His Favorite Mistake

Chapter 15

I followed Mr. Bennett into the room.

Three men were already seated around the long mahogany table. The Head of Finance, Fernando Lang. The project coordinator for the Eastbridge-Meridian Project. And Mr. Graves, the representative from Hartwell & Co. Their heads turned as I walked in. None of them stood.

I took the seat at the head of the table and placed the tablet in front of me. The leather of the chair creaked under my weight. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city lights blinked like they had somewhere better to be.

“Make it short,” I said.

Fernando Lang leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Hey, young man, you can’t order us around. You can’t have us wait here just to treat us like kids.”

I looked up slowly. The words landed harder than they should have. Fernando had always been the one who stepped in when things got messy, always defending, always smoothing edges. Tonight the edge was directed at me.

Graves cleared his throat and opened a thick folder. The sound of paper sliding against paper filled the brief silence.

“What happened to the Meridian reference paperwork that it hasn’t been forwarded to the Eastbridge team?”

My fingers paused on the edge of the tablet. Surprise flickered across my face before I could stop it. Hartwell’s staff had already come to get the Eastbridge paperwork this morning. I had watched Sienna leave with the document myself.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

Fernando cleared his throat. “Take it easy and answer the questions, please. This shouldn’t cause an argument.”

I looked at him, still processing the shift in his tone. For a moment I almost reacted, then let it slide and turned my attention back to Graves.

“Well, Graves. It’s with you now.”

Graves didn’t flinch. “Not with Hartwell. Our staff hasn’t brought it to us yet.”

I leaned back in the chair, the leather sighing under me. “So why did you try to make it look like my organization is the one withholding the whole process?”

“Like I said,” Graves replied evenly, “we haven’t reviewed it yet because our staff hasn’t brought it yet for us to go through it.”

“But you knew it left my company,” I said, voice dropping. “And you still cornered me to ask questions you already knew the answers to.”

The air in the room tightened. I could feel the heat rising under my collar.

Fernando raised a hand slightly. “Mr. Vance. We still have two vendor payments that are overdue. One is now twelve days late. The other party has started sending formal reminders.”

I exhaled through my nose. Vendor payments for the new leadership certification packages. The same packages we had marketed as industry-changing. The same ones that were supposed to keep our biggest corporate clients locked in.

Mr. Bennett finally spoke, his voice calm but firm. “There’s also the matter of the new Evolution module. Several of my clients under the corporate training contracts have been asking for it. They’re starting to complain. A few have already threatened to pull their shares if the current Evolution release isn’t delivered soon. You know what that means for us if they walk away.”

The words hit harder than I wanted to admit. I felt the muscles in my jaw lock.

I turned to Mr. Bennett and forced the edge out of my voice. “I know there’s been a certain delay on my company’s end. I’m sorry for that. I’ll look into it and make sure it’s resolved.”

Mr. Bennett nodded once. Easy. Forgiving. The kind of man who still believed delays could be fixed with a simple promise.

Graves, however, was not that kind of man.

He closed the folder slowly, almost deliberately. “How do you expect a man who has no real responsibilities to handle a business plan well? He doesn’t have problems, so he doesn’t know what it takes to solve one… just being incompetent for my liking.”

The room went still.

I felt the words settle under my skin like a burn. My hands curled into fists against the polished wood of the table. For a second I only stared at him, the city lights behind his head blurring into streaks of gold and white.

Then I stood.

The chair scraped back hard against the floor.

“When did we start crossing boundaries here?” My voice came out low and sharp. “What exactly do you mean by responsibilities?”

Fernando raised both hands, palms out. “Hey, it’s okay. Let’s not…”

Mr. Bennett also leaned forward. “Gentlemen, let’s keep this professional and maintain decorum please.”

But Graves only sat there, already turning the page in his folder as if the insult had never left his mouth. As if he hadn’t just tried to gut me in front of everyone.

The project coordinator remained perfectly still in his chair, eyes never leaving me.

I remained standing. The blood was pounding too loud in my ears. I looked at him, at the calm way he adjusted his glasses, at the faint smirk that never quite left his mouth.

Something inside me snapped.

I shoved the table hard enough to make the water glasses rattle and spill. I stepped around it and closed the distance in three long strides. Graves barely had time to look up before my hands were already on him, grabbing the lapels of his expensive suit and hauling him half out of the chair.

“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” I snarled.

He tried to push back. His fist came up fast. The first blow was clumsy, glancing off my shoulder. The second one I blocked with my forearm. Then I drove forward with my full weight, the force of it sending both of us stumbling toward the glass wall.

Someone shouted my name. Fernando, maybe. The sound felt distant.

My fist connected with the side of his face. Solid. Final. The impact traveled up my arm in a sharp, satisfying jolt. Graves staggered, eyes wide with shock, and swung again. This time his knuckles caught my jaw. Pain flared hot and bright.

I didn’t stop.

I shoved him harder against the glass. The entire wall trembled. Another punch landed, then another. Papers scattered across the floor. A chair toppled.

Fernando’s voice finally cut through the noise, sharp and urgent. “Frederick! That’s enough!”

I heard him, but my hands were still tight on Graves’s jacket. My breathing came hard and uneven. The taste of blood was already in my mouth.

For a moment the only sounds in the room were our heavy breathing and the soft drip of water from the overturned glasses.

Then everything stopped.

I blinked.

I was still standing at the head of the table. My hands were empty. The water glasses sat undisturbed. Graves was still calmly turning the page in his folder, as if nothing had happened.

My heart was racing. My fists were clenched so tightly my nails dug into my palms. The taste of blood was only in my imagination.

I had not moved.

The project coordinator was still watching me, silent and unblinking.

I forced myself to sit back down, the leather of the chair cold against my back, while the weight of what I had almost done settled over me like cold water.