Chapter 13
DELANEY
Ihoisted the fifty-pound bag of gastrointestinal kibble onto my right shoulder, gritting my teeth against the weight.
The broken bits of the parking lot asphalt crunched heavily under my rubber boots as I kicked my car door shut.
It was five-forty in the morning, and the Seattle sky was still a bruised, unrelenting black.
The rain had finally tapered off into a miserable, freezing mist that clung to my eyelashes and dampened the collar of my coat.
I adjusted the dead weight of the dog food, mentally preparing myself for the grueling two hours ahead.
The outdoor runs would be a disaster. They always were after a storm.
I needed to muck the concrete, sanitize the fencing, and clear the drainage trenches before the morning shift volunteers arrived at seven.
It was backbreaking, filthy work, and my body was already running on a severe deficit of sleep.
I rounded the corner of the brick building, keeping my head down against the mist.
The rhythmic, harsh scrape of metal sliding against wet concrete stopped me dead in my tracks.
I froze, the heavy bag of kibble digging painfully into my collarbone. I blinked through the darkness, my eyes tracking the source of the noise.
Someone was inside the chain-link perimeter of the outdoor enclosures.
My initial surge of adrenaline was pure defensive instinct.
We kept controlled substances in the clinic, and break-ins in the industrial district were a constant threat.
I dropped the bag of dog food onto the wet gravel with a heavy thud, my hand instinctively reaching into my coat pocket for my phone.
The thud caused the figure in the shadows to stop moving.
He turned around, the weak beam of the distant streetlamp catching his profile.
My lungs completely forgot how to process oxygen.
It was Hayes.
He stood in the center of the twenty-fifth run, holding a heavy, flat-edged snow shovel.
He wasn’t wearing a bespoke wool overcoat.
He wasn’t wearing an Italian silk tie or tailored trousers.
He was dressed in a pair of stiff, dark brown canvas work pants and a heavy utility jacket, both of which were absolutely coated in a thick, horrifying layer of mud, shredded bedding, and animal waste.
His dark hair was plastered to his forehead by the freezing mist. His jaw was coated in dark stubble, and his broad shoulders were heaving, dragging in deep, ragged breaths of the frigid air.
I stared at him, my brain entirely incapable of reconciling the untouchable, billionaire venture capitalist I had married with the filthy, exhausted man standing in the dog runs.
He looked back at me. He didn’t drop the shovel. He didn’t offer a slick, corporate greeting. He just stood there, completely exposed, his chest rising and falling in the quiet dawn.
The shock quickly burned away, replaced by a massive, surging wave of absolute cynicism.
I looked past him, my eyes scanning the perimeter of the chain-link fence, searching the dark alleyway.
I looked for his gleaming black Mercedes.
I looked for the slick corporate fixers, the lawyers with their leather folios, or the private security detail lurking in the shadows.
I fully expected to see a photographer stepping out from behind the dumpster to document the CEO of Easton Capital pretending to be a philanthropist.
There was no one. The street was completely empty, save for an anonymous, mud-splattered rental truck parked two blocks away.
I stepped off the gravel and walked up to the heavy metal gate, wrapping my fingers around the cold wire links.
“Where are the cameras, Hayes?” I asked. My voice was entirely flat, stripping away any potential warmth or welcome.
He didn’t flinch, but a muscle feathered along his jawline. “There are no cameras.”
“Did you bring Diane to take notes?” I pressed, my tone dripping with acidic disbelief. “Or is Caldwell waiting in the truck with another contract? Maybe a revised edition where you offer me twenty million dollars if I agree to scrub your floors?”
Hayes lowered the blade of the shovel to the concrete. He leaned some of his weight against the raw wooden handle, looking at me with a steady, quiet intensity that made my skin prickle.
“I came alone, Delaney,” he said, his voice a low, raspy scrape that blended with the quiet hiss of the mist. “There are no lawyers. There are no contracts.”
I looked past his shoulder. The first twenty-four runs were completely immaculate.
The concrete had been scraped clean and hosed down.
The drainage trenches were clear of debris.
It was easily three hours of grueling, continuous manual labor, executed with a methodicalness that I wouldn’t have believed him capable of.
My eyes snapped back to his face. I refused to be manipulated.
I knew this man. I knew how he operated.
Every single move he made was a calculated investment designed to yield a specific return.
He had realized that freezing my accounts didn’t break me, and throwing a twelve-million-dollar endowment at me hadn’t bought my submission.
So, he had pivoted his strategy. He was trying to acquire my forgiveness through a dramatic, manufactured display of physical martyrdom.
He thought if he stood in the mud for one morning, I would forget that he viewed my integrity as a negotiation tactic.
“What is the ROI on this?” I asked, crossing my arms tightly over my chest to ward off the biting cold. “What exactly do you think you are purchasing by mucking out my kennels?”
“Nothing,” Hayes answered simply. He didn’t raise his voice to defend himself. He didn’t bristle at the accusation. “The runs were dirty. I’m cleaning them.”
“You don’t do anything for free,” I fired back.
“I am currently trying to learn how,” he replied.
The quiet, unvarnished honesty of the statement threw me slightly off balance. I hated it. I hated the way his gray eyes looked so incredibly hollowed out, and I hated the fact that my treacherous, deeply ingrained muscle memory wanted to ask him if he was freezing.
I clamped down on the instinct, fortifying the thick, heavy wall of ice I had built between us in the boardroom.
If he wanted to play a game of endurance, I would give him exactly what he asked for.
I would call his bluff. I would strip away the romanticized idea of a single morning in the rain and plunge him directly into the absolute, unfiltered nightmare of what running this rescue actually entailed.
He wanted to pretend he could handle my world?
Fine. I would break him in half an hour, and he would be back in his penthouse by breakfast.
“You missed a spot,” I said coldly, nodding toward the drainage trench behind him.
I didn’t wait for his reaction. I turned on my heel, walked over to the heavy metal security door leading into the back of the clinic, and keyed in my entry code.
I stepped into the dimly lit mudroom, leaving the door propped wide open behind me.
Ten seconds later, I heard the heavy, uncertain tread of rubber boots stepping onto the interior mat.
I didn’t look back at him. I walked straight past the supply lockers, pushing through the double swinging doors that led directly into the isolation and quarantine ward.
The atmosphere shifted instantly. The air inside the ward was kept at a strict, stifling seventy-five degrees to maintain the body temperatures of the failing animals.
The smell hit with the force of a physical blow—a potent, inescapable, stomach-churning combination of industrial bleach, copper, iron, and the distinct, rotting stench of parvo-induced diarrhea.
The noise was a low, miserable hum of beeping IV fluid pumps and the raspy, exhausted breathing of thirty critically ill dogs housed behind thick glass barriers.
I stopped near the stainless-steel central charting island and turned around.
Hayes stepped through the swinging doors.
He stopped completely dead. I watched his throat work as he swallowed hard, his face paling slightly as the brutal heat and the atrocious smell assaulted his senses.
His eyes darted around the room, taking in the rows of sick animals, the tangled IV lines, and the harsh fluorescent lighting.
He looked entirely overwhelmed, a man who had suddenly stepped off a cliff into an alien dimension.
“You want to work?” I asked, my voice slicing through the hum of the machines.
Hayes forced his gaze back to me, giving a single, tight nod. “Yes.”
I walked over to the supply closet and pulled out a heavy plastic bucket.
I grabbed a short, stiff wire brush, a heavy metal wrench, and a pair of thick, yellow rubber gloves that went all the way up to the elbows.
I dropped the entire pile onto the floor at his feet with a loud, aggressive clatter.
“The drainage system in this ward is designed to flush the biohazard waste directly into a containment tank,” I explained, maintaining a tone of detached, clinical authority.
“But the parvo dogs shed a massive amount of intestinal lining and mucus. It mixes with the bleach and the loose fur, and it creates a solid, cement-like blockage in the traps beneath the floor grates.”
I pointed to a series of heavy, cast-iron square grates set into the lowest points of the sloped linoleum floor. They were currently sitting under an inch of dark, foul-smelling liquid that refused to drain.
“You need to use the wrench to pry the cast-iron grates up,” I continued, watching his face closely for any sign of revulsion.
“Then, you have to reach your arm down into the trap and manually scoop out the blockages into that bucket. Once the trap is clear, you use the wire brush to scrub the underside of the grate until there is no organic matter left. There are six drains in this room. If you don’t get them completely clear, the entire ward floods with infectious waste. ”