Tara Whitfield
The door to my apartment clicks shut behind me. The sound is final. I lean my forehead against the cool wood, the silence of my own space a welcome relief from the cavernous, judgmental quiet of that boardroom.
I do not break. I do not cry. The hurt from Derek’s betrayal is too sharp for tears. It has flash frozen into something cold and hard and heavy in my chest. Rage.
I move through my apartment on autopilot. The suit jacket comes off, hung with precision in the closet. My heels are placed side by side. I am a machine of routine, because if I stop, the ice will crack.
He let me fall. No, he pushed me. He sided with Marcus Thorne, a man whose only talent is sucking the air out of a room. He made me look like a fool. A naive, emotional child.
My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. A text from an unknown number. Just a string of digits, no name attached.
It contains only an address and a time. 9 PM.
It is an address I do not recognize. Not the penthouse. Not his office. It is a sleek, modern building in the financial district, but not one I have ever had cause to visit.
My first instinct is to shatter the phone against the wall. To delete the message and pour myself a glass of scotch so deep I can drown the memory of his impassive face.
But the rage is a hook. It demands an answer. It demands a reckoning.
He will not dismiss me in a boardroom and then summon me with a cryptic text. He will not treat me like a convenience. Not after today.
I will go. Not because he summoned me. But because I have something to say. He will hear it. He will look at me when I say it.
At 8:55 PM, I stand outside a heavy, unmarked door on the forty second floor. It is the only door on the level. I do not knock.
The door clicks open. Derek stands there, not in a suit, but in a simple dark gray sweater and black trousers. He looks tired. It does nothing to soften the anger coiling in my gut.
“Come in,” he says.
I walk past him without a word. The space is not an apartment. It is a high tech office, minimalist and severe. A large desk, a few chairs, and one wall that is a seamless bank of monitors, all dark for now. It smells like clean glass and ozone.
He closes the door, and the silence is absolute. He walks to the desk but remains standing. He waits.
“You have something to say, Tara,” he states. It is not a question.
“I have many things to say,” I reply, my voice low and tight. “But let’s start with one question. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Do not play games with me, Derek. Not tonight. You let him gut me. You let Marcus Thorne stand in front of your entire board and call me a naive, emotional child, and you nodded. You agreed with him. You threw me to the wolves.”
He watches me, his expression unreadable. That infuriating mask is back in place. “It was a strategic decision.”
I laugh. It is a harsh, ugly sound that echoes in the sterile room. “Strategic? My public humiliation was a strategy? Was it to keep Marcus happy? To make him feel important? Was I the sacrificial lamb to soothe his pathetic ego?”
“It had nothing to do with Marcus’s ego,” he says, his voice calm, which only fuels my fire.
“Then what? What possible strategy involves discrediting the only person who sees the threat coming? The only person who is actually trying to save your damn company while your overpaid senior counsel plans a press release party?”
I take a step closer, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. “You told me to keep digging. Was that a lie too? A little game to see what the junior partner would do? I want an answer. I have earned that much.”
He finally moves, walking around the desk until he is only a few feet from me. The proximity is a threat. A memory. An insult.
“You are right,” he says softly. “You have earned an answer.”
He gestures to the dark monitors. “If I had publicly endorsed your theory today, what do you think would have happened?”
“The board would have listened. We would be preparing a counterattack right now.”
“No,” he counters, his voice sharp. “The board would have panicked. Word would have leaked within the hour that Winslow Industries was under a sophisticated, invisible assault. Our stock would have plummeted so fast it would make your algorithmic attack look like a gentle decline. We would have done our enemy’s work for them. They would have won without firing another shot.”
I stare at him, the cold logic of his words a splash of ice water. He is not wrong.
“And you,” he continues, his gaze intense. “What about you? I validate your theory. I announce that you, a junior partner, have uncovered a conspiracy my entire security division missed. Suddenly, Tara Whitfield is the most important person in my defense. You are no longer a ghost in the machine. You are a target. A very visible, very vulnerable target. Whoever is doing this would have made you their first priority. They would have buried you, professionally or otherwise.”
My throat is dry. I had not thought of that. I was so focused on the fight, on being right, I never considered the consequences of winning.
“So what was that?” I whisper. “That performance in there? Watching him tear me apart?”
“That was a smokescreen,” Derek says, his voice dropping lower. “Marcus Thorne is a predictable, pompous fool. Our enemy expects a man like that to be in charge of the defense. They expect a conservative, sluggish response. They expect press releases and a holding pattern.”
He takes another step. We are so close now I can feel the heat coming off his body. “Today, Marcus Thorne did not humiliate you, Tara. He made you invisible. And in a war fought in the shadows, invisibility is the greatest weapon you can have.”
The pieces click into place. The brutal, cold, calculating brilliance of it. He did not sacrifice me. He hid me.
My anger begins to recede, replaced by a dizzying, confusing mix of awe and something else. Something that feels dangerously like connection.
He turns to the desk and picks up two objects. He places them on the polished surface between us.
A slim, featureless black phone. And a platinum credit card with no name, only a string of numbers.
“Your firm, Thorne, the board… they are the public theater. It is a play we will let them perform to keep the enemy watching the stage,” he says. “This is your real mandate.”
I look from the phone to his eyes. “What is this?”
“It is your new arrangement. That phone is encrypted, untraceable, and connects to a single number. Mine. The card has no limit. It is tied to an account that cannot be linked to you or to me. You will no longer file reports through your firm. You will not speak to Marcus about this again. You will work for me. Directly. Clandestinely.”
He leans forward, his hands flat on the desk. “I do not need the Tara Whitfield who has to beg Marcus Thorne for permission. I need the Tara Whitfield who saw the monster in the code. I need her sharp. I need her unbound. I am giving you the keys to my entire kingdom, off the books. Your only job is to find the enemy and tell me how to destroy them.”
The air crackles. This is not about the penthouse. This is not about physical release. This is trust. A terrifying, absolute level of trust. He is placing the fate of his empire in my hands.
This is an intimacy deeper than any touch, more binding than any kiss.
I reach out and pick up the phone. It is cool and heavy. A weapon. A promise.
“This changes things,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.
He looks at me, and for the first time since I walked in, the mask is gone. His eyes are clear, intense, and stripped of all pretense. He is not my client. He is not my lover. He is my co-conspirator.
“Yes, it does,” he says. “The old rules were for a different game.”
He holds my gaze, and I know, with a certainty that chills me to the bone, that the no strings arrangement just became the most complicated tie I have ever had in my life. And I just willingly bound myself to it.
