"Agreed."
She blinks like she expected another fight, then her shoulders relax and some of the tension around her mouth loosens.
A board seat is an easy concession for me to make. It's mostly cosmetic, anyway. She can sit on it for the rest of her natural life and feel like Adelaide Windemere of Windemere Maritime while I run the actual company.
Everyone wins something. Despite what the tabloids like to say, I'm not a monster.
"The naming rights," she says, and there's a steadier quality to her voice now. She's found her footing. "In perpetuity. The Windemere name stays on the buildings."
"Agreed." Another easy concession.
She opens her mouth, then closes it. She was braced for a fight on that one too. This is making her nervous.
I'm not. I know exactly where I stand and where to push. Naming rights, board seats and the likes are just ornamental distractions for me.
Plus, I actually want the Windemere name. It opens doors in Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and Shanghai that Thornwood Industries alone cannot open.
I have no intention of telling Adelaide this. She'd only use it to get more out of my very deep pockets.
"Do we have a deal, then?"
Adelaide Windemere's wings go fully still for the first time since she sat down. All four of them.
She looks at me across the desk the way people look when they've been braced for a long war and the other side has just surrendered the territory they wanted most.
She has nothing left to stall with. She knows it.
It takes her forty seconds. I give her the time. She sits with whatever grief lives under the business veneer, and comes back to herself. She is not stupid. She knows what she is doing and what she is giving up.
"We have a deal, Mr. Thornwood." She nods, like she needs to tell herself this is the right thing to do. "Congratulations are in order, I believe."
"My lawyers will be in touch about final documentation," I say, keeping my face and voice blank.
"I'm sure they will." Her voice is clipped and professional and almost entirely without affect.
She stands. Her wings rearrange themselves into perfect position, composed as a painted portrait. She picks up her bag and extends her hand to me.
I engulf it inside my much larger one. Her grip is firm for one so small.
"Mr. Thornwood." She holds my gaze.
"Miss Windemere."
She walks to the door. I watch the door close behind her.
The room is quiet when I'm finally alone.
I've achieved what my grandfather couldn't.
I sat across from Cornelius Thornwood at a desk very much like this one when he told me that the next century of logistics was in the Pacific. He had blueprints, diagrams, notes in that cramped handwriting of his that was impossible to read unless you had known it your whole life.
He said: someday, boy. Someday we'll take the Thornwood name all the way to the West Coast.
Cornelius ran out of somedays, but I never forgot.
My eyes go to the photograph on the left of the phone. It's small, set in a delicate silver frame. Cornelius Thornwood stands proud and tall, looking straight into the camera with the shrewd gaze that made our family's fortune. His horns are long and polished to a high shine, offsetting the salt and pepper fur at his temples. My grandmother's hand rests on his shoulder, her elegant snout stretched in a proud smile.
And me. Eighteen years old, cap and gown, tall, awkward and lanky the way every young minotaur is before his frame fills in. My horns too wide for my body. My hooves too thin.
