My Rival, My Partner

Chapter Nine: The Call

Callum's POV

Callum let it ring twice more before answering, mostly to buy himself the two seconds it took to rearrange his face into something his father wouldn't immediately read as compromised.

"It's eleven o'clock," Callum said, stepping a few feet farther into the garage, out of easy earshot, though he could still feel Dane's attention on his back like a physical weight.

"I'm aware of the time," his father said.

"I'm also aware you were seen at a very public dinner tonight, at a very public restaurant, standing rather close to Mr. Copper in the parking garage afterward, according to someone who happened to be leaving at the same time."

Callum's stomach dropped. His father had eyes everywhere, he'd always known that in the abstract, the way you knew a fact without feeling its full weight, but hearing it applied specifically to tonight, to a moment that had felt entirely private, entirely theirs, made something cold settle under his ribs.

"It was a work dinner," Callum said. "We were discussing the board's questions."

"In a parking garage. At eleven p.m. Standing close enough that my source described it as 'intimate.'"

His father's voice hadn't risen at all, which was somehow worse than if it had.

Robert Ashworth's anger had never been loud. It was cold, precise, and it settled into a room like frost.

"I told you to use the proximity, Callum. I did not tell you to become a headline for the society pages."

"Nothing happened."

"Something is clearly happening, or you wouldn't sound so defensive about a work dinner."

A pause, weighted, deliberate. "I've been patient about this. I understand proximity breeds familiarity, it's practically a rule of human nature, and I'm not naive about what three months in a small office can do to two young men with more chemistry than sense. But I need you to understand something clearly, because I don't think you currently do."

Callum closed his eyes.

"Go ahead."

"If this becomes a distraction, if it costs this family the Halloway contract, or costs this firm its reputation, or costs you your judgment at a moment when I need it sharpest, I will end it. Not gently. I have resources you haven't fully priced into your calculations, Callum, and I am entirely willing to use every one of them if it comes to that. Do you understand me?"

"You're threatening him."

"I'm informing you of a fact. What you do with that information determines whether it ever needs to become anything more than a fact."

His father's voice softened, marginally, into something that might have been mistaken for concern by anyone who hadn't spent thirty-one years learning to distrust every register his father's voice could produce.

"I don't want to hurt anyone, Callum. I want this family's name protected, and this contract secured, and you thinking clearly enough to help me do both. That's all. Handle it, and there won't be a problem."

The line went dead before Callum could answer, which was its own kind of message, his father rarely waited for a response he didn't already assume he knew, and tonight, apparently, was no exception.

Callum stood alone in the concrete quiet for a long moment, phone still in hand, feeling the particular vertigo of watching something good get folded, without his consent, into something that could be used as a weapon.

When he turned back, Dane was still there, waiting by his car, arms crossed against the night chill, watching Callum with an expression that was trying very hard to look unbothered and mostly succeeding, except for the small, careful furrow between his brows.

"Everything okay?" Dane asked.

"Fine," Callum said. "Just business."

It was, he would think later, the first outright lie he'd ever told Dane Copper, small, almost reflexive, the kind of lie that felt harmless in the moment it left his mouth and only revealed its actual size much later, once there was no way left to take it back.