The Rival I Let In

Three Years Of Rivalry

Most of the night I lay in bed replaying the will reading in my head, the lawyer's voice, Vesper's carefully hidden satisfaction, my grandmother's handwriting on that envelope. By the time it was morning, I was more exhausted than when I had gone to bed, and that rage in my chest hadn't faded at all. If anything, it had settled into something colder.

Nevertheless, I still got dressed for the office. Grief or not, will or not, Castellane Group had a scheduled negotiation session that morning, and I wasn't about to hand Vesper one more reason to say I wasn't ready.

I should have guessed who would be sitting across the table. Marchetti Holdings was negotiating a distribution partnership with us, and of course Julianii was there in person, dark suit, sleeves not a millimeter out of place, sitting like he owned whatever room he walked into. He didn't look at me when I came in. That was almost worse than if he had.

"Miss Castellane." He said it evenly, the way he always did, like my name was just another line item.

"Mr. Marchetti."

We took our seats. The meeting started the way it always did between us polite, professional, and quietly merciless.

Twenty minutes in, he leaned forward and tapped his pen against the table. "Your growth projections for the northern distribution region seem optimistic."

"They're realistic," I said. "Unlike Marchetti's last quarter."

A few people around the table shifted uncomfortably. Julianii didn't.

"Realistic," he repeated, "based on consumer data that's eight months old."

"Based on consumer data that's current as of last week, actually." I slid the updated report across the table without breaking eye contact. "I would recommend reading the full details, before challenging the executive summary."

He looked down at the report, then back up at me. And there was a little shift at the corner of his mouth. Not a smirk, Not mockery, Something closer to respect, which was somehow more irritating.

"Noted," he said simply.

The meeting continued for another forty minutes, both of us circling each other the way we always did, testing where the other one might be bluffing, catching every hesitation, every too quick answer. I'd learned a long time ago that Julianii went quiet right before he found a weakness in an argument. I watched for it. He probably watched for whatever tell I had too, though I'd never been able to figure out what it was.

Three years of this. Three years of boardrooms and negotiations and the strange, exhausting rhythm of knowing exactly how someone thought without ever actually knowing them.

When the meeting ended and people started leaving, he didn't leave with them.

"Sabine!"

I stopped near the door. "I don't have time today, Julianii."

“ I won't take much of your time."

I turned to face him. The room had emptied enough, that it was just the two of us and the long table between us, papers and empty coffee cups scattered across it.

"You knew…………..,"About the will."

He didn't flinch. "Yes."

At least he didn't slap me by the face with a lie or pretence. "How long?"

"Your grandmother contacted me a few months before she died."

Something in my chest tightened, and my throat burned, at the mention of my grandmother.

“Contacted you about what?" I asked in a shaky voice.

"About several things."

That's not an answer, My voice firmer this time

"That's the answer I can give you right now."

I felt my jaw tighten, and the tears threatened to fall. "My grandmother was talking to you. About my future. And she never once mentioned it to me."

"I imagine she had her reasons."

"Reasons." I let out a short, humorless laugh. "She left me a company on the condition that I marry the one man I've spent three years trying to beat in every negotiation I've ever walked into. Forgive me if I'm having trouble finding the reasoning behind that."

Something flickered across his face, not amusement this time. Something quieter. "She believed we would be good for each other."

I stared at him. “Good for each other!”

"That's what she told me."

"We're good at competing with each other, Julianii. That's the reality of what exists between us." I crossed my arms. "There is nothing else there."

He didn't argue. He didn't defend himself or push back the way I expected him to. He just watched me for a moment, that same unreadable calm, settling over his features, the one that had made him so difficult to read across a negotiating table for three years.

"You should read her letter again."

I blinked. "What?"

"The letter, The one she left for you."

"Why would I need to read it again? I've read it. It's one sentence."

"Read it again," he repeated, already turning toward the door.

"Julianii." He stopped, but he didn't turn around. "What aren't you telling me?"

He was quiet for a moment. Long enough that I thought he might actually answer.

"Read the letter, Sabine."

Then he walked out, and I was left standing alone in a conference room full of empty coffee cups, angrier than I'd been in the will reading, and for entirely different reasons.

I hated that I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I hated it more because it wasn't the arrogance I expected from him. If he had walked into that room and gloated, if he'd made some comment about how convenient this all was for him, I could have hated him cleanly, the way I had for three years. Simple. Uncomplicated.

Instead he'd looked almost careful. Almost like he was choosing his words around something he didn't want to say.

That bothered me more than cruelty would have.

By the time I got home that night, I was welcomed by the silence, the way it had felt every night since the funeral. I poured a glass of wine I didn't really want and sat down at my grandmother's desk in the study, because apparently I couldn't stay away from that room no matter how much it hurt to be in it.

The letter was still where I had left it, inside the folder alongside the will.

I pulled it out and read it again.

“There are some people we understand only after we are forced to stand beside them.”

Same words. Same handwriting. I turned it over, looking for anything I might have missed the first time, and then I saw it.

Right under her signature, in a smaller handwriting I'd barely registered before, there was a date.

I held the paper closer to the lamp.

It had been written three months before she died.

Three months. Long before anyone knew she was running out of time. Long before there was any reason to rush a decision like this one.

My grandmother hadn't written this in her final days, rushing to arrange some deathbed wish.

She had planned this. Deliberately. Months in advance.

I set the letter down on the desk and stared at it, my wine completely forgotten beside me.

"What were you planning?" I whispered into the silence.

The house didn't answer. It never did.