Page 47 of Suite 7

She added please and then took it out and then put it back, I’d guess, because the please is doing something specific — it’s not deference, it’s not managing, it’s Vera Beckett choosing to say the word she’d least naturally reach for because the choice itself is the point.

The exchange that followed was —

I look at my phone again.

Vera: Just to be clear — this means I don’t get to scene with other Doms at Eclipse, right? Asking for a friend.

Thirty seconds after the earnest formal message. Thirty seconds of sincerity and then straight back into the brat, because that’s who she is, because she can’t hold the vulnerable register longer than a minute before she needs to put something sharp between herself and it.

I know this about her. I’ve known it for years and I know it differently now, from the inside of a scene. The way she deflects with wit when something lands too close, the way the joke is always the armor going back on.

She lasted considerably longer than that.

I look at the blueprints.

The east elevation sits exactly where it’s been since eight this morning. I’ve run the load distribution figures twice. I have made zero amendments. The pencil is in my hand and has not touched the paper in forty minutes, which is the kind of data point I would find unacceptable in any other context.

I picture her face when she typed Asking for a friend.

She was grinning. And I bet she put the phone down after my response and laughed, or at least smiled, the smile that starts at one corner of her mouth and takes its time about arriving anywhere.

I’d like to have seen it.

The thought arrives before I’ve given it permission, and I put it down and look at the east elevation.

The east elevation continues to require nothing from me.

Rachel appears in the doorway.

“The structural engineer’s beam specifications came through. And the Zhao consultation moved to Thursday — I mentioned that this morning, but⁠—“

“You did. Thank you.”

She looks at me, then at the untouched blueprints, then at my phone sitting face-up on the desk. “I’ll hold your calls,” she says, and disappears before I can tell her that isn’t necessary.

I pick up my pencil.

Look at the east elevation.

Think about Sir, I’m asking properly.

Put the pencil down.

A knock at the open door.

Marcel fills the doorway with two coffees, jeans and a jacket — off-duty visit, then. He drops into the chair across from my desk and sets one of the cups in front of me.

“Harlow contract closed this morning,” he says. “Full security integration. Eighteen months.”

“That’s good. Congratulations.”

“Yeah.” He sips his coffee and does his usual survey of the room, blueprints, desk, me, phone, without commenting on any of it. “How was your week?”

“Moretti revisions. Working on the east elevation.”

He stretches his legs out. We sit in the comfortable silence of two people who don’t need to fill it, the kind that only exists when you’ve known someone long enough that the quiet doesn’t require explanation. Then: “So how was the Sinclair-Beckett Smackdown this week? You’ve got the face.”

“I don’t have a face.”