Addicted to My Enemy

The File Cabinet

The transition team met for the first time on a Thursday evening, long after most of the floor had gone home. It was just Ronan, Ivy, and a stack of old client files piled on the long table in his office, the harbor outside turning purple and gold as the sun dropped low over the water.

"We do this the right way or we don't do it at all," Ronan said, sliding a folder across the table toward her. "That means going back through every account note from the last two years. I want to know exactly where we let this client down, not just the parts that make us look bad."

"That's a lot of reading."

"You said you wanted this job done right." He didn't look up from his own folder. "Or was that just something you said to sound impressive in front of a room?"

Ivy felt her jaw tighten. "I meant it."

"Good. Then start reading."

They worked in silence for almost an hour, the only sound the soft turning of pages and the hum of the building settling into its evening quiet. Ivy found herself sneaking looks at him more than once, the way his brow pulled together when he read something he didn't like, the way he rubbed the back of his neck when he was thinking hard about a problem. He looked, in these quiet moments, less like the cold name people whispered about in the break room and more like someone tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

"You're doing it again," he said, without looking up.

"Doing what?"

"Staring." But there was no real edge in his voice this time. If anything, he sounded almost amused.

"Just trying to figure you out," Ivy admitted, surprising herself with how honest it came out.

Ronan finally looked up, and something passed between them that felt heavier than it should have for a random Thursday evening in an office that smelled like old paper and cold coffee. "Good luck with that. I haven't figured myself out yet."

She laughed before she could stop herself, a real laugh, surprised out of her, and for a moment the whole room felt smaller, warmer, like the harbor outside had stopped being a view and started being a backdrop just for them.

Then her phone buzzed, breaking the moment. A message from her mother. Working late again? Don't forget to eat something. Ivy's stomach twisted with guilt. Her mother had no idea where she really was, who she was really sitting across from, what name was stitched into the walls of the very building holding her right now.

She set the phone face down and kept working, because it was easier than thinking about it.

Near nine, Ronan stood and crossed to an old filing cabinet against the far wall, the metal kind that looked older than the rest of the office, out of place among all the glass and steel.

"Old records," he said, catching her curious look. "Anything from before the digital system got installed lives in here. My father likes to keep hard copies of certain deals. Doesn't trust computers the way the rest of us do."

"Why keep them in your office and not some archive downstairs?"

"Because some of them are deals he's proud of." Something flickered across his face, quick and unreadable. "And some of them, I think, he just doesn't want anyone else finding."

He pulled a drawer open, searching for something related to the logistics client, and Ivy, curious despite herself, stepped closer to look at the labels on the hanging folders. Most of them were names she didn't recognize, companies she'd never heard of, deals from years before she'd ever set foot in this building.

Then her eyes caught on one label, handwritten in faded blue ink, tucked near the back of the drawer.

Monroe Textiles Acquisition.

Her whole body went still.

For a moment she couldn't breathe, couldn't move, could only stare at her father's name sitting there in a stranger's handwriting, filed away like it was nothing more than another line item in a long list of companies this family had swallowed whole. Eleven years of her mother's silence, of unspoken grief, of a name too painful to say out loud, and here it was, reduced to two words in a drawer in an office with a view of the harbor.

"Ivy?"

Ronan's voice pulled her back. She realized she'd gone pale, that her hand had drifted toward the folder without her permission, fingers hovering an inch from the tab.

"You okay?" He was watching her now with real concern, the kind that didn't fit the cold reputation people had built around him.

"Fine." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Just tired. Long week."

He studied her a second longer, like he didn't quite believe her, but he let it go, sliding the drawer shut without ever noticing what she'd seen. "We can stop for tonight if you need to."

"No." She forced herself to sit back down, to pick her folder back up, to keep her hands from shaking. "I want to finish this."

But for the rest of the night, she couldn't stop thinking about that faded blue ink, her father's company reduced to a filing label, sitting three feet away from her the entire time, close enough to touch, close enough to break her open if she let it.

She left the office two hours later with the pitch work finished and something else entirely unfinished sitting heavy in her chest. Walking to the bus stop under a sky gone fully dark, she finally let herself cry, quiet and quick, the kind of crying you do when you can't afford to fall apart for long.

She had found the wound. Now she just had to decide what to do with knowing exactly where it lived.