Do the Math
The travel from public coffee spot to office desk consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
She could feel his eyes on her back like a weight pressing between her shoulder blades. The napkin in his hand, still dangling from his fingertips, had gone utterly still. The air in the café had thickened to the consistency of wet cement.
Clara didn’t turn around.
She pulled the door open, and the autumn chill hit her face like a reprieve. The little bell above the door chimed her exit, and she let it swing shut behind her. She walked. One foot in front of the other. Her heels clicked against the pavement in a rhythm that matched the frantic pulse in her throat, and she did not look back.
She made it half a block before she had to stop. Her hand found the cold iron railing of a stairwell, and she gripped it until her knuckles went white. The breath she’d been holding escaped her in a ragged shudder. *Focus. One thing at a time.* She reached into her purse and pulled out her phone, finding the text from Dorian with the address for her new assignment. She read it three times before the words registered.
Mercer Tower. Fourteenth floor. Design department.
The irony was so sharp it nearly drew blood.
She flagged down a cab, gave the driver the address, and spent the entire ride staring out the window at the steel-and-glass cityscape sliding past. Her mind replayed his voice. *Is Toby mine?* She pressed her palm flat against her chest, as if she could physically hold her heart still. No. She couldn’t think about that. Not now. She had a job to do.
The cab pulled up to a monolith of black glass and brushed steel. Mercer Tower. Twenty-three stories of corporate power that belonged to the man she’d just lied to by omission. She paid the driver, stepped out, and tilted her head up to take in the building’s sheer, unblinking façade. *You’ve faced worse, Clara.* That wasn’t true. She’d never faced anything remotely like this.
The lobby was a cathedral of polished marble and ambient lighting. A security desk sat like an altar at the center, and behind it stood a man in a crisp black suit with a coiled earpiece. Dorian. He was built like a defensive lineman, but his eyes were sharp, scanning the room with a practiced efficiency that never missed a detail. When he saw Clara, a flicker of recognition softened the hard line of his mouth. He gave her a single, almost imperceptible nod.
“Ms. Holloway,” he said, his voice low and professional. “Welcome to Mercer Tower. This way, please.”
He led her past a bank of elevators, his badge swiping through a security gate that thunked open with a heavy, magnetic click. Clara followed him into a private car. Dorian pressed the button for the fourteenth floor, and the doors slid shut with a whisper.
“Starting fresh,” he said, his eyes fixed on the floor indicator. “He asked me to look after you. Make sure you settle in.”
“He asked you to babysit me, you mean.”
Dorian’s mouth twitched. “He asked me to keep an eye on you until he could figure out what you were doing here. But I know your work, Clara. You’re good. And you don’t strike me as someone with an angle.”
The elevator chimed. The doors parted onto a wide-open design studio, all white walls and clean lines, sunlight flooding through floor-to-ceiling windows. Drafting tables stood in neat rows, adorned with monitors and light boxes, sketches and color swatches pinned to cork boards. It was the kind of creative space artists dreamed of — and it was completely empty.
“Everyone’s off-site today,” Dorian explained. “Your station is through there.” He pointed toward a glass wall at the far end of the studio. On the other side of it, an office. Large. Commanding. A man’s silhouette moved behind the tinted glass, and Clara’s stomach dropped.
“That’s Xavier’s office,” she said.
“Efficient, isn’t it?” Dorian turned to face her, his expression unreadable. “Your drafting desk is just outside his door. He wants you close.” He paused, letting the weight of the words settle. “For the security audit.”
“What?”
“Someone tried to breach the tower’s network last night. Routine, but he’s treating it like a threat. He’s pulling all the temp staff into the inner circle until the audit’s done.” Dorian ran a hand along the back of his neck. “Don’t ask me to explain it. I just follow orders.”
Clara looked at the glass wall again. Xavier had stopped moving. She could feel his gaze through the tinted panel, a phantom pressure against her skin. *He’s tracking your phone too, Clara.* Dorian had told her that as a warning on the ride up. *He put a locator on your number the moment you walked in.*
“Lovely,” she said under her breath.
She made her way across the studio, her footsteps swallowed by the soft industrial carpet. The drafting desk Dorian had indicated was a sleek white standing station, outfitted with a brand-new laptop, a graphics tablet, and the kind of ergonomic chair that cost more than her entire wardrobe. She set down her bag and placed her palm flat on the cool surface.
Behind her, Xavier’s door opened.
She didn’t turn. She slid onto the chair, powered up the laptop, and began pulling up the files for her project. The briefing had been dropped into her email this morning: a rebranding campaign for a luxury hotel chain. Her fingers moved to the trackpad, but her focus splintered the moment she heard his footsteps stop just behind her.
“Clara.”
She let out a measured breath, then looked up over her shoulder. He stood there in a charcoal suit that probably cost five figures, a coffee cup in his hand, watching her with that steady, intense expression she remembered from college. The boy she’d known had been promising. The man before her was dangerous.
“I didn’t realize the security audit included a personal welcome,” she said.
“It does when the temp contractor is the mother of a child who might be mine.”
“*Might* being the operative word.” She turned back to her screen. “You have my résumé, my portfolio, and my bank account information in your system. That should be enough to verify my credentials. I’m here to do a job, Xavier. Nothing more.”
He set the coffee cup down on the edge of her desk. It was black, no sugar. He remembered how she took it. Or maybe that was a coincidence. She refused to read into it.
“Fourteen years,” he said. “You vanished. No call, no letter, nothing. And now you’re sitting ten feet away from me like it’s a casual Tuesday.”
“It’s Wednesday, actually.”
His jaw worked for a moment before he caught himself. “You always did that.”
“Did what?”
“Deflected with technicalities when the conversation got too close.”
Clara looked up at him again, letting the silence stretch a beat too long. “Maybe I learned it from watching you.”
Something flickered in his eyes. A crack in the veneer. But it sealed over just as quickly, and he straightened, adjusting his cuff links. “Dorian will issue you a security badge. It’ll get you into the building, the studio, and the break room. Nothing else.”
“I didn’t ask for clearance to the crown jewels.”
“You’re in my inner circle now, Clara. That comes with a certain level of exposure.” He took a step back toward his office, pausing at the door. “If you need anything, my door is open.”
She waited until he was behind his glass wall before she let out the breath she’d been holding. Her hands were shaking. She curled them into fists beneath the desk, counted to ten, then forced herself to open the project files and start working.
The morning passed in a blur of color palettes and typography grids. She managed to lose herself in the work, in the clean precision of vector lines and chosen fonts. But she stayed hyperaware of the figure moving behind the glass, of the occasional pauses where she felt his gaze settle on her. His phone was on his desk, face-up. Every few minutes, he glanced at it. She didn’t need to guess at what he was looking at. Her own phone vibrated in her bag, and she fished it out.
A text from Xavier:
*You’re in section G of the parking garage. That’s an interesting route for a temp contractor who takes the subway.*
She locked the screen and set the phone face-down. The clock on her desktop read 2:17 PM. She had a break coming. She pushed back from the desk, walked to the break room, and poured herself a cup of water from the cooler. Her phone buzzed again. Celia.
She stepped into the corner of the break room, out of sight of the main studio, and answered. “Hey.”
“Okay, talk to me,” Celia said, her voice a hushed, urgent whisper. “How is it? Is he there? Is he being a nightmare?”
“Define nightmare.” Clara pressed the cool cup against her forehead. “I have a drafting desk outside his office. He keeps staring at me through the glass. And he’s tracking my phone.”
“What? That’s— actually, that’s kind of stalker-ish. Are you safe?”
“I’m safe. He’s not going to hurt me. He just wants answers.”
“Do you want to give them to him?”
Clara looked at the doorway, checking that it was still empty. “He asked me this morning if Toby is his. In the café. Right before I left.”
The silence on the line stretched. “*Clara.* What did you tell him?”
“I told him it’s none of his business.” She laughed, but it came out broken. “Then I walked out and picked up the contract he’d offered me. I must be insane.”
Celia exhaled. “You’re not insane. You’re just— caught between a rock and a very handsome hard place. What about Toby? What’s he saying?”
“He’s been asking again. ‘Mama, what was my dad like?'” She closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the wall. “I told him his dad was smart and fearless and that he’d gotten lost in a storm. It’s not really a lie. It’s just not the whole truth.”
“He deserves to know, Clara. And honestly? So do you.” Celia’s voice softened. “But it’s your call. You have to protect your son. And yourself. Just promise me you’re actually thinking it through, not just reacting.”
Clara nodded, even though Celia couldn’t see her. “I’m thinking. I’ll call you tonight.”
“Be safe. And if Xavier gives you any trouble, just remind him you’re more trouble than he is.”
The line clicked. Clara pocketed her phone and turned. Xavier stood in the doorway of the break room, one shoulder braced against the frame, his face carved from stone.
She went still.
“How much did you hear?” she asked.
“Enough.” He stepped forward, closing the distance between them. The break room suddenly felt very small. “What was the storm, Clara? You said I got lost in a storm. What exactly did you tell Toby?”
“That his father was a good man who had a complicated life.” She forced herself to hold his gaze. “He’s six. He doesn’t need to know about torn families and abandoned promises.”
“Abandoned?” His voice cracked on the word. “I didn’t abandon you. You left. You made that choice on your own.”
“Because I had to. There are things you don’t know, Xavier. Things about your family that—” She stopped herself, pressing her lips together.
“What about my family?”
Clara shook her head. “It’s not my story to tell. And it’s definitely not a conversation for a break room.”
She tried to step around him, but he caught her wrist. His grip was firm, not painful. Warm. Her body remembered the feel of his hands before her mind could stop it. Her heartbeat hammered.
“I need you to tell me the truth,” he said, his voice low.
“If I told you the truth, you’d have to make a choice.” She pulled her wrist free from his grasp. “And I’m not sure you’re brave enough for the one that matters.”
She walked out of the break room, back to her desk, and sat down. Her hands shook as she reached for the mouse. She didn’t look at the glass wall. She couldn’t.
The afternoon stretched on, taut as a wire. She worked. She sketched. She deleted. She redrew. At 4:59 PM, a file landed in her inbox from a sender she didn’t recognize: an encrypted folder labeled *HAMMERSMITH M. — ARCHIVE.*
She opened it halfway, expecting a design brief. Instead, the first page was a legal document. A ledger entry. A debt. A black-ink number scrawled across a line item, dated fifteen years ago, with the signature of a man she recognized from tabloid headlines. *Flynn Aldridge.*
Clara closed the file so fast her hand cramped. Her pulse thumped in her ears. This was it. The missing piece. The trap. She’d only had her suspicions before, whispers and fragments—but this showed how Xavier’s father’s rivals had funneled funds in the weeks before the Aldridge acquisition crushed Mercer’s old company. There was enough here to destroy an empire. Or to free a man from a debt he didn’t know he was paying.
But it was also evidence that she wasn’t just temp help. The truth was designed to change everything.
She sat back, staring at the blank monitor of her finished work. Her phone lit up with a text from Xavier:
*I saw you open the file. We need to talk. Now.*
The words hung in the air, heavy as iron. The glass door of his office slid open. He walked to the edge of her desk, pressing a hand flat on the work surface and leaning in.
“Who sent you that file?” he asked, voice edged with steel.
Clara pushed her chair back, giving herself room. “Someone who wants me to know the truth about your father’s business affairs. The ones your family buried.”
“Clara, that file is a weapon.”
“It’s a ledger. It’s numbers. And you’re good with numbers, Xavier. Figure it out.” She stood up, grabbing her bag and slipping the strap over her shoulder. “Your family tried to destroy mine once. I found an invoice that traces directly to your father’s account. The Aldridges held a debt that nearly ruined my mother. I might never have known the whole truth if your people hadn’t poked a hole in their own network.”
He looked at her, warring with something behind his eyes. “I didn’t know. I never knew about any of this.”
“That’s the tragedy of it, Xavier.” Her voice was soft and final. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
She turned toward the elevator. Behind her, she heard him take a step forward. “Clara.”
She stopped but didn’t look back.
“Is Toby mine?”
Clara closed her eyes. The words hung in the air, suspended between them, refusing to fall.
“I need you to tell me Toby isn’t mine.” Clara met his eyes. “Toby is six years old. You were always good with numbers, Xavier. Figure it out.”