9. Sofia
Sofia
My lungs stopped working. The air in the boardroom turned to absolute ice, freezing my lungs and the breath right in my throat.
“We saw this exact same presentation yesterday afternoon.”
Marcus’s words replayed in my head like a cruel, looping nightmare.
I stood there, my hand still lightly hovering near the edge of the easel, my body entirely numb.
For a terrifying second, I thought I might actually pass out.
The vibrant digital mock-ups, the topographic can designs that I had poured my heart and soul into, the financial metrics I’d scoured over all felt like they were mocking me now.
I looked at the brewery executives, desperately searching their faces for a sign that this was some kind of sick joke. But there was no punchline. The CFO was looking at me with a mix of pity and corporate skepticism, his eyes dropping to the printed briefs in front of him.
Leonard had stolen… everything. He hadn’t just taken standard agency files—he had taken my life raft. He had memorized my layouts, copied my distribution numbers, and walked into this exact room twenty-four hours ago to parade my brainwork around as his own genius.
A heavy, hot wave of humiliation rushed up my neck, turning my cheeks a brilliant, burning crimson. I felt exposed. Naked. Like a kid caught copying someone else’s test, even though I was the one who had written every single answer.
I couldn’t speak. If I opened my mouth, I was terrified my voice would break, and I refused to let these people see me cry. I forced my eyes down, staring intently at the grain of the reclaimed pine table, my knuckles locking onto the side of the easel so hard the plastic bit into my skin.
Then Rick stood up.
His massive frame instantly drew the attention of the entire room, absorbing the suffocating pressure that had been flattening me into the floorboards. His voice broke through the roaring static in my ears—calm, steady, and dangerously cold.
“Marcus, gentlemen, I understand how this looks,” Rick said. His tone carried so much absolute, unyielding authority that the room seemed to realign itself around him. “But I can assure you, with absolute certainty, that what you are looking at right now is the original, authentic pitch…”
I listened in a daze as Rick fiercely defended my honor, laying out the timeline of Leonard’s swift termination and explicitly stating that every piece of copy belonged to me. He didn’t sound desperate. He sounded like a man commanding a battlefield.
When Marcus agreed to give us exactly one week to sort out the mess, a tiny, trembling breath finally escaped my lips. One week. We weren’t completely dead in the water, but the hill we had to climb had just become a freaking mountain.
The executives filed out of the room, offering tight, polite nods. I didn’t look at them. I kept my eyes glued to the floor, listening to the rhythmic click-clack of their footsteps fading down the hallway until the heavy timber doors finally shut with a definitive thud.
The silence that followed was deafening. The room felt entirely too small.
I heard new footsteps crushing softly on the rug in front of me. I didn’t look up, I was too buried in my own shame and anger, until a shadow fell over me.
“Sofia.” Rick’s voice was completely gentle, devoid of the corporate armor he’d just used to fight off the board members.
I finally lifted my chin, my throat tight as I looked up at him. “He took everything,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash. “Every single thing I had.” I was seconds away from cracking.
He reached up and took my shoulders in his hands, firm but soft. “Then we create something new. Together.”
His hands were warm through the fabric of my blouse, their steady pressure anchoring me to the floorboards just as the room felt like it was spinning out of orbit.
I looked up into his deep blue eyes, searching for any hint of doubt or frustration, but there was nothing there except a fierce, unyielding determination.
“Together,” I whispered with a slight nod. I was not going to break. Not in front of Rick. Not because of Leonard.
The word echoed in my chest, sending a strange, electric jolt through the numbness that had taken over my body. I nodded slowly, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Together,” I repeated, my voice finally finding a bit of its footing.
We packed up the presentation boards—stolen concepts or not, they were still our property—and walked out of the brewery in total, focused silence.
The drive back to the office was entirely different from the ride down there.
The nervous anticipation was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp anger and a renewed focus.
The moment the elevator doors slid open on the executive floor of Gold Standard Media, Rick stormed out like a man on a mission. I marched right beside him, my briefcase swinging at my side.
Elizabeth looked up from her desk, her hand hovering over her keyboard as she took in our grim expressions. “How did the—”
“Elizabeth,” Rick interrupted smoothly, not even slowing down as he pushed open his heavy office door. “Cancel every single meeting I have on my calendar for the next week. Clear it completely and get our lawyers on the phone. I need to speak to them ASAP.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened, her jaw dropping slightly. “Every meeting, Mr. Mylonas? Even the corporate budget review on Tuesday?”
“Everything,” Rick commanded, turning to look at her from the doorway.
“If it’s not related to Clear Creek Brewery, reschedule it.
Sofia and I are going into lockdown after I have a chat with our lawyers.
Unless the building is actively on fire, we are not to be disturbed.
I’ll have Jax step up for the week if you need anything. ”
“Understood,” she said, her fingers already flying across her layout matrix.
Rick turned to me, gesturing into his spacious office. “Bring your things in here, Sofia. We’re not doing this from separate rooms or setting up at the conference room where we’ll get interrupted constantly.”
I walked into his office, dropping my heavy leather bags onto the polished mahogany table in the corner.
I kicked off my heels without asking, entirely past the point of caring about corporate decorum, and immediately began pulling out blank legal pads, my favorite felt-tip pens, and a fresh pack of sticky notes.
Rick shed his suit jacket, tossing it over his desk chair, and rolled his shirtsleeves up past his forearms.
Elizabeth’s voice came over the speaker phone. “John Hues from our legal team is on the line for you.”
Rick sat behind the desk and answered the call.
While I listened to him relay what Leonard had done and Gold Standard’s legal stance, I sketched.
I had other ideas I had come up with for the brewery.
None were as good, but they were all mine.
Not once had I shared these sketches or ideas with Leonard.
When Rick was done with the call, he walked over to the massive whiteboard that spanned the side wall of his office.
“All right,” he said, turning to face me.
The competitive fire in his eyes was blinding.
“Leonard Whistler thinks he can win dirty because he has a head start. But he’s playing a game with static pieces.
He took what you built last week, which means he’s locked into that strategy. He can’t pivot. We can.”
I walked up to the whiteboard, taking a deep breath as the familiar, comforting rush of creative energy began to override the lingering sting of the brewery meeting.
“He has my first campaign,” I said, my mind racing as I stared at the blank white surface. “He has my trail maps and the creek targeting. If we try to just tweak those, it’ll look like we’re the ones copying him.”
“Exactly,” Rick agreed, stepping closer, his presence warm and commanding right next to me. “So we abandon the lifestyle angle entirely. We go bigger. What is the one thing Leonard could never steal from you, Sofia?”
I looked at him, a slow, defiant smile finally breaking through my exhaustion. “My imagination. And the fact that I actually know how to brew a story, not just paste pictures on a canvas.”
“That’s a true strategist,” Rick murmured, his voice dropping into that low, thrilling baritone that made my pulse do a dangerous little skip. He handed me the marker. “Now, let’s build something that makes his stolen pitch look like a high school project.”
By three o’clock, the whiteboard was a chaotic web of arrows and half-formed concepts, but my brain was starting to feel like mush. Not because the ideas weren’t coming, but because the universe seemed personally invested in breaking our focus.
Despite Rick’s lockdown order, the corporate machine didn’t care about our crisis.
First, it was one of the other department heads, who apparently hadn’t checked his email and barged right past Elizabeth to scream about a “scheduling oversight” on a completely unrelated account.
Rick dealt with him with a terrifyingly polite coldness that had the guy backing out of the room in under two minutes, but it took us another five just to find our train of thought again.
Then, the printer on the creative floor jammed, and because I was apparently the only one who knew how to clear the internal rollers without throwing a code, I had to assist.
When I sat back down at the mahogany table, my dad called my cell phone to check on how the pitch went. I had to step out into the hallway, forcing a cheerful tone, assuring him we were just “Fine-tuning a few details” for next week.
When I finally walked back into Rick’s office, he was massaging his temples, staring at a flashing red light on his desk phone.
“Elizabeth says the compliance team needs my signature on an emergency labor audit before five o’clock or the whole floor gets flagged,” Rick muttered, letting out a dark, frustrated sigh.
He looked up at me, his blue eyes tight with irritation.
“We’ve been in here for four hours and we’ve barely managed to write down two coherent taglines. This isn’t working.”
“It’s the building,” I said, leaning my back against the edge of the table and crossing my arms. “Too many people know where you sit. Too many people know where I sit. Every time the phone rings, my brain resets.”
Rick was quiet for a long moment. Then he stood up, grabbed his cell phone off the desk, and jammed it into his pocket. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” I called out, but the heavy timber door was already clicking shut behind him.
I slumped into a chair, staring at the whiteboard.
We were trying to build a masterpiece, but we were doing it in the middle of a freeway.
Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. I was just about to start erasing a section on the board that felt too much like Leonard’s initial “Bros and Brews” vibe when the door swung open again.
Rick walked back in, but the tight, stressed expression on his face was entirely gone. He looked completely relaxed, a definitive, victorious smirk playing on his lips.
“Pack up your markers,” he said smoothly, walking over to his desk and snagging his car keys.
I blinked, confused. “What? Did we get fired?”
“No.” Rick chuckled, the deep, rumbling sound instantly warming the tense room.
“I had a genius idea.” He walked over to the mahogany table, leaning his hands on the surface as he looked down at me.
“I just realized that if we stay in Golden, Leonard wins by default because this building won’t let us think.
So I pulled a few strings. I arranged something for us so we can actually have some real, uninterrupted time to work on this together. ”
My heart did a sudden little flutter against my ribs. “What kind of strings?”
“My family has a cabin up past Estes Park,” he said, his voice dropping into that low, thrilling baritone.
“Where there’s no cell service, no corporate directors, and absolutely no office gossip.
Just four bedrooms, a massive dining table, a fireplace for cold mountain nights, and, best of all, zero distractions. ”
I stared at him, my mind scrambling to catch up. A cabin? Alone? With the boss?’ “I… is that a good idea?”
“It’s the only idea I have to save this account,” he said with a shrug, his gaze holding mine with total, unyielding professionalism, though there was a deliberate warmth behind it.
“You can bet that Leonard believes that he’s locked the account down.
We need to be better. We can’t do that here.
But I get it if you don’t want to be alone with me for a week.
I can give you references if you need. I’ll give you my mother’s phone number. You can call her and—”
I held up my hand. “No, it’s not that. Nova and Jax are friends. I trust Jax and, therefore, I trust you. Besides, who would plan a week getaway in the mountains with one of their employees just to…” I made a knife motion toward my chest, which had him chuckling.
“Okay, so at least you agree I’m not a killer.”
No, that wasn’t what I’d been worried about. Gossip in the office was my main worry. Me getting the big office, getting Leonard fired, then going on a trip to the boss’s family cabin in Estes Park? Even if it was a work trip, gossip was going to be going wild when we came back.
He straightened up and then checked his watch.
“Go home,” Rick suggested gently. “Tell whoever you need to that you’re going on a deep-dive creative retreat for a week and you’ll be out of reach.
Pack a bag with enough warm clothes for a few days in the mountains, gather every single notebook and marker you own, and get some actual sleep tonight.
I’ll pick you up first thing in the morning. ”