Aria
My new office is a mausoleum. It is vast and silent, with a wall of glass that looks down on the city like a judgmental god. The desk is a slab of black marble so large it could serve as a landing pad for a helicopter. A single, pristine white orchid sits in a vase at its center. A gift, according to my new assistant, from the board. It feels more like a funeral wreath.
“Will there be anything else, Ms. Sterling?” the assistant asks. Her name is Patricia, and she speaks in the hushed, reverent tones of a mortician. She is probably my mother’s age.
“No, Patricia. Thank you. I’d like some time alone.”
“Of course, Ms. Sterling.”
She backs out of the room as if leaving the presence of royalty, closing the heavy oak doors with a soft, funereal click. Alone. The silence is deafening. I walk to the window, placing my hands on the cool glass. This was my grandfather’s office. The seat of power. For me, it is a cage. A beautiful, corner office cage with a spectacular view of my own personal hell.
They have given me a title, Executive Vice President of Legacy Initiatives. It is a meaningless string of words designed to keep me occupied, to make me feel important while holding no actual power. My daily schedule consists of charity luncheons and museum galas. I am a figurehead. A ghost in expensive shoes.
That ends today.
I return to the marble slab and touch the intercom. “Patricia, would you please ask Caleb Vance to see me? And schedule a brief with his senior logistics team in the small conference room in one hour.”
There is a slight pause. “Mr. Vance is in a priority meeting, Ms. Sterling.”
“I’m sure he is,” I say, my voice sweet as poison. “Please tell him his cousin would be so grateful if he could spare a moment. It’s about… family history.”
An hour later, I am seated at the head of a much smaller, more functional table. The air is thick with the smell of stale coffee and Caleb’s arrogant cologne. He sits opposite me, flanked by two of his top lieutenants who refuse to make eye contact with me. They look terrified of him. Or me. It’s hard to tell.
“This is a surprise, Anastasia,” Caleb begins, forgoing any attempt at pleasantries. “I was under the impression your initiatives were more… philanthropic. What could you possibly need from logistics?”
I give him my most fragile smile. “I’m trying to reconnect with grandfather’s vision for the company. To understand the legacy I’m meant to uphold.”
Caleb shares a smirk with one of his men. “And you think you’ll find that in our shipping manifests?”
“Not exactly,” I say, my hands clasped calmly on the table. “I was reading through some of his old journals. He mentioned a project he was very passionate about, something from about fifteen years ago. I believe it was called Project Nightingale.”
The name lands on the table with a thud. The lieutenants shift uncomfortably. Caleb’s smirk vanishes, replaced by a flicker of genuine surprise, then suspicion.
“Nightingale?” he says, his voice losing its mocking tone. “That was a failure. A tech skunkworks project that burned through millions before it was shut down. It’s ancient history.”
“Perhaps,” I say. “But it was important to him. I’d like to see the files. The archives. Whatever is left of it. For my research.”
He stares at me, his eyes narrowing. He is searching for the angle, the trick. He cannot find it, and it infuriates him.
“The archives for a defunct project are not something you can just… browse,” he says dismissively. “They’re on decommissioned servers, locked down for compliance reasons. Accessing them would require time and resources we don’t have.”
“I’m sure your very capable team could manage it,” I reply, my voice unwavering.
This is it. The challenge. He can acquiesce, granting a simple request and giving me what I want. Or he can assert his dominance, proving that my new title is worthless.
Caleb leans back in his chair and laughs. It is not a pleasant sound. It is a sharp, ugly bark of derision.
“You can’t be serious,” he says, shaking his head. “You want me to pull my best engineers off the OmniCore integration, a fifty million dollar acquisition, so you can play historian? We have a company to run, Anastasia. This isn’t a library. This is a multi billion dollar corporation.”
He leans forward, planting his hands on the table. He is speaking to me like a child.
“I appreciate your newfound interest in the family business. It’s cute. But leave the actual work to the professionals. We don’t have time for you to rummage through the attic on a sentimental whim.” He looks at his men. “This meeting is over.”
“It’s not a whim, Caleb,” I say, my voice dangerously quiet. “It’s a formal request from an Executive Vice President.”
“And it is formally denied,” he shoots back, his eyes glittering with triumph. “Your department has no jurisdiction here. The archives fall under IT infrastructure, which reports through logistics. Which reports to me. Access denied, cousin.”
He stands, a smug, final smile on his face. He has won. He has put the little lost girl back in her box.
The conference room door opens.
Mason Trent steps inside. The entire energy of the room shifts, the temperature dropping ten degrees. He is not smiling. He never is. He simply stands there, a pillar of dark suits and quiet authority.
“Am I interrupting something?” he asks, his low voice cutting through the tension.
Caleb is visibly startled. He quickly composes himself, straightening his tie. “Mason. No. We were just finishing up.”
Mason’s gaze sweeps the room, landing on me. It is as unreadable as ever. “The topic?”
One of the lieutenants, a nervous man with thinning hair, speaks up. “Ms. Sterling was requesting access to the archived files for Project Nightingale.”
“A defunct R&D project,” Caleb adds quickly. “I explained it would divert critical resources from priority initiatives.”
Mason is silent for a long moment. He looks from Caleb’s defensive posture to my calm, waiting expression. I do not plead. I do not argue. I simply meet his gaze and wait. He is the vAriable. The king on the chessboard.
He turns his head slightly, his eyes still on me, but his words are for Caleb.
“Grant her access.”
It is not a suggestion. It is a command. Flat. Final. Unquestionable.
Caleb’s face flushes a deep, ugly red. “Mason, with all due respect, that’s not feasible. The manpower…”
“I was not asking for your opinion on its feasibility,” Mason says, his voice dropping even lower, colder. “I was telling you what you are going to do. She gets full access. Today.”
No one breathes. Caleb looks like he has been slapped. He opens his mouth to argue, sees the look in Mason’s eyes, and shuts it again. The power dynamic in the room has been brutally, efficiently redrawn. Caleb is a prince. Mason is the executioner.
“Understood,” Caleb bites out, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.
“Good,” Mason says. He gives me one last, lingering look before turning and walking out of the room as silently as he appeared.
The meeting dissolves in a haze of humiliation and unspoken fury. Caleb’s men scurry away. Caleb himself remains, glaring at me across the table.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing,” he hisses. “But you’ve just made a very powerful enemy.”
“I thought we were already enemies, cousin,” I say softly.
He storms out, slamming the door behind him.
I sit alone in the silent room, my heart a steady, triumphant drum. I have the access. I have my first foothold. But the victory feels hollow, complicated. Mason did not save me. He made a strategic move. The question is, for which side is he playing?
Later that afternoon, there is a soft knock on my office door.
“Come in,” I call out.
Mason Trent enters, closing the door behind him. The vast office suddenly seems small, charged with his presence. He walks to my desk without a word and places a thin, black plastic card on the marble surface. A keycard.
“Your credentials for the digital archives,” he says. His voice is a low rumble in the quiet room.
I look at the card, then back up at him. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he says. He hasn’t moved. He stands before my desk like a judge about to pass sentence. “Caleb is an arrogant fool, but he is not wrong about everything. Some things are buried for a reason.”
I stay silent, my hand resting on the desk, inches from the card. This is not a friendly visit. This is a warning.
“You seem to have a talent for finding people’s weaknesses, Anastasia,” he continues, his dark eyes searching mine. “It is a useful skill. And a dangerous one.”
He leans forward slightly, placing his fingertips on the edge of the desk. We are separated by a continent of polished marble, but I feel his proximity like a change in air pressure.
“Be careful what you dig for,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “Some skeletons have teeth.”
He straightens up, gives a single, sharp nod, and turns to leave.
“Why did you help me, Mason?” I ask, the words escaping before I can stop them.
He pauses at the door, his hand on the handle. He does not turn around.
“Let’s just say,” he says, his back still to me, “I find the company’s legacy initiatives… interesting.”
Then he is gone.
I am left alone in the silent, cavernous office. The setting sun casts long, ominous shadows across the floor. My fingers close around the keycard. It is cold and smooth in my palm. It feels less like a key and more like a single, dislodged dragon’s scale. A piece of the hoard, freely given. I know, with a certainty that chills me to the bone, that the dragon is watching to see what I do with it.
