Chapter 8 #2
By the time the rain stops completely and the last rays of sunset begin to filter through the clouds, I am satisfied with the day's progress.
Our vendor alliance is secured, our supply chain restored, and our position significantly strengthened.
Vance will not find us easy prey, not with Cypress's brilliant mind guiding our defenses and my own strategic experience directing our attacks.
I am just beginning to compose a summary of our achievements for the clan elders back home when I hear a sharp intake of breath from the outer office.
The sound is quiet, easily missable if I had not been subconsciously tracking her movements all evening, but to my ears it rings out like an alarm.
I am on my feet and moving before my conscious mind registers the decision, my body responding to the distress in that small sound with an instinct that bypasses rational thought entirely.
Cypress is standing at my desk. Not her own neat workspace in the outer office, but my desk, the mahogany monstrosity that came with the corner office and which I have slowly begun to make my own.
She has a folder in her hands, unmarked and nondescript, the kind of plain manila envelope that could contain anything from expense reports to launch codes.
Her face has gone pale, all the color draining from her cheeks as she stares down at whatever documents she has discovered inside.
"Cypress?" I approach slowly, the way one might approach a wounded animal, careful not to startle her further. "What have you found?"
She looks up at me, and the expression on her face stops me in my tracks.
It is not fear, not exactly, though there is something vulnerable lurking in the depths of her eyes.
It is betrayal, raw and fresh, the look of someone who has just discovered that the ground beneath their feet is not as solid as they believed.
"What is this?" She asks. She holds up the folder, and I see the documents inside—dense legal text, corporate letterhead, signatures and seals that I recognize with a sinking feeling in my gut. "Knox, what is this?"
"This is a merger document." The words come out flat, accusatory, nothing like her usual professional tone. ""A proposal for combining your clan's holdings with the company assets. Dated your very first week in this building."
She takes a shaky breath, and when she continues.
"There's no mention of saving this company anywhere in these pages.
Just a plan to absorb the assets and eliminate the existing staff.
This was always the backup plan, wasn't it?
Strip the assets and dissolve everyone's jobs the moment things got too difficult. "
The merger document—I had forgotten it existed, a preliminary proposal drafted by clan bureaucrats right after I took command, before she convinced me we could save this enterprise, before everything changed.
It is ancient history, a relic of plans that no longer apply, but she does not know that.
She cannot know that, because I never told her.
"Cypress, listen to me—"
"Were you ever going to tell me?" She cuts me off.
I hear the fear beneath the anger now, the desperate hope that I will deny it, explain it away, prove that her trust in me was not misplaced.
"Or was I just... what, a useful tool? Someone to guide you through the acquisition before you threw me away like everyone else? "
"No." The word comes out too loud, too forceful, and I see her flinch. "That document is obsolete. It was drafted before I arrived, before I understood the situation here, before I met you. Everything changed when I saw what you were capable of, Cypress. Everything."
The war plays out behind her eyes. The folder trembles slightly in her grip, the papers rustling with the motion.
"I need..." She shakes her head, backing away from me, and every step she takes feels like a blade sliding between my ribs. "I need time to think. I need to understand what this means."
"Cypress, please—"
My jacket slips from her shoulders and pools on the floor, abandoned, and the sight of it lying there like a fallen flag of surrender makes something inside me crack.
"This changes nothing," I call after her, desperate and undignified and utterly unlike the warchief I have always prided myself on being. "Whatever that document says, whatever plans existed before—they are not my plans anymore. You are not disposable, Cypress. You are essential. You are—"
The elevator doors close on my words, cutting me off mid-sentence, and I am left standing alone in the empty office.
I regard the closed doors for a long moment, my mind racing through strategies and counter-strategies, trying to find the tactical approach that will fix this, that will bring her back, that will make her understand.
But for the first time in my life, I have no plan.
No backup strategy. No clever maneuver that will turn defeat into victory.
I have only the terrible, dawning realization that in my haste to prove myself worthy of conquering her, I may have lost her entirely.