CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Aria’s POV

The expanded contract notice was sent to my cousin’s company inbox three days after my first visit to Beaumont Group Tower.

Derek had called me on phone about it personally, which he rarely did for routine updates, his voice carrying the particular excitement of a small business owner who had just been handed something larger than he had expected.

“Monthly visits instead of quarterly,” he said happily. “Same team, same access, better rate. Whatever you did in that building, Aria, do it again.”

“I didn’t do anything special, I only cleaned it,” I said. “The way I always do.”

“Well, clean it with that same energy every month,” he said, and hung up before I could point out that pest control didn’t really have an energy component.

I had thought about it afterward briefly, the jump from quarterly to monthly was unusual for a building that size. The kind of decision that usually came from a specific complaint or recommendation rather than general satisfaction with a first visit. But Derek was happy, the rate was better and I had enough moving parts in my week without adding unnecessary questions about corporate facilities management decisions to the list.

I showed up for the first monthly visit on a Tuesday morning, signed in at the security desk with the same temporary access card protocol, and collected the updated service schedule Helen had left at the reception for me.

I noticed while reading through it in the lobby that the schedule had expanded.

There had been two additional areas on the third floor that hadn’t been included in the quarterly scope, a small conference suite on the fourth and a server room access corridor that required a separate sign-off. Those were routine additions, nothing unusual, except that each new area had a small notation beside it: per executive request.

I folded the schedule under my arm and headed for the service elevator.

**********

The third floor additions took longer than the original areas, partly because the layout was less familiar and partly because the third floor was considerably busier than the basement levels I had worked through last time, a steady, purposeful current of people moving between open-plan offices and glass-walled meeting rooms. The exact organized noise of a building operating at full capacity.

I kept to the edges, the way you learned to in service work, present but peripheral, visible only when the task required it and otherwise folding yourself into the background of a space that belonged to other people.

I was finishing the second of the new areas when I noticed the footsteps stopped behind me.

“Ms. Ashford.”

I turned around.

He was taller than I had noticed in the corridor last month, or the corridor had compressed everything into a two-second impression that hadn’t done the reality justice. He was wearing a grey suit, no tie, the same sharp jaw and dark eyes that had caught mine three weeks ago and stayed somewhere in the back of my mind longer than I had given them permission to.

He knew my name.

That was the first thing that landed on me, not the fact of him standing there, nor the low, even quality of his voice.

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced properly,” he said, and extended his hand with the unhurried ease of a man for whom formal introductions were a native language. “Xavier Beaumont.”

I looked at his hand for like half a second and took it immediately, and shook it gently.

His grip was firm, brief and professional. The moment it ended I had the strange, disorienting sensation of a memory trying to surface in my brain and failing to find its footing, like a word dissolving the moment you moved toward it.

“Aria Ashford,” I said, because apparently that was necessary even though he already knew it. “I guess you already know that.” I added.

“I do,” he said, without any embarrassment about it. “I reviewed the contractor access logs after your last visit. A standard protocol when we tend to expand a service agreement.”

It was a reasonable explanation. It was also delivered in a tone with a specific steadiness, though, not entirely convincing as the full story. But I had no grounds to challenge it and he had given me nothing obvious to push against.

“The expanded schedule,” I said instead. “The notation says executive request. If I may ask, was that you?”

He smiled. “Yes, it was.” He said the words simply without elaborating, which was somehow more unsettling than an explanation would have been.

I held his gaze. “If I may ask, was there a problem with the original scope?”

“Not at all,” he said. “The original scope was perfectly executed.” He paused briefly. “I wanted to ensure the building’s service relationship was comprehensive and the areas we added were overdue for inclusion.”

I nodded gently. That was a perfectly reasonable answer, delivered with a composure that gave no way for further questioning.

“I can walk you through the new areas if the layout is unclear,” he said. “I have twenty minutes before my next meeting.”

I looked at him in disbelief.

Xavier Beaumont, the man whose name was on this building, was offering to personally walk a fumigation contractor through a service schedule.

“That’s not necessary sir,” I said. “I have the floor plan.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said. “Consider it courtesy. We value our contractor relationships here.”

He was already turning toward the corridor, leaving me with the choice of following or making the refusal explicit. And making it explicit would have required a justification I didn’t quite have, because nothing he had said or done was anything other than professionally courteous.

I picked up my kit and followed him.

We moved through the third floor corridor side by side, him pointing out the new additions with the brief efficiency of someone who knew his own building well, me noting each area with the focused attention of someone trying very hard to concentrate on service schedules rather than on the fact that this particular proximity was producing a feeling she couldn’t name and didn’t entirely trust.

He stopped outside the last new area and turned to me.

“The fourth floor suite is on your schedule for next week,” he said. “If you have any questions about access, Daniel in facilities can help you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He nodded once. Then, with the same unhurried composure he had brought at the start of the conversation earlier, he said:

“It was good to meet you properly, Ms. Ashford.”

“The pleasure is mine,” I said courteously.

He walked back toward the executive corridor without looking back, and I stood outside the third floor service area with my kit in my hand and the feeling I couldn’t name sitting squarely in my entire body. I spent the rest of the morning while I worked, trying to decide whether what had just happened was professional courtesy or a nameless act entirely.

I couldn’t decide on any of it.

That, more than anything, was what stayed with me on the entire drive home.