly. But I have a plan, and tonight the plan is not spiraling about debt next to a table of luxury dog portraits.”
I followed her gaze. On the nearest auction table, a sample portrait of a dachshund in a naval uniform stared into the middle distance.
“We can revisit the subject later,” I said.
“We absolutely cannot.”
“We appear to be at an impasse.”
“I’m comfortable with that.”