Hate Me Closer

Chapter 14: The Rival Returns

Chapter 14: The Rival Returns

The trouble started with a cancellation.

Aria was reviewing seating mockups for the Ashford bat mitzvah — her firm’s biggest spring client — when Jess appeared in her office doorway looking like someone had died.

“Tell me,” Aria said.

“The Ashfords cancelled.” Jess held up her phone. “Their coordinator just emailed. ‘Going in a different direction.’ That’s it. No call, no explanation. We’ve been planning this for four months.”

Aria set down her pen. In three years of running her firm, she’d never lost a client mid-plan. “Did they say who?”

“They didn’t say. But—” Jess hesitated. “I saw Vivienne Marsh having lunch with Mrs. Ashford yesterday. At the Whitmore. I was dropping off the linen samples and they were at the corner table, and Vivienne saw me and smiled. Like, smiled smiled.”

Vivienne Marsh. The planner who’d tried to steal the Beautiful Ruin gala two years ago, calling Aria “too green” to anyone who’d listen. Aria hadn’t thought about her in months.

“She’s back,” Aria said.

“She’s back with money,” Margot said, appearing behind Jess with her tablet. “I did some digging after Jess told me. Marsh registered a new firm in January — Marsh & Sterling Events. The ‘Sterling’ is money, not a partner. She’s got backing. Real backing. And she’s undercutting us by thirty percent across the board.”

“Thirty percent?” Jess said. “She can’t make money at that.”

“She doesn’t need to. Not yet.” Margot’s expression was grim. “Somebody’s funding a price war, and the target is us.”

Aria leaned back in her chair. Her firm had a six-month waiting list — or it had, until this morning. She thought about the expansion: the new office space she’d just signed a lease on, the three planners she was about to hire, the deposit she’d put down on additional warehouse storage.

“Who’s the money?” she asked.

“Working on it. Shell companies, the usual.” Margot tapped her tablet. “But here’s the thing — Marsh isn’t just poaching clients. She’s poaching staff. She offered Priya double.”

Priya. Aria’s senior florist, with the firm since year one. “Did Priya—”

“She said no. She said — and I quote — ‘tell Aria I’m flattered but I’m not working for Cruella.’” Margot almost smiled. “But two junior coordinators didn’t say no. They start at Marsh & Sterling Monday.”

The office felt very quiet. Through the glass wall, Aria could see her team working — the mood boards, the sample tables, the beautiful organized chaos she’d built from nothing.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. We don’t panic. We’ve survived worse than a price war.”

“Have we?” Jess asked quietly. “Because this feels pretty bad.”

Aria stood up and walked to the glass wall, looking out at her people. Priya, elbow-deep in peonies, laughing at something. Two empty desks where the juniors had sat. She thought about year one — just her, a laptop, and a borrowed steamer — and the years it had taken to build this.

“Team meeting,” she said suddenly. “Four o’clock. Everyone.”

“What are you going to tell them?” Margot asked.

“The truth. That someone’s trying to buy our clients and our people, and that we’re going to earn them back the way we earned them the first time — by being better.” Aria turned. “And Jess? Call Priya. Tell her I heard about the offer, and that her loyalty bonus just doubled.”

Jess grinned. “Now you’re talking.”

After they left, Aria stood alone in her office and let herself feel it for exactly sixty seconds — the fear, cold and metallic. Then she picked up her phone and called Nadia.

“I need everything you have on Halcyon Crest by Friday,” she said. “And Nadia? Dig deep. I want to know whose money this is.”

That evening, Aria told Dorian over takeout on the couch, still in her work clothes, too tired to change.

“Marsh & Sterling,” Dorian repeated. “Sterling. Huh.”

“You know something.”

“I know that ‘Sterling’ was the name of a holding company my father used in the nineties. Sterling Holdings. Dissolved in 2004.” He set down his chopsticks. “Probably a coincidence. There are a lot of Sterlings.”

“Your father didn’t do coincidences.”

“No,” Dorian said slowly. “He didn’t.”

They looked at each other. On the mantel, the sealed envelope sat where Dorian had left it three days ago. Neither of them had touched it since.

“You’re thinking about opening it,” Aria said.

“I’m thinking about a lot of things.” He pulled her against his side. “Hey. Whatever Marsh is doing, whoever’s paying her — we’ll handle it. That’s what we do now. We handle things. Together.”

“Together,” she agreed. “But Dorian? If your dead father is somehow behind my rival’s new firm, I’m going to be extremely annoyed.”

“Noted.” He kissed the top of her head. “For what it’s worth, I’d be annoyed too.”

Her phone buzzed. Nadia: “dinner tomorrow? I have wedding venue intel AND gossip.”

Aria typed back: “both better be good.”

Nadia: “The venue is perfect and the gossip is about Vivienne Marsh’s mystery investor. You bring wine, I’ll bring everything else.”

Aria showed Dorian the screen. “She works fast.”

“She’s terrifying.”

“She’s our terrifying.” Aria leaned her head on his shoulder. “You know what? Let Marsh have the Ashfords. We’ll be too busy being happy to care.”

“Famous last words,” Dorian said.

“Probably. Kiss me anyway.”

He did. And for a little while, price wars and mystery investors and sealed envelopes didn’t exist — just the two of them on a couch, takeout going cold, building something neither of them had ever had before.

Something that was theirs.