Dominic
Exactly two weeks after I leave Elena’s condo, Evan walks into my office, closes the report on my desk, and takes it with him.
I stare at the empty space it left behind. “Put that back.”
“No.”
“I was reading it.”
“You’ve read it twice.”
“I was reviewing it.”
“You changed one comma during the second review.”
It’s Monday morning, and I’ve already been here for more than three hours. The executive floor is filling outside my glass walls, but no one has come near my office since I arrived. Evan appears to have volunteered for the assignment.
He slips the report beneath his arm, the crisp edge of the paper a final, deliberate sound in the quiet office. He looks at me with the patience of a man who knows I’m unlikely to fire the only person willing to tell me when I’m being an asshole.
“You cleared my weekend,” I say.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“You also didn’t ask me to schedule four additional meetings for Saturday.”
“I need the meetings.”
“You don’t. Two were status updates you could’ve handled by email. One was with an executive who has been avoiding you since you requested a Sunday forecast call last week, and the fourth was with me.”
“That sounds useful.”
“I declined.”
I lean back, the leather of my chair groaning in protest as I try to find a position of authority he’ll actually respect. “You can’t decline a meeting with your boss.”
“I can when the purpose is helping my boss pretend fourteen-hour workdays are a strategic necessity.”
There it is.
Evan has worked with me long enough to recognize when the pace is deliberate. He knew something had changed when I started leaving the office earlier seven months ago. He noticed the protected evenings on my calendar and the weekend blocks that appeared without explanations.
Now he sees what I’ve done with every empty hour.
“You’re paid to manage my schedule,” I remind him.
“I’m managing it.”
“By canceling half of it?”
“By refusing to help you work through another weekend when nothing on your desk requires it.”
He looks around the office, taking in the reports stacked beside my laptop and the coffee that went cold before seven.
“You’re going home Friday at a reasonable hour,” he says.
“I decide what’s reasonable.”
“The cleaning crew shouldn’t have to ask you to lift your feet so they can vacuum.”
A laugh almost gets out, a sharp, unfamiliar thing. It feels like it would tear something on the way up, so I swallow it down.
Evan’s impatience gives way to something quieter. He doesn’t ask what happened. He hasn’t asked once in the past two weeks, even after the appointments vanished from my calendar and Elena stopped coming through my private office door.
He lifts the report. “You have an acquisition strategy meeting in twenty minutes. This can wait.”
He walks out with it.
I should call him back. Instead, I open the preliminary acquisition packet on my laptop.
The numbers are familiar. I understand what the data is asking from me, and with enough attention, I can produce an answer. I wish anything else worked that way.
For two weeks, Elena and I have occupied the same building without being alone together once.
She remains exact in every meeting. She challenges weak assumptions, finds problems before anyone else sees them, and refuses to let personal pain touch her work. No one watching us would know she was in my bed the night before this distance began.
No one would know I told her I loved her.
I’ve kept every promise I made when I left. I don’t call her. I don’t touch her when we pass each other in a crowded room. I don’t send a message unless her role requires it, and I haven’t invented professional reasons to see her.
Every email gives her precisely what she needs.
Dominic: Revised forecast approved. Proceed with the updated assumptions.
Dominic: Legal has cleared the vendor change.
Dominic: Please attend Monday’s acquisition strategy meeting.
Her answers are brief and professional.
Elena: Understood.
Elena: Thank you.
Elena: I’ll be there.
She never signs her name. She knows she doesn’t need to.
I know when she arrives because I recognize her footsteps in the corridor. I notice when she leaves because some part of me tracks her even while the rest of me is discussing quarterly targets or reviewing a financing proposal.
She doesn’t pause after meetings anymore. There are no quiet comments once everyone else leaves, no look held across the table because we’re remembering something that happened outside the office.
I removed myself from her space, and Elena has respected the distance so completely that I understand why she relies on work when everything else becomes unbearable. I’m doing the same thing.
The acquisition strategy meeting begins under the name Project Northstar.
The preliminary packet contains no company name, CEO biography, or identifying information about the target’s executives and owners.
An intermediary brought the opportunity to Rowe Holdings and hasn’t received permission to disclose the client’s identity. Until that happens, we get anonymized financial statements, broad operational data, and enough information to decide whether this consulting firm is worth a real look.
The secrecy is standard at this stage. Elena is tense long before anyone asks for her analysis.
She sits four seats down from me with the packet open in front of her, one hand resting beside her laptop. She looks composed until the senior associate asks everyone to turn to the client-retention summary.
Her fingers tighten around her pen.
The movement lasts a second, maybe less. I notice because I notice everything she does now that I’ve forbidden myself from responding to any of it.
“The company has shown steady growth over five years,” the associate says. “Client retention is reported at ninety-two percent, with recurring engagements driving most of the annual revenue.”
Elena flips back two pages. “That retention figure is misleading.”
The associate pauses. “It comes directly from the initial materials.”
“They’re counting any renewal as full retention.” She turns the packet toward him and points to the account breakdown. “These six clients renewed at less than half their prior annual spend. If you measure retained revenue instead of logos, the number drops.”
His eyes drop to the page. “You’re right.”
“Recalculate it before we use the figure in the fit model.”
Her voice is the one she uses with clients—level, precise, and impersonal. It’s a voice I never heard in my bed. She also hasn’t looked at me once.
I make myself concentrate on the screen. “What else do we know about the ownership structure?”
“Current management holds a controlling interest. Minority equity is divided among several senior partners, but the intermediary hasn’t released percentages or leadership profiles.”
“When will they?”
“If we confirm preliminary interest, the intermediary will request permission to identify the target and release the restricted diligence package.”
“And if the client declines?”
“The process stops.”
I scan the financial summary. The opportunity is plausible. Rowe Holdings has the infrastructure to support a consulting division, and the target’s client base could give us entry into markets we’ve discussed for years. The underlying figures still need work.
Elena has already marked several issues in the margins.
“What’s your initial assessment?” I ask her.
She finally looks at me.
For a second, the exhaustion is plain in the skin beneath her eyes, a shadow she can’t quite hide. Then her focus sharpens, and the opening is gone.
“The target may fit our expansion strategy, but the data isn’t reliable enough to support a valuation range yet. My team should rebuild the operating model from the source figures.”
“How long?”
“Three days.”
The associate glances at her. “With the adjustments to retention and compensation, I estimated five.”
“You don’t have my team.”
A few people around the table smile. Elena doesn’t.
She taps one section of the packet. “We need to normalize executive compensation, separate project revenue from recurring engagements, and test the client concentration under the corrected retention assumptions. Three days is enough for an initial model.”
“Take three,” I say. “If you need five, tell me before the end of the second.”
“I won’t.”
The words are clipped, absolute. Against my will, I almost smile.
That is the Elena I know. She’s competent enough to make certainty attractive and stubborn enough to treat an extra forty-eight hours as a personal insult.
She lowers her eyes, but the tension doesn’t leave her shoulders.
I want to ask if she’s sleeping. Whether she’s eating anything besides the yogurt I saw on her desk yesterday. Whether she’s opened the notes app where I once found every admission she couldn’t make aloud.
Those questions no longer belong to me.
I turn back to the associate. “Elena’s team will handle the first-pass analysis. Keep the project code in place until the intermediary has authorization to release the target’s identity. Limit the current materials to the people in this room and the analysts Elena assigns.”
The associate nods. “Do you want to join the identity-release call if they approve it?”
“No. I’m booked through Thursday, and there’s no reason to add another executive to a preliminary call. Elena can represent finance and report back through the normal diligence process.”
Elena’s pen stops.
I wait for her to object. She doesn’t.
“Any issue with that?” I ask.
“No.”
The answer is smooth, but a flicker of strain tightens the skin around her eyes.
I can’t tell whether being assigned the call worries her or whether every direct question from me feels personal now. I have no information that justifies pushing beyond the answer she gave.
“Good,” I say. “Proceed with the model.”
The meeting ends twenty minutes later.
Elena gathers her papers while murmuring instructions to two members of her team. She gives each of them an assignment, clarifies what they can share, and tells the associate exactly which source data she needs by noon.