Price of his name

The eviction notice was still in her hand when security grabbed her arm. “Ma’am, you need to leave the building.” “That’s funny,” Sloane said, twisting against his grip, “because I own part of it.” She didn’t. Not anymore. Not since a man she’d never met decided her father’s signature on a ten-year-old patent didn’t matter. She wrenched free and made it three more steps into the lobby before a second guard caught her other arm, fingers digging into her jacket. Marble under her boots, gold letters on the wall behind the front desk spelling out CROSS ENTERPRISES in a font that probably cost more than her father’s shop made in a year. She should have called ahead. She should have brought the actual paperwork instead of just the notice. She hadn’t thought past getting through the front door, because she never did she reacted first and figured out the plan on the way down. “You’re going to want to hear this,” she called out, to no one in particular, just needing someone in this building to stop and listen. A man near the elevators looked over. Dark suit, no tie, phone pressed to his ear, the kind of walk that said doors opened themselves for him and always had. For one second, something in his face flickered like he almost knew her, like he was chasing a name that wouldn’t come. Then the elevator opened and he stepped inside without a word, and the doors slid shut on her still fighting to get free. The guards hauled her through the revolving doors and released her hard enough that she stumbled into a trash can. A woman in heels sidestepped her without looking up from her phone. Sterling City kept moving. It always did, whether or not your life was falling apart six feet away from it. Sloane smoothed her jacket down and looked up at the tower. Fifty-two floors of glass reflecting a sky that didn’t belong to people like her anymore. She uncrumpled the notice and read the line she’d already memorized on the bus over. Property to be seized in satisfaction of outstanding debt, effective the 30th, pursuant to agreement between Ashby Restoration and Cross Enterprises Holdings LLC. Her father hadn’t signed anything called Cross Enterprises Holdings LLC. He’d signed a licensing agreement with a man named Elias Cross eleven years ago, back when the shop was thriving and the engine retrofit design he’d drawn up on a napkin was going to change both their lives. Then Elias Cross took the design, cut her father out of the patent filing, and built an empire on it. Her father never fought it. Said the lawyers would eat what little they had left and spit out nothing. Sloane had spent every year since telling herself he was wrong, and she still hadn’t done a single useful thing about it just showed up here today and yelled at a lobby. She pulled out her phone and called the hospital. “Ashby, Robert. Room 412.” “He’s stable. Resting. You can visit during afternoon hours.” Stable. Because a man collapsing from stress while reading a foreclosure letter counted as stable, as long as his heart kept beating on its own. She turned and started walking, already working out how to get back inside a building that had just thrown her out twice in five minutes. Eleven floors up, the board meeting was already going badly. “Voss is offering thirty percent above market on the retrofit division,” Corinne Cross said, not looking up from the tablet in front of her. “The board would be irresponsible not to consider it.” “The board would be irresponsible to hand Marcus Voss the one division holding this company together,” August said. “That’s not an offer. That’s a takeover wearing a nicer suit.” “It’s generous for a division that’s bleeding money” “It’s bleeding money because funding got cut two quarters running.” He didn’t raise his voice. He never did it was the only thing that kept people twice his age from steamrolling him in a room he’d inherited before he was ready for it. “Vote it down.” Corinne’s mouth thinned. Across the table, Everett gave him a look that said you’re outnumbered, and August already knew it. Four votes for exploring the offer. He needed five, and the fifth was supposed to walk in any minute with the numbers to make his case. His phone buzzed. Security: disturbance in lobby, handled. He glanced at the wall of windows behind him, floor-to-ceiling glass looking straight down into the atrium his father’s design, so he could always see who was coming and going in his own building. A woman was being dragged out by two guards, fighting the whole way, a piece of paper crushed in her fist like she’d rather lose the fight than let go of it. Something about the way she held her ground snagged in him and wouldn’t let go. “August.” Corinne, sharper now. “We don’t have all afternoon.” “Table the vote,” he said, already standing. “Until my numbers get here.” “You don’t get to unilaterally—” “I run this company. I get to table a vote.” He left before she could argue, aware even in the elevator that walking out mid-meeting might cost him the vote entirely. He told himself it was about the missing board member. Not about a stranger he had no reason to still be thinking about. The lobby was empty when the doors opened. She was already gone. He stood there a second too long. “Find her,” he said when Everett picked up. “I want a name in an hour.” “You walked out of the Voss vote for a stranger from the lobby?” “Yes,” August said, and hung up before his brother could point out how little sense that made because he didn’t have an answer that made sense either, and it bothered him more than he wanted to admit that he’d let it pull him out of a room he couldn’t afford to lose.