Derek Winslow
I end the call.
"Sell it all," I say to the empty room. "By sunrise. I do not care what it costs."
The voice on the other end of the secure line was already scrambling, a symphony of panicked compliance. I did not need to hear it. The decision is made. A thirty year old shipping conglomerate, erased from my portfolio with three words. A necessary amputation.
My penthouse is silent. It is a silence I pay millions for. Soundproofed walls, triple paned glass, a filtration system that hums at a frequency below human hearing. It is a tomb at the top of the world. A perfect machine for thinking.
But my thoughts are not on the billions in liquidated assets.
They are five blocks away, in a sterile suite that costs me fifty thousand a month to keep empty for all but a few nights.
*No strings.*
Her voice is a ghost in the machine of this room. Her rule. A rule I agreed to. A rule that is starting to feel like a knot tightening around my throat.
I walk to the bar, the polished marble cool beneath my bare feet. The bottle of scotch is where I left it. I pour a measure. The amber liquid catches the city lights, a constellation trapped in glass.
I see her face in the reflection. That flash of defiance in her eyes when she laid her hand on my chest. She thinks it is a boundary. A line she draws. She does not understand. That touch is a brand. A claim.
I replay the last hour. The scent of her skin, clean and sharp like a summer storm. The way she moves, a fluid economy of strength that belies the delicate lines of her body. The fire. Always the fire. The one she banks down to embers for men like Marcus Thorne, the one she lets rage for me.
She thinks I keep her at arm's length. She thinks this is just about physical release. It was supposed to be.
I take a swallow of the scotch. It does nothing.
My hand still remembers the feel of her shoulder blade beneath her silk robe. The small, sharp bone a testament to the tension she carries. A tension I put there today. A tension I needed.
"Keep digging," I told her.
A test. A mandate. A leash.
I walk to the wall opposite the window. It looks like a sheet of obsidian, seamless and dark. I press my palm against a specific spot. A panel retracts with a faint hiss, revealing a bank of monitors. This is my real view. Not the glittering city, but the raw data stream of my empire.
I pull up the same feed she was showing Thorne. My system is more powerful. The resolution finer. I can see what she sees, but magnified a thousand times.
She called it a pincer movement. Cute. It is not a pincer movement. It is an infestation. A digital plague spreading through the deepest, darkest channels of the market. She found the footprint. I can see the whole beast. It is older, bigger, and far more patient than she imagines.
But she saw it.
My entire global security team, my seven figure analysts with their MIT doctorates, my legions of overpaid consultants. None of them saw it. They were all looking at the fortress walls, checking for cracks.
Tara Whitfield looked at the air itself and realized it was poison.
The intercom chimes, a soft, unobtrusive sound.
"Sir. Julian is here."
"Send him up."
The private elevator opens directly into the foyer. Julian steps out. He is a man built of quiet efficiency. He has been with me for fifteen years, since before there was an empire. He is the only person on this planet who knows where all the bodies are buried. Some of them, he helped me bury.
He does not speak. He just waits.
"Report," I say, turning back to the screens.
"The Thorne firm submitted their weekly analysis," Julian says, his voice a low, even monotone. "It cites 'standard market volatility'. They recommend a 'conservative hold strategy'."
I almost laugh. "Thorne is a dinosaur waiting for the meteor. He is paid eight figures a year to tell me the sky is blue."
"Indeed, sir."
"Is she back in her own apartment?"
Julian does not need to ask who 'she' is. "Yes. Arrived seventeen minutes ago. No followers. Her building's security is solid. Our man across the street confirms lights on in her living room."
"Good." I keep my eyes on the data streams, on the elegant, lethal pattern weaving through my stock. "She is the only one who sees it, Julian."
"Sir?"
"The threat. Whitfield. She found it. While Thorne was admiring his reflection in his shoes, she was mapping the enemy’s DNA."
I can feel Julian’s surprise, a subtle shift in the air behind me. He is a hard man to surprise. "Her theory about a coordinated attack... it's valid?"
"It is more than valid," I say, tracing a line of code with my finger on the screen. "It is the only thing that is real right now. Everything else is noise. She saw a ghost in the machine."
"That is a significant intelligence failure on our part."
"It is," I concede. "Our people were looking for an army at the gates. They were not looking for a saboteur already in the throne room. Her perspective is different. She is not one of us. That is her value."
Julian is silent for a moment. I know what he is thinking. The risk. The exposure.
"What are your orders, sir?" he finally asks.
"Thorne is a problem. He will dismiss her. He will try to bury her under mundane casework to prove his own releWhitfield. He cannot be allowed to blunt her."
"You want me to handle Thorne?" The question is devoid of emotion, a simple query about logistics. It could mean anything from a quiet word with the firm's board to ensuring Marcus has a tragic accident on his morning commute.
"No," I say. "Thorne is a tool. A clumsy, stupid tool, but his dismissal of her is useful for now. It keeps our enemy from seeing her as a threat. They will watch me. They will watch my board. They will not watch a junior partner on a leash."
I turn to face him. "But I want eyes on her. Not just for her safety. I want to know everything. Who she talks to. Where she eats lunch. What she is researching. I need her sharp. I need her hungry. And I need her pointed in the right direction."
"The arrangement..." Julian starts, the closest he will ever come to questioning me. "...it complicates things. Her proximity to you is a liability."
"Her proximity to me," I say, my voice dropping lower, harder, "is the only reason any of us are having this conversation. She is an asset. Treat her as such. A very, very valuable one. Our most valuable one."
Julian gives a single, sharp nod. "Understood. I will re-task the surveillance team. Discreet and total."
"Good. You are dismissed."
He turns and walks to the elevator, as silent as he arrived. The doors slide shut, and I am alone again.
Asset.
The word tastes like ash in my mouth. It is the correct word. The logical one. She is a tool to be wielded. A weapon to be aimed.
Then why do I remember the exact cadence of her breathing as she fell asleep in the gray light of dawn last week? Why do I still feel the ghost of her nails scraping down my back?
I walk to the window, the city sprawling beneath me, a kingdom of light and shadow. My kingdom. I built it on a foundation of control. Every variable accounted for. Every outcome modeled. Every person a piece on the board, moved according to my will.
Tara is not a piece. She is a player. One who does not even know she is in the game.
Her rule. *No strings.*
It was meant to keep her safe from me. To keep things clean. Simple. But standing here, in the cold silence of my perfect fortress, I realize the truth.
The rule was never for her.
It was for me.
And it is failing.
My phone lies on the granite countertop. Her personal number is the only one I know by heart. My thumb hovers over the screen. It would be so easy. To break the rules. To summon her back here. Not for the arrangement. Just to talk. To hear her voice when it is not laced with the fire she reserves for our nights or the ice she uses for the world.
I clench my jaw.
Not yet.
The asset needs to work. The game has to be played.
But when it is over, the rules will change.
I will change them.
