Chapter 19
CYPRESS
The Bloodaxe stronghold rises from the mountainside like a monument to centuries of conquest, all weathered stone walls and iron-spiked battlements that look deeply incongruous next to the solar panel array Knox installed last spring and the satellite dish that ensures reliable video conferencing with the New York office.
I adjust my grip on my tablet and take a deep breath of the crisp mountain air, steeling myself for what promises to be the most challenging negotiation of my entire career.
Knox's mother is waiting for us in the great hall.
Brunhilde Bloodaxe stands seven feet tall in her ceremonial armor, her tusks carved with intricate patterns that denote her status as the supreme matriarch of eleven mountain clans, and she regards me with the same expression she might use to evaluate a particularly questionable tax return.
Two years of quarterly visits have done little to soften her initial assessment that I am too small, too soft, and far too reliant on caffeine to properly manage her son's domestic affairs.
"Daughter of my son's choosing. You have brought the quarterly reports I requested."
"I have." I step forward and hand her my tablet, which looks comically tiny in her green hands.
"You'll notice that our profit margins have increased by eighteen percent since last quarter, primarily due to the aggressive acquisition strategy we implemented in the tech sector.
Page seven contains a detailed breakdown of the synergies we've achieved through vertical integration. "
Brunhilde scrolls through the data with surprising dexterity, her eyes narrowing at certain figures in a way that tells me she has already identified the three minor discrepancies I intentionally left in the document as a test of her attention to detail.
She misses nothing, this woman, and I learned very early in our relationship that attempting to hide information from her is both futile and deeply insulting.
"Your depreciation calculations on the Seattle property are incorrect."
"They're not incorrect. They're aggressive.
The IRS allows for accelerated depreciation on properties used primarily for research and development, and I've structured our usage reports to maximize that classification.
It's technically legal, strategically advantageous, and saves us approximately four million dollars annually. "
The great hall falls silent. Knox, standing beside me with his hand warm and steady on my lower back, makes a sound that might be pride or might be terror.
His three younger brothers, gathered around the stone fireplace, exchange glances that suggest they are mentally calculating whether they can reach the exits before the inevitable explosion.
Brunhilde's eyes meet mine, and something shifts in her expression—a crack in the fortress of her perpetual disapproval that I have been working to widen for twenty-four consecutive months.
"You deliberately manipulated the tax code to benefit your clan's treasury."
"I did."
"Using methods that exist within the letter of the law while thoroughly violating its spirit."
"Absolutely."
"And you felt no moral hesitation in doing so."
"Brunhilde, the federal government collected over four trillion dollars in revenue last fiscal year.
They will survive without our four million.
Meanwhile, that money funded the employee profit-sharing program that allowed thirty-seven of our junior analysts to make down payments on their first homes. I sleep extremely well at night."
The silence stretches for what feels like an eternity. Knox's hand tightens on my back, and I can feel the tension radiating through his entire body as he prepares to defend me against whatever judgment his mother is about to deliver.
Then Brunhilde does something I have never seen her do in two years of quarterly visits, holiday gatherings, and one deeply memorable incident involving a spreadsheet error and a thrown battle axe.
She laughs.
The sound is a booming cascade of genuine amusement that shakes dust from the ancient rafters and startles a family of nesting birds into panicked flight.
She laughs until tears stream down her weathered green cheeks, until Knox's brothers are staring at her with expressions of pure shock, until Knox himself looks like he might need to sit down.
"Finally." Brunhilde wipes her eyes with the back of one hand and fixes me with a gaze that holds something warm and fierce and utterly unexpected.
"Finally, my son has brought home a true Bloodaxe.
Two years I have waited for you to stop tiptoeing around me like a frightened hatchling.
Two years I have tested your spine, and you have bent and accommodated and compromised when you should have stood firm and shown me your teeth. "
"I was trying to be respectful of your cultural traditions."
"Respect is earned through strength, small one, not through deference.
You have commanded boardrooms full of warriors.
You have faced down hostile takeovers and regulatory investigations and my son's truly appalling approach to expense report organization.
Yet you walked into my hall and became meek.
" She reaches out and cups my face in one hand, her touch surprisingly gentle.
"Today you finally showed me the woman my son fell in love with.
The valkyrie of commerce. The shield-maiden of the spreadsheet. "
My throat tightens unexpectedly. "I wasn't sure you actually liked me."
"Like you? Child, I have liked you since you corrected my son's mental math in front of his entire conquered territory.
But liking is not enough for a Bloodaxe bonding.
I needed to know you could stand beside him as an equal, not behind him as a shadow.
" She releases my face and straightens to her full towering height.
"Welcome to the clan, Cypress Bloodaxe. Truly and finally welcome. "
Knox pulls me against his side and presses a kiss to the top of my head, and I can feel him shaking with relief and joy and something that might be suppressed laughter at the sheer absurdity of this moment.
"I told you she would love you eventually."
"You told me she once made a rival chieftain cry by critiquing his quarterly projections."
"Both statements can be true simultaneously."
Brunhilde is already calling for mead and meat and the ceremonial ledgers that apparently document every Bloodaxe union for the past eight hundred years, and Knox's brothers are arguing about who gets to add our names to the record, and somewhere in the chaos I find myself laughing too—at the improbability of my life, at the green-skinned giant who broke down a conference room door and refused to leave until I agreed to be his partner, at the terrifying mother-in-law who has finally decided I am worthy of her legacy.
Two years ago, I was drowning in student loans and slowly dying of boredom in a job that treated me like furniture. Now I run the most feared firm on Wall Street beside the love of my life, and I have just won the approval of an Orcish matriarch by defending my creative approach to tax law.
The coffee is still terrible up here in the Thornback Mountains—which, it turns out, requires a four-hour private clan flight and a deeply terrifying helicopter drop from Wall Street—and the WiFi cuts out every time there's a strong wind.
Plus, Knox's youngest brother keeps challenging me to arm wrestling contests that I lose in approximately half a second.
But I have never been happier.