Chapter 6
THE BLUE STREAK
KAIDEN
The painting arrives at seven in the morning.
I direct the delivery team to the wall opposite my desk. I have kept it bare since I moved into this apartment three years ago. They work with a quiet efficiency, and within minutes, the crate is open, and the men are gone.
Gray. Charcoal. That single, defiant streak of blue cutting through the gloom.
I had called the gallery before leaving the museum that night. The curator tried to explain that it was part of a private collection on loan and not for sale. I gave him a number to pass along to the owner, a figure high enough to end the conversation. He called back within the hour.
The painting hangs on the wall now, and I stand there longer than I should. My coffee grows cold in my hand.
I don't buy art. I don't wander the city on foot because my head is usually too loud to sit still. I am always strategic, always three steps ahead of the predator who shares my DNA.
Last night, I was none of those things.
Last night, I let a stranger give me a ticket for no reason.
I ate a pastry because a woman with chocolate on her thumb told me to live dangerously.
I caught her on a staircase and forgot to let go.
The painting is the only proof that for one evening, I was someone who could exist in a moment without an agenda.
My phone buzzes on the desk. Then again. The third vibration follows quickly, the specific pattern Ethan uses when he is panicking.
Ethan: Board meeting moved to Friday
Ethan: Your father's doing
Ethan: He is bringing the heavy hitters. Lawyers. Forensic accountants.
The gray rushes back in. No blue this time. I call him immediately.
“Before you say anything,” Ethan answers, “I already have Maddox looking into what they're planning.”
“Good morning to you, too.”
“It's not a good morning, Kai. Victor's making moves. He wants the energy contracts we just secured, and he's going to argue that ELK's renewable division falls under Hammond Industries charter from forty years ago.”
“That charter is prehistoric. It doesn't apply to technology that didn't exist when it was written.”
“Since when has your father cared about logic? He owns the manufacturer of the very chips we use. If he can’t take the company, he’ll squeeze the supply chain until we suffocate.”
“Then we bury him in precedent until he chokes on it.” My voice is flat and cold.
It is the voice I learned in boardrooms full of men who thought my last name was the only thing that made me valuable.
“Pull every case where legacy charter claims were dismissed. Get Maddox to find out which judges he’s bought and which ones he hasn’t reached yet. Find me leverage.”
“On your own father?”
“Anyone who's planning to vote against us.”
Ethan is quiet for a beat. “You don't have to be the one doing this. Logan and I can handle Victor. You don't need to go head-to-head with him again.”
“Yes, I do. This is my fight. He destroys things to prove a point, Ethan. I won’t let him do it to ELK.”
“Alright.” Keys click in the background. “Maddox has been digging, and he can't find a direct link between Victor and the board members pushing this motion. On paper, it looks like internal dissent.”
“Bet he’s using the board as a shield,” I say. “He’s making it look like a revolt rather than a direct attack. It’s his signature move. Plausible deniability while he twists the knife.”
“We need to flip one of them,” Ethan says. “Get someone to admit Victor is pulling the strings.”
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
ELK's headquarters occupy the top three floors of a glass tower in the financial district. My grandmother's money built the foundation, the inheritance I moved offshore before my father could sink his claws into it. But the rest, the growth and the reputation belonged to us.
The elevator opens into the executive suite, and I find Ethan exactly where I expected him, hunched over his desk with three monitors glowing. Empty energy drinks crowd his keyboard.
“You look terrible,” I say.
He glances up. “You look like you didn’t sleep. Glass houses, Kai.”
“I was thinking.”
Ethan swivels in his chair. His gray eyes narrow behind his glasses. “Thinking about the presentation or something else?
“No. Just thinking.”
Ethan studies me a beat too long. “You're being cagey. You're never cagey with me.”
“I'm not.”
“You are.” He turns back to his monitors. “Fine. Keep your secrets, but if you're spiraling about Victor again, I need to know so I can plan the fallout.”
The elevator dings, and Logan steps out with his helmet under one arm, his brown hair messy from the ride, and his leather jacket still on. He looks like he hasn't slept, but the grin says he doesn't care.
“Reyes hit 340 on the straight,” he says. “New track record. The bike is ready for the qualifier.”
“You were there at the tracks until midnight for a record?” Ethan asks.
“I was there because it's my team and I give a shit.” Logan drops into the chair across from Ethan. “Some of us have passions, you know.”
I pour myself a coffee and lean against the window frame.
Logan came into my life on a scholarship at boarding school, a kid from nowhere who outworked everyone.
Ethan was the rich black sheep who preferred hacking to galas.
When I decided to build something Victor couldn't touch, I didn't have to ask twice.
Logan became CEO because we both knew we needed someone who could keep our egos in check.
I handle the money. Ethan handles the tech. Logan handles us.
It works.
“So.” Logan swings his attention to me. “What's the play for Thursday?”
“We present a proposal so airtight that the council can't say no without looking corrupt. Maddox is digging into who Victor has reached out to. Vivien is handling the financials.”
Logan nods, but his eyes stay on me. He has always been too good at reading the gaps in a conversation. “You keep checking your phone,” he says.
I stop my hand mid-reach for my pocket. “No, I don’t.”
“You’ve looked at it three times since I walked in. Is it a deal?”
“Something like that.” I lie.
“Bullshit,” Logan says cheerfully. “You don't check your phone for deals. You have people for that.”
My phone buzzes before I can respond. I glance at the screen.
Mom: Darling, I heard your father has been making calls about ELK. He's in one of his moods. I hate being caught in the middle. Call me? I worry about you.
“Helena?” Ethan asks, reading my expression.
“Playing the concerned mother.”
“What does she want?”
I scan the message again. I worry about you. My mother has never worried about anyone but herself, but she's useful sometimes, a window into my father's thinking. She hears things, picks up details he lets slip when he's had too much wine at dinner.
“She says Victor's making calls. I’ll deal with her later. Right now, we focus on Thursday. We have a week to prepare.”
For the next two hours, we dig into strategy. The renewable energy contract would make ELK the primary provider for the city’s municipal buildings.
Throughout it all, I check my phone twice more. Nothing.
She has no reason to text me. She starts her new job on Monday. She is probably preparing with the friend who bailed on her last night. The only friend she has in this city, she had said. I grind my teeth thinking about her alone in a new place with no one to celebrate her win.
I could text her. Every version I write in my head gets deleted before my thumb moves.
“Okay.” Logan stretches, cracking his neck. “I need food. Ethan needs more of his bottled poison. Kai, you need to tell us what's actually going on with you.”
“Nothing is going on.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” Ethan says. “Your tell is the way your jaw ticks.”
“I don't have a tell.”
“You do,” Logan says. “Is it a woman? Last time you were this distracted was Brianna.”
“It isn't Brianna.” The words are sharp. My body recoils. I shut it down before the memory gets further than her name
“Okay,” Logan says, raising his hands. “Then who is she?”
“There’s no one.”
Logan holds my gaze for a long moment. He knows I am lying. We have been friends for twenty years, and he can spot my tells a mile away. “When there is something to tell, you talk to us. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I watch them head for the elevator. Once the doors close, I take the stairs down to the workspace Maddox uses. It is a cave of glowing monitors and drawn blinds. He reports to no one, but he works with us because we've earned his trust.
Vivien is perched on the desk beside him with a tablet in her lap. They look up in unison.
“Kai. We were just about to send the findings,” Vivien says.
“Hey, Viv. Thank you. I need a minute with Maddox, is it ok?”
“Vivien for you, Rhodes,” Maddox growls in my direction. He looks at his partner with a softness he reserves only for her. Vivien squeezes his shoulder as she passes me.
“Later, boss,” she says to me with a wink.
The door clicks shut. Maddox leans back in his chair. “What do you need?”
“A background check. Full workup. Employment history, family, financials. The works.”
“On who?”
I hesitate. The words feel heavy. I have learned what happens when I trust the wrong person. Standing here asking my friend to investigate a woman whose only crime was kindness makes my stomach turn.
“Her name is Emma. She starts at Global Venture Marketing on Monday.” I forward her contact info. “That’s her number.”
Maddox looks at his phone. “How do you know her?”
“I don't. That’s the problem.” I move to the window. “She approached me last night. Victor is ramping up pressure, and suddenly, a stranger appears to offer me a breath of fresh air. It feels like a plant.”
“Or she could just be a woman with terrible taste who found you attractive,” Maddox says.
“Then the check will confirm that. My father has used people before, Maddox. I won’t be caught off guard again.”
“I’ll have something by tomorrow.”
“Thank you. Keep this between us.”
I head back upstairs. My footsteps echo in the stairwell. I just asked a friend to investigate a woman because she smiled at me. This is who I am. I am someone who cannot accept a gift without searching for the trap.
My parents made me this way. I don't know how to be anything else.