2. Declan
TWO
DECLAN
"Gentlemen," I began as I walked into the conference room at Ashton Lark Capital with my chief of staff, Graham, two steps behind me.
My eyes swept the table before my second foot crossed the threshold.
Glass walls, polished walnut, expensive furniture.
That was why Victor Sloane thought he could toss me around. I was going to prove him wrong.
Six bankers lined up on one side like a jury, two junior associates clutched their folders at the end. Three seats down sat the only woman at the table — dark hair pinned back, silk blouse, a legal pad in front of her. She looked up when I walked in. I smiled at her.
At the head, Victor Sloane sat with his jaw set, bald head shining under the fluorescent light. Well, good for you, Victor.
Nolan Reeves stood behind his own chair — six feet of stillness in a black suit, close-cropped hair, dark-skinned and unhurried, hands loose at his sides.
Julian Cross had already made himself comfortable.
A navy jacket was slung over the back of his chair.
His sleeves were rolled to the forearm. His hazel eyes found mine, and he gave me the faintest nod.
I sat. I waved my hand without turning. Graham disappeared and returned with three coffees — black for Nolan, oat milk for Julian, and a double espresso for me. He set them down without a sound, adjusted his wire-framed glasses, and folded himself against the wall.
I leaned back, crossing one ankle over my knee while looking at Sloane. "This place is as quiet as a graveyard. Why so gloomy, gentlemen? You've been waiting for me, no?"
Sloane didn't smile back. That was fine. I had enough smiles for both of us.
"Mr. Hale," Sloane began, "we have concerns about the leverage ratios on the Lassiter deal. The debt load you're proposing exceeds what our risk committee is comfortable underwriting at current spreads."
"Your risk committee." I picked up my espresso and took a sip.
Wonderful. Ashton Lark had terrible negotiators but excellent coffee.
"Victor, your risk committee flagged the Montclair deal in 2019.
We closed with a threefold return after eighteen months.
Then the Hargrove restructuring. Returned 4:1 by year two.
" I set the cup down. "How is your risk committee, by the way?
Do they need anything? Warmer socks? A night-light? "
Julian coughed into his coffee. Nolan didn't move. One of the junior associates bit his lip.
Sloane's neck turned a shade of red that clashed with his purple tie. "This isn't Montclair. The asset base is fundamentally different, and the cash flow projections — "
"Are conservative." I slid the revised model across the table.
"My team reran the numbers using your committee's preferred discount rate.
Even under the most conservative assumptions, the coverage ratio remains at 1:8 times through the first thirty-six months.
" I tapped the page. "That's with a 12% haircut on projected Earnings before Interests, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA).
We built in your pessimism, for you. You're welcome. "
Sloane opened the folder and read. His banker to the left leaned in and whispered something that sounded like a white flag.
“We’re concerned about the syndication timeline,” Sloane said. “If we can’t place the senior tranche by — ”
"You'll place it. Three of your top five institutional buyers have already received term sheets from my office. Informally, of course." I spread my hands. "We'd never presume."
Silence. Sloane's pen tapped the table. He was running out of angles, calculating whether he had enough pride left to burn or whether he should just take the deal and bill for it. I decided to help him along.
"Let me save you the trouble." My voice dropped, and the room dropped with it.
"You underwrote the Bellamy acquisition for Fortress last quarter at worse terms and higher leverage.
I know, because I read the filing. So either your risk committee has a selective memory, or this conversation is about something other than risk. " I held his eyes. "Which is it?"
Victor Sloane sat back, looked at the folder, then at me. He picked up his pen, uncapped it, and frowned as he signed the first page. "I'll have the commitment letter to your office by the end of the week."
"Wonderful." I stood, as I carefully buttoned my jacket and smoothed the front. Victor had earned the extra five seconds of watching me not rush. "Nice doing business with you, gentlemen."
I turned to leave and caught the woman's eye. I nodded. "Lady."
She blinked as I walked out.
Nolan fell into step on my right. Julian appeared on my left, shrugging his jacket on as we moved through the marble lobby. Our shoes echoed on the stone floor — three different rhythms that somehow sounded like one.
"The night-light comment was excessive," Julian said, grinning. "Nolan, thoughts?"
Nolan shrugged. "We got the deal. That's all that matters." He stopped. "I have to cut out. Some non-Vanguard business I need to sort out." He nodded at me. "I'll see you back at the company." He turned and disappeared.
"What do you think he's up to?" Julian asked.
"No idea. I'm not counting on him to tell us." I glanced at Julian. "Ready to head out?"
"I'll meet you up ahead at the office." He grinned. He clapped my shoulder and split toward the east exit.
I pushed through the revolving door.
Graham was already beside me. The car was three steps away. I reached for the door handle when I heard heels on concrete behind me. Quick. Determined.
I turned.
The woman from the conference room appeared, slightly out of breath, her legal pad tucked under one arm, cheeks flushed from cold or effort. Up close, she had a spray of freckles across her nose that her makeup almost covered. Her silk blouse pressed flat against her collarbone in the wind.
I gave Graham a look.
"Mr. Hale." She stopped in front of me and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "What you did there, that was impressive. I like how you handled the syndication objection."
"Thank you."
"I'm Rachel Whitmore. I'm on Sloane's capital markets team."
"I know."
That caught her. She recovered quickly. "I was wondering if you might want to get dinner sometime. There's a new place in Tribeca that — "
I took her hand, lifted it, and pressed my lips to her knuckles. "Sweetheart, I don't mix business with pleasure."
I let go. She stood there with her lips parted and the wind in her hair. I turned to the car. Graham already had the door open. I slid in and pulled it shut.
We made it half a block before the flash hit the windshield. Cameras — five, six of them — pressed against the glass, lenses swinging toward the back seat.
A reporter knocked on the window, her recorder thrust forward. "Mr. Hale! Can you confirm the Lassiter acquisition? Sources say the deal is worth two billion — "
Graham's hand hovered over the window control. I shook my head and lowered the glass myself. Three inches. Just enough. "I don't kiss and tell. You'll find out when everyone else does."
The window went back up. The car merged into traffic, and the cameras shrank in the side mirror until they were just dark shapes on a sidewalk I'd already forgotten.
Graham didn't comment. That was why I paid him what I paid him.
Back at the Vanguard, the floor moved as it always did when I stepped off the elevator.
Elise stood from the reception desk. An associate appeared with a briefing folder.
A junior analyst materialized with a term sheet that needed a signature.
Graham intercepted a call, redirected a meeting, and handled a catering issue for tomorrow's board lunch — all before I reached my office door.
I liked the rush of it. The choreography appealed to me. It ran without prompting, and everyone on the floor knew the tempo. My job was simply to walk through it.
Julian was behind my desk. Feet up. Eating an apple.
"Get out of my chair, Cross."
He didn't move. "The woman from Ashton Lark. Rachel something."
"Whitmore." I set my briefcase on the credenza and shrugged off my jacket.
"She's pretty."
"She works for our underwriter."
"So?"
"That muddies the waters. We're still trying to close this deal and I don't need complications."
Julian took a bite of his apple and chewed, watching me with that look he got when he was about to say something clever. "Well," he said, "looks like you've finally matured. Did someone sneak something in your food?"
I rolled my eyes. "Don't you have work to do? The Caine acquisition won't close on its own. The man is a stubborn old goose, and you're the best person to loosen him up."
Julian scoffed and swung his legs off the desk. "Me? I'm an artist, Hale. You can't just point me at — "
Suddenly, my phone rang.
We both looked at the screen. The name glowed against the dark glass.
Kira.
Julian stopped chewing.
I watched it ring. Two. Three. Then I reached over and declined. The screen went dark.
Julian nodded at the phone. "Kira is still bothering you?"
"She can't take the hint." I loosened my tie and pulled it over my head, tossing it on the desk. "And I sure as hell won't let her back in. She can't fool me twice."
Julian nodded, took another bite of his apple, and let it go.
But the image was already behind my eyes — Kira sitting across from me at a place she'd picked—a Dominican spot in Washington Heights with plastic chairs and a TV above the bar playing a baseball game nobody was watching.
She'd ordered for both of us in Spanish, and when I raised an eyebrow, she'd laughed and said, “Trust me.” The food arrived on mismatched plates, and it was the best meal I'd eaten in months.
She watched me eat with this look on her face — warm, amused, like she was seeing someone I hadn't meant to show her.
I shut it down and shoved it back into whatever drawer it kept crawling out of.
She left. That's what people did, and it was fine. It was on my terms.
"Go bother Caine," I told Julian.
He raised the apple in a mock salute and disappeared.
I sat down, pulled the Lassiter file toward me, and worked through the fourteen things that needed my attention before the London call at four.
The city was already dark when I stepped out of the lobby.
Graham had the car idling at the curb. I slid into the back seat without speaking, and he pulled into the river of red taillights heading uptown.
The leather seat was cool against my back.
I loosened the top two buttons of my shirt and let my head fall against the headrest.
We pulled up to the building, and the doorman had the glass door open before my foot hit the sidewalk. "Evening, Mr. Hale." I nodded, crossed the lobby, and took the private elevator up.
The penthouse was dark.
I stood inside the door and didn't reach for the lights. The city glowed through the floor-to-ceiling windows — forty stories of lit-up grid moving and breathing below me, and up here, nothing. Just the hum of an empty apartment.
I dropped my keys on the kitchen counter. The sound was loud against the marble. The fridge held sparkling water, leftover Thai food, and a bottle of Sancerre that Julian had left the last time he showed up uninvited. I ignored all of it and poured two fingers of whiskey.
The apartment was three months old. A designer had furnished it based on a single meeting where I'd said, "I don't care, just make it look finished.
" And it did. It also looked like no one lived here.
The books on the shelves were arranged by color.
I hadn't read any of them. No photographs.
No objects that meant anything. Just space and surfaces, clean and impersonal.
I'd never been good at staying. That wasn't self-pity, but it was arithmetic.
When a room got too familiar, and the walls felt like they still carried the ghost of the old tenant, I moved just like others waited for the next season.
The previous penthouse had lasted fourteen months.
But she'd been there, and even after she walked out, the rooms smelled like her perfume for weeks. I sold it within the month.
This place had three months left. I should start looking.
My father had done the same thing with houses. Different ones for different women, none of them the one my mother lived in, all of them temporary by design. I wasn't like him. I told myself that regularly enough that it almost worked.
I stood at the window with my drink, watching the city. My phone buzzed against the marble countertop.
I walked over and set the whiskey down. The screen glowed in the dark kitchen.
Kira.
I watched it ring. The name pulsed with each vibration. Four rings. Five. Voicemail.
Kira sitting across from me. Plastic chairs. The baseball game no one was watching. Trust me.
I picked up the phone, opened her contact, and blocked the number.
The screen went dark. I set the phone face down, finished my whiskey, and rinsed the glass.
The past needed to remain in the past.