His To CONTROL

CHAPTER 6 - JAMERSON

I attend monthly dinner at the Summers family home out of duty, habit, and the knowledge that refusing will create a week of telephone calls.

The Kensington townhouse looks exactly as it did when I was a child. Dark mahogany floors. Oil paintings chosen by ancestors with more money than taste. The smell of slow-roasted meat travelling from the kitchen. Nothing changes unless my family commissions the change and approves it in triplicate.

I hand over my coat and loosen my tie as I head towards the rear sitting room.

I expect to find Brian sprawled across the sofa.

I find him on the floor losing an online match beside a woman I have never seen.

"Flank left, Brian," she snaps at the screen. "You're sprinting straight into the sniper lane, you absolute idiot."

"I'm providing suppressive fire."

"You're providing free points."

Her laugh reaches me before either notices I am standing in the doorway.

She sits cross-legged on the rug with a controller balanced in both hands. Long black waves spill over one shoulder. Her complexion is warm and difficult to place at a glance, her features carrying the subtle blend of her Afro-Latino grandfather and the white branches of the rest of her family. Hazel eyes remain fixed on the game.

She has an athlete's posture even at rest.

Strong arms. Toned legs. A body built through years of gymnastics and maintained without vanity. Her cream jumper follows the full curve of her breasts before narrowing at her waist.

Physical attraction is immediate.

Interest follows when she abandons Brian's character to save the objective.

"Traitor," he says.

"Survivor."

Brian finally sees me. At twenty-seven, he retains the easy athleticism that once made him a university sprinter. Brown hair, brown eyes and rugged features give him a warmth I have always lacked.

"Jamerson. Tell Sydney that charging without cover is terrible tactics."

The woman pauses the game and stands in one fluid movement.

"Given your athletic history," I tell Brian, "I assume your strategy is to run very fast in the wrong direction."

She smiles.

The effect is inconvenient.

"Sydney Ryan." She offers her hand. "And you've just summarised his entire gaming career."

Her grip is warm and firm. No fluttering uncertainty. No sudden change in tone after hearing my name.

"Jamerson Summers."

"I know."

"Should I be concerned?"

"Only if you approve your own expense reports."

Brian groans. "Here we go."

Sydney is the lead accountant at Vance & Sterling, the firm responsible for auditing our European media accounts. I recognise her name instantly. She is the person who questioned four logistics classifications last quarter and rejected two executive expenses without caring whose signatures appeared beneath them.

"You reduced our projected overhead by four percent," I say.

"Your overseas line items were bloated."

"They were strategically flexible."

"That's an imaginative way to describe inaccurate."

Brian looks between us. "I suddenly understand why neither of you is fun at parties."

"You don't attend parties," Sydney says.

"Exactly."

There is no flirtation between them. I look for it because attraction makes men stupid, and I refuse to become stupid before dinner. What I find is sibling familiarity: shared jokes, casual insults and the complete absence of self-consciousness.

They met at university. Both were the youngest in their families and preferred gaming to crowded nights out. Sydney has been joining these dinners twice a month since graduation, yet our schedules have somehow kept us apart.

"How?" I ask Brian later, when Sydney steps away to take a call.

"How what?"

"Have I never met her?"

"You cancel dinner whenever a client sneezes. She missed the few months you didn't."

"Are you together?"

Brian stares at me, then laughs loudly enough that Sydney glances back from the hall.

"No. Never. She is my best friend."

"People date their friends."

"Not when it would feel like kissing a sibling. Also, she can hear you."

Sydney returns, unimpressed. "For the record, the feeling is mutual."

I should be embarrassed.

Instead, relief moves through me.

Dinner becomes an exercise in controlled observation. Sydney does not perform for the room. She asks questions when interested and allows silence when she is not. She describes leaving gymnastics at sixteen because the training consumed her life.

She also breaks the unspoken Summers rule that business must be discussed as inheritance rather than preference.

"Do you actually like advertising?" she asks me.

Brian nearly drops his glass.

"What?"

"Everyone talks about the company as though it is an inherited medical condition. Do you enjoy the work?"

Nobody in my family has ever asked so directly.

"I like building a campaign from incomplete information. Finding the idea that makes people feel something before they understand why."

"Manipulation, then."

"Persuasion."

"Accountants call the distinction disclosure."

"That explains the charm deficit."

Her smile is quick and unwilling.

"I like the work," I admit. "I dislike having that treated as proof my family chose correctly for me."

Something in her expression says she understands.

"Were you good?" I ask.

"Very. That's why leaving was difficult."

"Do you regret it?"

"Sometimes. But being talented at something doesn't mean you owe it your entire future."

The words land harder than she intends.

My own future has always been treated as a debt to ability, inheritance and expectation. Sydney walks away from a path others admire because it no longer belongs to her. Then she builds another without family money or useful surnames.

She owns a flat in Wapping, close enough to commute easily to Bank and Canary Wharf. She speaks about the mortgage with quiet pride. No trust fund. No inherited deposit. Everything earned.

Brian tells me she saves for years, refusing help from relatives who would have attached opinions to every pound. She works through university, earns her professional qualifications and builds a career where nobody knows her family.

The information makes her choices legible. Sydney protects her independence because it has never been guaranteed.

When she catches me watching her, one eyebrow rises.

"Do I have something on my face?"

"No."

"Then your observational technique needs work."

"My technique is excellent."

"Your discretion isn't."

Brian looks between us. "Are you arguing or flirting?"

"Arguing," we answer together.

The synchronisation makes him groan.

By dessert, I understand why the women selected for me at Cross never hold my attention.

Surrender from Sydney would never be automatic.

It would be a decision made by a woman who knows exactly how to stand alone.

The thought is inappropriate on several levels.

She is Brian's best friend. Her firm audits mine. She knows nothing about Cross or the part of my life I keep separate from family and business.

I tell myself to leave it there.

Then Brian persuades me to join their Friday gaming session.

Sydney hands me a controller.

"Try to keep up, CEO."

"Do you speak to all major clients like this?"

"Only the ones who deserve it."

Forty minutes later, she leaves my character bleeding behind a virtual wall because I ignore her instruction.

"You were supposed to cover me."

"You were supposed to listen."

Brian laughs until an opposing player eliminates him.

Something shifts in me then, small but permanent.

When the game ends, Sydney helps gather glasses without being asked. She knows where everything belongs in a house that is not hers, yet she never behaves like a guest seeking approval. Brian complains about a software deadline. She reminds him he chose the contract because it pays enough to finance a new custom system.

"You remembered that?" he asks.

"I remember numbers."

"And every bad decision I've made since nineteen."

"Those are often the same thing."

I listen to them trade insults and feel something unfamiliar settle beside attraction.

Envy.

They possess a kind of ease money cannot manufacture. Neither needs to impress the other. Neither fears being misunderstood. I want that ease with someone, and wanting it feels more exposing than any physical appetite.

I do not merely want Sydney's body.

I want her attention. Her challenge. The sharp pleasure of earning agreement from someone immune to status.

For the first time in years, I am interested enough to be patient.

That should make me safer.

Instead, it gives me more to lose.