Lucas
The weekend flew by in a blur, Monday arrived, and with it, a full slate of meetings I couldn’t ignore.
I don't play by their rules. I play by mine.
The words I'd sent to Savannah lingered on my screen, bold and uncompromising.
Too revealing, perhaps. I hadn't intended to expose quite so much of myself through a simple text message, but something about this woman—about the pull she exerted—made me reckless in ways I hadn't been in decades.
She hadn't responded. I hadn't expected her to.
The gauntlet had been thrown, now I could only wait to see if she would pick it up.
I set my phone down on the polished surface of my desk and turned to face the floor-to-ceiling windows of my office.
Forty-two stories up, the city spread before me—a testament to ambition, to vision, to the relentless pursuit of something greater.
My city, in many ways.
The backdrop to the empire I'd built.
Yet for the first time in memory, the view failed to center me.
"Mr. Turner? Your ten o'clock is here."
I turned to find my assistant, Ava,in the doorway.
Efficient, discreet, with me for fifteen years, she was the only one who'd seen through my carefully constructed façade this week, though she would never mention it.
"Thank you. Show him in."
She hesitated, an uncommon break in her professional demeanor.
"Miles called. Asked to move your lunch to one. Something about picking up Ms. Blake beforehand."
My jaw tightened imperceptibly.
"Fine. And Ava?"
"Sir?"
"That file I asked for. Was it delivered?"
"Yes, sir. On your tablet." Her eyes betrayed nothing, but we both knew what file I meant.
Not the Westlake projections or the Madison Street revisions, but the Alder-West Strategies personnel directory I'd requested yesterday.
The directory that had given me Savannah's private cell number.
A breach of professional ethics, perhaps. But I'd long since crossed that line where she was concerned.
"Thank you, Ava. That will be all."
The morning passed in a blur of meetings, contracts, and calculations—the familiar rhythm that had structured my life for decades.
Yet beneath it all ran an undercurrent of anticipation for the afternoon.
For seeing Savannah again, this time with the knowledge of who she was. What she was to my son.
