11. Maris #2
His lips pull back in something that might be trying to be a smile but comes out more like a snarl. "Move now, or I'll have security remove you bodily from the premises. How will that look for your little business? The café owner who had to be escorted out of a charity event?"
From inside the room, I hear another crash. The kitten yowls louder. My heart hammers.
"No."
He grabs my arm. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to mean it. I react on instinct, bringing my knee up sharp and fast. He doubles over with a wheeze.
The door behind me splinters. Not opens. Splinters. Wood cracks and buckles, and then Grath is there, filling the doorway like a wall of muscle and fury. He's holding the kitten in one massive hand. The tiny creature looks furious but unharmed.
In his other hand, he's clutching a manila folder stuffed with papers.
"Found it," he says grimly.
The assistant straightens, one hand pressed to his stomach. His eyes go wide when he sees Grath.
"You're trespassing. Both of you."
"So are you." Grath holds up the folder. "These bribe ledgers and falsified inspections show demolition scheduled before you even made the purchase offer. You were planning to tear down the rowhouses whether we agreed to sell or not."
"Those are private documents."
"Private documents stored next to a kidnapped kitten and a stack of falsified inspection reports." Grath's voice is stone. "We've got recordings too. Your phone calls to the inspection office. Your bribes to the zoning board."
The assistant's face goes from red to white. "You can't prove any of that."
"Actually," I say, pulling out my phone, "we can."
I hit play. The assistant's voice crackles through the speaker, tinny but clear. Bribes. Threats. Plans to drive out tenants through harassment and false violations.
We recorded it all. Every damning word.
His hand shoots out, grabbing for my phone. I yank it back, but he's faster than I expected. His fingers close around my wrist, twisting hard.
Grath moves.
It's not elegant. It's not even particularly coordinated. It's just pure, protective fury compressed into seven feet of orc launching himself at a problem.
They collide. The assistant goes down like a sack of expensive flour. Grath pulls the punch at the last second, but the man still hits the marble with a crack that makes me wince.
Then the henchmen arrive.
Two of them, built like refrigerators in suits. They take one look at the situation and charge.
What follows is less fight scene and more slapstick catastrophe.
Grath swings. Misses. His fist punches through the drywall. He yanks it back out, trailing dust and electrical wire.
I throw my phone to one of our allies in the hallway, a barista named Ty who catches it and runs.
One of the henchmen grabs for me. I duck, and he crashes into a serving cart. Champagne bottles explode like fragmentation grenades. Foam and glass everywhere.
The kitten, still clutched in Grath's hand, takes a swipe at the second henchman's face. Tiny claws rake across his cheek. He yelps, stumbling backward into a decorative plant.
The plant topples. The pot shatters. Soil sprays across the pristine marble.
We're making a mess. A glorious, catastrophic mess.
"The chandelier!" I shout.
Grath looks up. The massive crystal fixture sways ominously, its chain rattling from where the henchman's shoulder clipped the support beam.
"That's not good," Grath says.
"No. It's not."
The assistant scrambles to his feet, blood trickling from his nose. He lunges for the folder Grath dropped. I dive. We hit the floor together, grappling for the papers. His elbow catches my ribs. I bite back a gasp and hook my foot behind his ankle, sending him sprawling.
Grath roars. The sound fills the hallway, primal and furious. The henchmen freeze.
Then the kitten leaps.
I don't know how. I don't know why. But that tiny ball of fur launches itself from Grath's hand with the precision of a heat-seeking missile and lands directly on the closest henchman's face.
Claws out. Teeth bared.
The man screams. High-pitched. Undignified.
He staggers backward, hands flailing, trying to dislodge the furious creature attached to his head. His foot hits a puddle of champagne. He goes down hard, skull bouncing off the marble with a sound that makes my teeth ache.
He doesn't get up.
The second henchman takes one look at his unconscious partner and raises his hands in surrender.
Smart man.
The assistant tries to run. Grath catches him by the collar, lifting him clean off his feet.
"I don't think so."
The crowd has found us by now. They pour into the hallway, a river of expensive clothes and shocked faces. Someone's already filming. Good. Let them. Let everyone see.
I snatch the folder from the floor and hold it high.
"The fake reports!" I shout. My voice cracks, but it carries. "Demolition plans dated three weeks before the purchase offer. Falsified inspection reports. Bribery. It's all here."
A murmur ripples through the crowd. The developer pushes forward, his face purple.
"This is slander! Lies!"
"Lies recorded on your assistant's own phone." I pull out a backup recorder we stashed with Ty. Hit play again.
The assistant's voice crackles through the speaker. Crystal clear. Every damning word preserved in digital perfection.
The crowd's murmur shifts, darkens, turns angry.
The air changes temperature. Edith steps forward, her jewelry catching the light, her face transformed into something harder than steel.
Gone is the cheerful neighbor who brings me day-old scones and gossips over coffee.
This is Edith the investor, Edith the bulldozer, Edith who built a business empire in heels and never once apologized for taking up space.
"We trusted you," she says, and her voice could cut glass. "You came to our community meetings. You shook our hands. You looked us in the eye and said you wanted to improve the neighborhood. You promised preservation. Partnership."
The developer's face goes from purple to gray. He holds up his hands, backing away from the fury in her expression.
"I do! I did! This is all a misunderstanding, a terrible misunderstanding."
"The only misunderstanding," Grath says, still holding the assistant by his collar, "is that you thought we'd let you destroy our home."
More voices rise. The café regulars, other shop owners, residents from the rowhouses. They press closer, a wall of righteous fury.
Someone's called the police. I can hear sirens in the distance.
The developer tries to leave. The crowd blocks him. Not violently. Just present. Immovable.
When the officers arrive, it takes less than five minutes to sort the truth from the lies. The recordings. The blueprints. The assistant crumbles under questioning, throwing the developer under the bus with impressive speed.
Arrests are made. Handcuffs click. The crowd cheers.
I wait in the middle of the chaos, clutching the kitten, who Grath finally handed over, and trying to process that we actually did it.
We won.
The rooftop garden is quiet. Empty. The gala continues below, but muted now, background noise to the sound of my heartbeat gradually slowing to normal.
Grath leans against the railing, his borrowed shirt torn at the shoulder, bow tie long gone. He looks exhausted. Triumphant. Beautiful in the way that broken things sometimes are when they've survived something terrible and come out whole on the other side.
I set the kitten down. It immediately starts grooming itself with offended dignity, as though the evening's heroics were a personal insult.
"You found my note," Grath says quietly.
I did. This morning, slipped under the café door. I'd read it three times before I could make myself put it down.
"You're an idiot," I tell him.
He flinches. I step closer.
"You're an idiot for thinking I don't love you. For thinking you have to earn it or prove yourself worthy or whatever stupid, self-sacrificing thing you've got rattling around in that thick skull."
His eyes widen. Hope flickers there, tentative and fragile.
"I love you," I say. The words feel huge. Terrifying. True. "I've been in love with you since you crashed into my café covered in mud and wouldn't stop apologizing to the kitten. I'm just really, really bad at admitting when I need someone."
"You don't need to need me," he says roughly. "You're the strongest person I know."
"I don't need to need you," I agree. "But I want to. I want you there when things fall apart. I want you there when they don't. I want you taking up too much space in my kitchen and breaking my furniture with your ridiculous muscles and making me laugh when I'm trying to stay mad."
He reaches for me. His hands, still dusty with drywall and champagne, cup my face with a gentleness that makes me ache.
"I'm still terrified," he admits.
"Me too."
"I don't know how to do this. How to be in love without waiting for it to get ripped away."
"Neither do I." I lean into his touch. "But I think maybe we figure it out together. Badly. With lots of mistakes and property damage."
He laughs. The sound is rough, almost broken, but real.
"I can do that."
"Good."
He kisses me. Slow and deep and tasting of relief and champagne-soaked chaos. His arms wrap around me, solid and safe, and for the first time in weeks, maybe years, I let myself relax into it. Let myself be held without flinching at the vulnerability.
Below us, the city sparkles. The café waits. Tomorrow we'll have to deal with the aftermath, the press, the inevitable bureaucratic nightmare of prosecuting corrupt developers.
But tonight, up here in the quiet dark with Grath's heartbeat steady under my palm and the kitten purring at our feet, I let myself have this.
I let myself have him.
And it feels like coming home.