Chapter 6
1256 Words
Lena's POV
I picked up the pen.
And I signed.
It wasn't dramatic. No thunder, no music, no moment where the room held its breath. Just my hand moving across the page, my name appearing in ink, and then the scratch of the pen going quiet.
I put it down.
Damien took the document, closed the folder, and set it to one side. Then he stood and extended his hand across the desk.
I looked at it for a half second before I stood and shook it.
His grip was firm. One shake. That was it.
"Welcome to Morrison Corporation," he said.
I sat back down because my legs weren't entirely trustworthy.
Something had shifted.
I couldn't explain it properly. It wasn't confidence exactly, I didn't suddenly feel capable or powerful or any of the things that word implied. It was smaller than that. Quieter.
It was the feeling of a door closing behind me.
The Lena who had no name, no family, no ground to stand on, she was still there, still fresh, still raw at the edges. But she was behind that door now. And I was on the other side of it, holding a pen I'd just used to write my real name on something that mattered.
I walked out of Damien's study and stood in the corridor for a moment.
Then I went to find Henry.
He was in the sitting room with a cup of tea and a newspaper he wasn't reading.
"You signed it," he said the moment he saw my face.
"How do you know?"
"You look terrified." He smiled. "That's how I know."
I dropped onto the couch across from him. "Is it that obvious?"
"Only to someone who knows what to look for." He set the newspaper down. "How do you feel?"
I thought about it honestly.
"Like I just jumped off something very tall," I said.
"And I haven't hit the ground yet. So I don't know if I'm flying or falling."
Henry nodded slowly. "That's exactly right. That's exactly what it feels like."
"Did you feel that way? When you started?"
"I was twenty-two and Damien handed me a division to run and said 'don't embarrass us.'" He smiled at the memory. "I threw up in the bathroom first. Then I went and ran the division."
I laughed. An actual laugh. "He said that?"
"Word for word. It's his version of a pep talk."
"Wonderful."
"You'll learn to translate." Henry picked up his tea.
"The signed contract means he believes in you, by the way. Damien doesn't offer things he doesn't believe in. He's incapable of it."
I looked at my hands in my lap.
My name on a document. CEO.
Don't embarrass us.
I could work with that.
The afternoon passed quietly.
Abel gave me a brief tour of the east wing I'd missed the night before. A library, actual floor-to-ceiling shelves, rolling ladder, the smell of old paper and leather. A gym. A home cinema. A room that Abel said was originally a ballroom and was now mostly used to store things Damien refused to throw away but would never admit to keeping.
"Like what?" I asked.
"Old photographs. Our parents' things. A bicycle he rode when he was eight that he says takes up too much space but has never actually moved."
I filed that away. Damien Morrison kept his dead parents' things and an eight-year-old's bicycle in a room he called storage. I would not mention this to him. I would think about it often.
We were heading back toward the main staircase when Damien's assistant, a sharp-eyed young woman named Claire who moved like she was always slightly ahead of the room, appeared at the end of the corridor.
"Mr. Morrison." She addressed Damien, who had appeared from somewhere in that silent way of his.
"The Hartley Group has confirmed. They've formally cancelled their contract with Norman Industries, effective immediately. No explanation given, per your instruction."
Damien nodded once. "And Reeves Capital?"
"Withdrew this morning. Desmond Partners followed an hour ago."
"Good."
Claire disappeared.
I stood very still.
Three contracts. Gone. Just like that. By this afternoon.
Abel was watching me from the corner of his eye.
"That's…." I started.
"Fast?" he offered.
"I was going to say quiet."
"Damien doesn't announce things," Abel said. "He just does them. By the time anyone realizes what happened, it's already done."
I looked down the corridor where Claire had gone.
Aiden's phones would be ringing right now.
I knew exactly what that would look like, him pacing, calling people, demanding answers, getting nothing.
His voice getting tighter with every call. His mother calling to ask what was happening. Vanessa watching him pace and calculating what it meant for her.
I knew that version of him. The panicked one. The one who grabbed his phone with both hands and talked too loud into it.
I felt something move through me that I wasn't entirely proud of.
Good, it said.
I let it say it.
By dinner, two more had followed.
Claire delivered the update quietly at the table between the soup course and the main. Five contracts total. Aiden's three largest clients and two mid-sized ones who apparently didn't want to find out what it meant to stay.
Abel refilled his water glass and said nothing.
Henry looked at his plate
.
Damien cut his food with the same precision he did everything.
I sat with the information for a moment. Turning it over. Feeling the edges of it.
Then I said: "I want to be involved."
Damien looked up.
Not surprised. But looking.
"In what you're doing," I said. "Not just watching it happen. Not just hearing the updates at dinner." I kept my voice steady. "I want to be in the room. I want to be part of it."
Silence.
Abel was very carefully not reacting.
Henry had stopped eating.
Damien set down his fork. He looked at me with that expression that meant he was thinking several things simultaneously and choosing which one to say.
"Tell me what you want from it," he said.
And that was when everything I'd been pushing down since yesterday came up to the surface.
Vanessa sitting on Aiden's lap like she'd already won.
Margaret's palm connecting with my face. The sound of it. The way Aiden hadn't moved.
My boxes by the door. The rain. The pavement.
Six years.
Six years of being small so he could feel big. Six years of shrinking and apologizing and trying harder and being told it still wasn't enough. Six years of loving someone who looked at me like I was something he'd accidentally bought and couldn't return.
I looked at Damien across the dinner table.
"I want to be in the room," I said quietly, "when he finds out it was me."
Nobody spoke.
Abel picked up his glass and took a slow sip. His eyes were bright.
Henry exhaled softly.
Damien held my gaze for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes, not quite emotion, not quite its absence. Something in between that I was starting to think was just the way Damien Morrison looked when he approved of something.
Then the corner of his mouth moved.
Not quite a smile. The suggestion of one. The ghost of what a smile would look like if Damien ever fully committed to having one.
"Then you'd better be ready," he said.
He picked up his fork again.
"Because that means you need to look the part.”
- Writer
