Vested Interest

Preliminary findings

CHAPTER 2: PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

Sloane spent her first three hours at Voss Industries buried in shipping manifests, grateful for the mundane familiarity of spreadsheets after the lobby's mortifying reunion.

She'd been assigned a temporary office on the fourteenth floor, glass walled, with a view of the finance department that made her feel like she was on display rather than simply working. She kept her head down, moved through the documentation with practiced efficiency, and told herself firmly that Adrian Voss's presence three floors up had no bearing on her ability to conduct a thorough, professional audit.

She was still telling herself that when he appeared in her office doorway just before noon, having apparently abandoned whatever executive duties usually filled his day.

"Ms. Kereti." He knocked once on the open door, formal despite having already let himself halfway into the room. "Do you have a few minutes? I'd like to discuss the scope of the review."

"Of course, Mr. Voss." Sloane set down her pen with careful, deliberate calm, refusing to let her hands shake despite the sudden acceleration of her pulse. "What would you like to discuss?"

He closed the door behind him, and something in that small gesture, the click of the latch, the sudden privacy of the glass-walled office, made the air between them considerably heavier.

"We should address the obvious thing first," he said, dropping the formal tone, his voice lower now, more like the man from the hotel bar than the CEO from the lobby. "Three months ago. I recognized you the moment the elevator doors opened. I assume the feeling was mutual."

Hearing her first name in his mouth again, after months of careful effort not to think about it, sent an unwelcome shiver through her.

"I recognized you too," she admitted, matching his directness because pretending otherwise felt exhausting and pointless. "This is an extremely inconvenient coincidence, Adrian."

"Extremely," he agreed, though something in his expression suggested he didn't find it entirely unwelcome. "For what it's worth, I didn't request you specifically. The audit firm was selected by the board before I even knew your name. I only learned who my new external auditor would be an hour before you walked into that lobby."

"That's somehow both reassuring and not remotely helpful," Sloane said. "I have a signed contract. A professional obligation to conduct this review with complete objectivity. Whatever happened between us cannot factor into that."

"Agreed completely." He studied her for a long moment, something careful entering his gaze. "Though I should mention, for full transparency, that my sister has spoken about you often over the past several weeks. She has a new friend from her pottery class who gave her excellent advice about a difficult ex-fiancé situation. I didn't put the pieces together until this morning, when Elise mentioned your name over breakfast completely unprompted."

Sloane's stomach dropped considerably further than it already had. "Elise is your sister. The Elise."

"The Elise," he confirmed. "Small world, apparently, in ways that are becoming increasingly inconvenient for both of us."

"She doesn't know," Sloane said, working through the implications with mounting alarm. "About the hotel, about any of it. I never mentioned details."

"Nor did I, since I didn't know your name to mention." Adrian's jaw tightened slightly. "Though I imagine she'll find the truth interesting once this audit requires you to be around the company, and by extension, around family events I can't avoid attending."

The weight of that settled between them, professional complication now tangled with personal relationships in ways that made Sloane's carefully ordered plans for this contract considerably more fragile.

"We need boundaries," she said finally, forcing herself back into the practical, capable mindset that had carried her through considerably worse situations than an awkward professional reunion. "Clear ones. No private meetings without documentation. No discussion of personal matters during business hours. And you cannot mention this to Elise, not yet, not until I've figured out how to handle it properly."

"Agreed on all counts," Adrian said, something almost relieved in his tone at her decisive, businesslike approach. "Though I should warn you, Elise is remarkably perceptive. She's already asked me twice this week why I seem distracted."

"Then be less distracted," Sloane said, sharper than intended, exhaustion and anxiety bleeding into her tone despite her best efforts at composure.

Something shifted in Adrian's expression, amusement mixing with genuine concern. "Are you alright? You seem considerably more rattled than the situation alone accounts for."

Sloane hesitated, weighing how much to reveal, acutely aware that the complication currently growing beneath her blazer was not information she was remotely prepared to share with him yet, not in a glass-walled office on her first day of a professional contract that already felt precarious.

"I'm fine," she said, the lie sitting uncomfortably in her chest. "Adjusting to an unexpected situation, same as you. Nothing that affects my ability to complete this audit properly."

Adrian studied her for a moment longer, something in his expression suggesting he didn't entirely believe her, though he didn't press further.

"Alright," he said finally. "I'll leave you to the documentation. If you need anything from my office directly, my assistant Priya can arrange access without requiring us to interact personally, if that would feel more comfortable given the circumstances."

"That would be helpful. Thank you."

He paused at the door, something almost reluctant in the way he lingered. "For what it's worth, Sloane, that night three months ago was genuinely one of the better nights I've had in longer than I'd like to admit. I don't regret it, complicated as this situation has become. I hope you don't either."

He left before she could formulate a response, the door clicking shut behind him with the same quiet finality as their supposedly anonymous morning parting three months earlier.

Sloane sat alone in her glass office, heart pounding, and allowed herself exactly thirty seconds to press her palms against her closed eyes and breathe through the overwhelming complication her carefully planned professional life had suddenly become.

Then she picked her pen back up, opened the next file in the stack, and reminded herself that she had survived a difficult marriage, a difficult divorce, and considerably worse professional challenges than one inconveniently attractive, inconveniently connected client.

She could survive this too. She simply needed a plan.

Her phone buzzed against the desk, Elise's name flashing across the screen with unfortunate timing.

Pottery class Thursday? I need to vent about my brother being weird and distracted this week. Also I have a work thing I want your advice on, some external audit that's apparently making everyone tense. Corporate stuff, boring probably, but the auditor sounds impressively thorough according to my brother.

Sloane stared at the message for a long moment, laughter bubbling up despite the absurdity of her situation, equal parts horrified and genuinely amused at how thoroughly her carefully separate lives had collided within the span of a single morning.

She typed back a noncommittal response about Thursday, set her phone face down on the desk, and returned to the shipping manifests with renewed determination, understanding clearly that whatever came next in this increasingly complicated professional and personal entanglement, she would need considerably more than careful boundaries to navigate it successfully.

The pregnancy test currently hidden in her bathroom cabinet at home, two lines she'd stared at for nearly twenty minutes before allowing herself to believe them, waited patiently for the conversation she wasn't yet ready to have with anyone, least of all the man three floors above her whose company she was contractually obligated to scrutinize for the next several weeks.

By late afternoon, Sloane had made her way through half the department's shipping documentation, and the mundane rhythm of the work had finally begun to settle her nerves. She was cross-referencing a vendor invoice against its purchase order when a knock at her door interrupted her, considerably gentler than Adrian's earlier arrival.

"Ms. Kereti? I'm Priya, Mr. Voss's assistant." A young woman with a warm, efficient manner stepped inside, carrying a small stack of folders. "He asked me to bring you the Q3 vendor contracts you requested, and to let you know the conference room on this floor is available if you need a quieter space to work."

"Thank you, Priya. That's very helpful." Sloane accepted the folders, grateful for the normalcy of a straightforward professional exchange after the morning's emotional whiplash.

"He also mentioned," Priya added, hesitating slightly, "that questions requiring his direct input should be routed through me first, for documentation purposes. He said you'd understand what that meant."

Sloane felt a flicker of surprised gratitude at Adrian's discretion, the careful boundary he'd apparently already begun building without her having to ask twice. "I do understand. Thank you for passing that along."

Priya left, and Sloane found herself staring at the closed door for a moment, turning over the strange, complicated shape of a professional relationship that had begun with considerably more intimacy than any client relationship reasonably should.

She worked steadily through the rest of the afternoon, and by the time she packed up her laptop and headed toward the elevator, she'd almost convinced herself the day's earlier turbulence had settled into something manageable.

Almost, until the elevator doors opened on the ground floor and she found herself face to face with Elise Voss, floral design portfolio tucked under one arm, clearly waiting for someone.

"Sloane!" Elise's face lit with genuine delight, entirely unaware of the horror currently flooding through her friend. "What are you doing here? Please tell me this isn't a coincidence, because I could really use a friendly face. I'm meeting my brother for a family dinner thing and I'm already exhausted just thinking about it."

Sloane's mind raced through several possible responses, all of them inadequate. "I'm actually here for work," she managed finally, opting for partial truth over outright deception. "A consulting contract. Small world, I suppose."

"Wait." Elise's expression shifted, something clicking into place with visible speed. "You're not the auditor Adrian's been so tense about, are you? Sloane, that's insane. You have to come to dinner. He'll be thrilled someone he actually likes is involved in this whole stressful process."

Sloane opened her mouth to decline, already composing a reasonable excuse, when Adrian himself emerged from a side hallway, stopping short at the sight of the two women together, something carefully neutral settling over his expression as he processed the collision of his two worlds happening considerably faster than either he or Sloane had prepared for.

"Elise," he said, recovering smoothly. "I see you've met Ms. Kereti already."

"Met her? Adrian, she's my pottery friend. The one I told you about." Elise looked between them with growing, delighted confusion. "You two know each other?"

"Professionally," Adrian said carefully, his eyes meeting Sloane's with silent, urgent communication neither dared voice aloud. "Ms. Kereti is conducting the audit review."

"That's such a funny coincidence," Elise said, entirely oblivious to the tension crackling between the two people she'd just inadvertently connected. "You should absolutely join us for dinner, Sloane. Family style, nothing formal, just the three of us and considerably too much pasta."

Sloane glanced at Adrian, searching for some signal about how to navigate this unexpected, complicated invitation, and found only careful, matching uncertainty reflected back at her.

"I'd love to," she heard herself say, some reckless instinct overriding every reasonable objection her exhausted mind could generate. "If that's alright with everyone."

"Wonderful," Elise said, already looping her arm through Sloane's with easy, affectionate familiarity, entirely unaware that she'd just arranged a dinner considerably more complicated than a simple family gathering.

Adrian caught Sloane's eye over his sister's head, something between alarm and reluctant amusement crossing his expression, and Sloane understood, with sudden and complete clarity, that whatever careful boundaries she'd established that morning were about to be tested considerably sooner than she'd anticipated, over pasta, with the one person who had no idea how much was actually at stake.