Two

Damien’s pov

I've read the will three times before Sera Calloway even answers my text, which tells you something about the state of Okafor's office — either the man has the world's leakiest paralegal, or he wanted this clause to reach the right ears fast. I have a guess which. Edmund Calloway spent thirty years making sure the right information found the right people at the right moment. I doubt death changed his methods much.

I read it a fourth time anyway, at my desk, with the city going dark orange outside my window and my father's old shipping charts still bolted to the wall behind me because I've never gotten around to taking them down. Thirty days. One marriage. One year, uninterrupted, or the whole empire slides sideways into the cousin's lap.

It's the kind of clause a sentimental old man writes when he's dying and wants a story out of his granddaughter's life instead of a balance sheet. It's also, if I'm being honest with myself, the kind of gift I have not been handed in a very long time.

My assistant knocks twice and lets herself in without waiting for an answer, which is why I keep her. “You're smiling,” she says, like an accusation.

“I'm thinking,” I say. “It looks the same on me.”

She doesn't dignify that. “The Calloway board meets Thursday to discuss transition contingencies. Do you want a seat at that table or not?”

I do. I have wanted a seat at that table for six years, ever since my father lost the Baltimore contract to Edmund Calloway over a bid that was, by every rational measure, worse than ours, and watched the old man take the account anyway because the harbor master had known him since they were boys and trusted a handshake more than a spreadsheet. My father died still furious about it. I inherited the fury along with the company, the way you inherit a bad knee from a parent — quietly, permanently, in a way that changes how you walk through the rest of your life.

Calloway Shipping isn't just a competitor. It's forty percent of the East Coast bulk freight lanes my company has been trying to break into for a decade, guarded by contracts that renew on relationships, not price. Marry into the name and every door that's been closed to a Voss since before I was born opens on its own.

That's the honest version. I don't pretend, even to myself, that it's the only version, but it's the one I'll lead with.

“Set up the meeting,” I tell her. “Today, if she'll take it. Neutral ground. Somewhere she can leave if she wants to.”

My assistant raises an eyebrow at that last part — it's not like me, this concession to someone else's comfort — but she doesn't ask. She's smart enough not to ask most of the time, which, again, is why I keep her.

• • •

Sera Calloway agrees to meet me at a café four blocks from her building, not one of mine, not one of hers, a compromise so precisely calibrated I almost respect it. She's already there when I arrive, sitting at a corner table with her back to the wall, which tells me she's paying more attention than her red-rimmed eyes let on.

She's younger than I expected to feel across a table from, though I know for a fact she's twenty-eight, three years behind me. There's something unfinished about the way she's sitting, spine too straight, hands wrapped around a coffee she hasn't touched, like she's still bracing for whatever room she just walked out of. Grief does that. I remember.

“You move fast,” she says, before I've even sat down. “The will's been public for two hours.”

“I move efficiently,” I say. “There's a difference.”

“Is there?”

I sit. I don't order anything, which I can see unsettles her slightly — good, I want her paying attention to the details, because the details are where I'm most convincing. “I'll be direct, since I imagine you've had enough people today dancing around what they actually want. My company has spent ten years trying to break into freight lanes your grandfather locked down before either of us could vote. You have thirty days to marry someone or lose everything you were just handed. I'm proposing we solve both problems at once.”

Something flickers across her face — not surprise, exactly. More like confirmation of something she'd already suspected and hoped she was wrong about. “You're proposing marriage as a merger.”

“I'm proposing marriage as a solution,” I say. “Call it whatever helps you sleep at night. You keep the company, keep your grandfather's name on the door, keep every promise you apparently feel obligated to keep to a dockyard full of men who'll riot if Vera Calloway gets her hands on their pensions. I get access to contracts I've been circling for a decade. We draw up terms — a year, clean dissolution after, whatever protections your lawyers want written in. No one has to pretend it's a fairy tale.”

“How romantic,” she says, dry enough that I almost laugh.

“I didn't come here to romance you, Miss Calloway. I came here because I think you're smart enough to recognize a clean offer when every other option in your inbox is going to come wrapped in a lie about love.”

That lands harder than I mean it to — I watch it land, watch something behind her eyes go very still — and for one unguarded second I wonder who's already texted her something soft and sentimental today. A friend. An old flame. Someone playing a longer, gentler con than mine. I file the thought away. Useful, possibly, later.

“And if I say no?” she asks.

“Then you say no, and I withdraw, and I imagine I'm not the last competitor who reads legal filings for a living. You'll get more offers like this before the week is out. I'd simply rather you take mine, because unlike whoever comes next, I'm not going to lie to you about what I want.”

She's quiet for a moment, turning the coffee cup a slow quarter turn on its saucer, and I let her have the silence. I've learned that much, at least — that silence does more work in a negotiation than most people's second sentence.

“You didn't even know my grandfather died until this morning,” she says finally, “and you already have a merger memo ready, don't you.”

I don't confirm it. I don't need to. She can see it on my face, and I find, oddly, that I don't mind being seen that clearly by her. Most people I do business with prefer the performance. She's already cutting past it.

“Twenty-nine days,” I say instead, standing, buttoning my jacket. “I'm not expecting an answer today. I am expecting you to do the math on how many of the men who call you this week actually have a proposal on paper instead of a speech in their pocket.”