Chapter 29 - You’re Asking the Wrong Questions
1335 Words
The next morning didn’t arrive gently.
It came with urgency—sharp, fast, already in motion before anyone had the chance to fully catch up with it.
The office reflected that shift immediately.
Phones rang more often than usual. Conversations were quicker, tighter. Movements had purpose. There was no lingering, no wasted time, no space for hesitation.
Everything felt… accelerated.
Emily noticed it the second she stepped inside.
Not because anyone told her something had changed—but because she felt it. The energy in the room wasn’t just busy.
It was pressured.
She set her bag down at her desk, her movements automatic, her eyes scanning briefly across the space out of habit more than curiosity—
—and stopped.
Alex was already there.
That, in itself, wasn’t unusual.
What was—
was the way he looked.
Focused.
Still.
Too still.
No smirk. No casual confidence spilling into the room before he even spoke. No effortless ease that made everything feel lighter than it was.
This version of him was… contained.
Their eyes met briefly.
Just a second.
Just enough.
Neither of them spoke.
Emily looked away first, sitting down, opening her laptop, giving herself something to do that didn’t involve acknowledging whatever that moment had been.
Whatever this was.
It didn’t last long.
Her phone vibrated softly against the desk.
Once.
Then again.
A message.
Unknown number.
Her fingers stilled for a fraction of a second before she picked it up, unlocking the screen with a calm she didn’t entirely feel.
She expected something random.
Irrelevant.
Unimportant.
It wasn’t.
“You’re asking the wrong questions.”
Her breath caught—just slightly.
Barely noticeable.
Another message followed immediately.
“Try asking about her.”
Her gaze sharpened, her mind already moving ahead, connecting, searching—
her.
A third message.
“Before someone else answers for you.”
Emily lowered the phone slowly, her grip tightening around it just enough to betray the shift inside her.
This wasn’t coincidence.
This wasn’t random.
This was targeted.
“Emily.”
She looked up.
Alex was standing in front of her desk.
He had seen it.
Of course he had.
“What happened?” he asked, his tone lower now, more serious than she had ever heard it in a work setting.
She didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she turned the phone slightly, angling the screen toward him.
He stepped closer.
Close enough to read.
Close enough that she could feel the shift in his presence without looking directly at him.
His expression darkened as his eyes moved over the messages.
“Well,” he said after a moment, quieter now, “that’s not subtle.”
“No,” she replied. “It’s not.”
Silence lingered between them for half a second.
Then—
“What does it mean?” he asked.
Emily shook her head slightly.
“It means whoever this is… knows we’re looking.”
“And wants to control how we look,” Alex added.
Their eyes met again.
This time—
neither of them looked away immediately.
“We don’t tell anyone yet,” he said.
She hesitated.
“Alex—”
“Not yet,” he repeated, more firmly this time, though not aggressively. “We don’t even know what this is. If we bring it in now, it becomes something bigger before we understand it.”
She studied him for a moment.
Measured.
Careful.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Fine,” she said finally. “But we don’t ignore it.”
A faint, almost humorless smile touched his lips.
“Wasn’t planning to.”
Another pause.
Then—
“We start with her,” he added.
Emily nodded slowly.
“Yes,” she said. “We do.”
Across the office, the atmosphere felt just as controlled—and just as close to shifting.
John stood by the large table in the meeting room, reviewing something on his tablet that he hadn’t fully registered in several minutes, his focus split between what was in front of him and what had yet to settle from the night before.
He hadn’t slept much.
Not that it showed.
It never did.
The door opened quietly.
Taylor stepped inside.
He didn’t look up immediately.
But he knew it was her.
“You’re early,” he said.
“So are you,” she replied, closing the door behind her with a calm that mirrored his own.
That was it.
No mention of the night.
No acknowledgment.
No shift in tone.
Professional.
Clean.
Controlled.
Exactly as it should be.
She moved to the table, setting down a folder, her fingers brushing briefly against the surface as she organized it with precise, practiced movements.
“We have updates on the press situation,” she said. “Nothing new published yet, but there’s movement behind the scenes.”
John nodded slightly.
“Expected.”
A pause.
Then—
“We’re ignoring it?” she asked.
It was subtle.
Carefully phrased.
Neutral on the surface.
But not empty.
John looked up then.
Their eyes met.
“There’s nothing to address,” he said.
The words were controlled.
Measured.
Taylor held his gaze for a second longer.
Then—
“Of course,” she replied.
And just like that—
it was buried.
Or at least—
that was the agreement.
For now.
Back at the desks, the air between Alex and Emily had shifted again.
Not softer.
Not easier.
Sharper.
They stood side by side now, looking over something on her screen, close enough that neither of them could pretend not to notice it, but not acknowledging it either.
Emily scrolled through records, old articles, archived mentions that barely registered as important on their own but began to form something more when placed together.
“There,” she said, pointing.
Alex leaned in slightly.
Closer.
A name.
A company.
A date that didn’t quite align with everything else.
“She shows up more than once,” Emily added. “Different contexts. Different years.”
“But always around the same people,” Alex said.
Their hands moved at the same time.
Brushing.
Neither pulled away immediately.
Just a second.
Too long to be accidental.
Too short to be intentional.
Emily’s breath hitched—barely.
“Focus,” she said quietly.
Alex’s gaze flickered to hers.
“I am.”
That didn’t help.
She looked back at the screen.
Forced herself to.
“We need to verify this,” she said. “If she’s connected—”
“She is,” he interrupted.
“Alex—”
“No one sends messages like that unless they know exactly where to push.”
She turned toward him then.
Fully this time.
“And what does that mean?”
He held her gaze.
Closer now.
Too close.
“It means,” he said quietly, “this isn’t just information anymore.”
A beat.
“It’s leverage.”
The word settled heavily between them.
Across the room, Taylor watched.
Not obviously.
Not directly.
But she saw enough.
The proximity.
The shift.
The difference in how they stood near each other now compared to before.
And she filed it away.
Not for now.
For later.
The next message came faster than expected.
Not to Emily.
To John.
His phone buzzed once against the table.
He glanced at it.
Almost ignored it.
Then didn’t.
Unknown number.
A single message.
“He didn’t tell you everything.”
John’s expression didn’t change immediately.
But something behind it did.
Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his gaze—
—and met Taylor’s eyes across the room.
She had seen it.
Of course she had.
“What is it?” she asked.
A simple question.
Too simple.
John didn’t answer right away.
Because for the first time—
he wasn’t entirely sure how much longer he could keep everything exactly where it was.
And across the office—
without knowing why—
Alex and Emily both looked up at the same time.
As if something had shifted.
As if something had just begun.
- Writer
