Bound By Blackmail

Chapter 4: Blood and Blueprints

Vance Tower didn’t contain a lobby, it was a statement marble polished to a shine that challenged visitors to leave a fingerprint. Clara left one anyway, pressing her palm flat against the reception desk a bit longer than necessary, some petty, stubborn part of her wanted to make it known to the building that she wasn't afraid of it. She was a little, though she'd have died before admitting it out loud. Her account was still frozen, her morning had started with a voicemail full of delays and unanswered messages, and she had exactly one working theory about why, none of it proven, all of it sitting like a stone behind her ribs as the elevator doors opened onto a private floor of glass and steel.

At the opposite end, there was a man standing with his back to her, looking out over a harbor he apparently owned pieces of. "Ms. Montgomery." He didn't immediately turn, a habit she suspected, of making people wait for his attention rather than the reverse. "Thank you for coming."

"You said ten minutes would be enough on the phone." She set her bag down, uninvited, and let her voice come out steadier than she felt. "I'm billing you for the elevator ride too. Consider it your first lesson, if we do this."

That got him to turn, and she found herself briefly, unwillingly recalibrating. She'd expected someone colder-looking from the voice alone instead she found a man who looked carved rather than born, hard lines softened by nothing except, faintly, the corner of his mouth when he almost smiled. Grey eyes assessed her the way she assessed a site survey, cataloguing weaknesses first. He wasn't performing charm at her, which she appreciated more than she expected to; he was simply, unnervingly, paying attention.

"You're straight," he said.

"Well, I'm in a business where I specialise in load-bearing structures and have no time to do anything else, Mr Vance." She nodded at the folder on the table between them, refusing to let her voice catch on the word firm, which this morning felt more fragile than she wanted him to know. "Is that the proposal, or am I supposed to guess the terms like the rest of your board apparently does?"

"My grandfather's charter requires me to marry before a vote in nineteen days, or the company gets carved up by a hostile bid my father can't survive personally." He said it like a bridge's tonnage rating facts, nothing personal, and yet she caught the very slight tightening at his jaw that told her the facts cost him something to say aloud. "I need someone who holds up under press scrutiny, has no interest in my money beyond what we negotiate, and will not fall in love with me. In return, I clear your firm's debt, guarantee three years of Vance contracts, and you walk away in eighteen months with your reputation rebuilt."

Clara had already sat down without waiting to be asked, which pleased him more than it should have. She watched him notice it, watched him file the detail away the way she filed away a contractor's report. "You've done your research on me."

"I don't propose marriage without due diligence." A bet, dry, almost warm. "Though I'll admit this morning's due diligence uncovered up something I wasn't expecting."

Her spine went rigid before her face could catch up and hide it. "My account."

"Frozen an hour before you walked in, on a fraud flag with no corresponding fraud." He watched her carefully, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he was reading her the way she read structural drawings for the c***k that told you where the real damage was. "I don't believe in coincidences that are convenient, Ms. Montgomery. Do you?"

"No." The word came out rougher than she intended. She remembered of the scandal that had cost her three contracts on nothing but timing and rumor, of a wall on her studio floor that only held because someone forced the math to be honest, and felt something in her go quiet and sharp at once. "I think someone's trying to make sure I have no choice but to say yes to whatever you're about to offer me. Which makes me want to say no on principle, and also makes me very interested in who benefits from me saying yes."

"That!" Julian said, "is the first thing you've said that makes me certain I picked correctly." He didn't smile, not quite, but something eased in his shoulders, the recalculation of a man who'd expected panic and found strategy instead. "I intend to find out who's behind it either way, Ms. Montgomery. Whether or not you sign anything with me."

"How generous." She flipped open the folder anyway, scanning terms that were, if anything, more generous than the version she'd braced for on the phone generous enough to make her more suspicious, not less. "Why me? You could buy silence and cooperation from a hundred women in this city who wouldn't ask you a single hard question."

"Because you won't lie to me for money. And because I need someone in my house for eighteen months who isn't already lying to me for something else." He held her gaze on that, steady, unblinking, and she believed it precisely because it clearly cost him something to say, dry wall behind which he'd usually kept intact, standing open a tiny bit behind a support beam.

She thought of her father's name on a letterhead three months from meaning nothing. She thought about how badly she wanted, for once, to be the one setting terms instead of the one begging a bank for an explanation it wouldn't give her. "I have conditions," she said, and watched him take the breath, bracing, she'd learn later, for a demand he assumed he couldn't meet. "Separate bedrooms. My firm's name stays mine. And as soon as this thing is over, I walk away clean, no leverage left in your family's hands."

"Done. All three." He held out his hand, more assured than friendly. "What I do want, Ms. Montgomery, you'll find I don't give up easily, including finding whoever put that flag on your account before they do anything else."

She shook it, grip steady, matching his. "Then I suppose we have a merger."

His phone lying between them gave a single buzz, face up, and she watched his expression change before he'd even finished reading it the particular stillness of a man absorbing news he hadn't budgeted for. He turned the screen toward her silently.

Fraud flag traced. Reported internally. Vance Enterprises credentials used.