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"Before the new year," Ma repeated.

"Yes."

My father ran his index finger around his half-full cup. Then nodded to himself. "Good. It's time."

The room settled into the quiet of a family receiving difficult news. The kind of quiet that came with folded hands and careful breathing and the unspoken agreement not to be the first one to say the thing everyone was thinking.

But this wasn't a funeral. It was a wedding announcement.

"And the Odhiambo woman," Vidar said. Not a question. A prompt.

I took a sip of my scotch. "She'll continue operating within the Blackwood infrastructure under standard oversight. She's an asset. A significant one. She stays in the city. She has a protective detail. She goes to work and makes us money."

I didn't tell them about Nell's solution that would bring us out from under Sorsha's thumb. That would be my cross to bear. It was also my insurance policy to stay away from her. I needed the pressure of Sorsha's thumb to ensure my thumb didn't find its way back up Nell's skirt.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

NELL

By Wednesday, I had restructured the entire senior staff reporting hierarchy, terminated two legacy contracts that had been bleeding the company for years, and renegotiated our primary data services agreement at a seventeen percent reduction that James Sterling Jr. had never thought to attempt because Junior was fraternity brothers with the tech bro owner.

"The Meridian account wants a call." Priya appeared in my doorway with her tablet. Priya had been my unofficial second-in-command at Sterling since Addie left me. Addie had been grooming the woman, so I knew I could hand things off to her without a second thought.

"Set it for two," I said. "And tell them Marcus is no longer their point of contact. They work directly with you now."

Priya's mouth did a small, satisfied thing as she turned to leave.

"Priya."

She turned back.

"Your title is now Deputy CEO. HR will have the paperwork by the end of day."

The silence that followed was brief and full.

"Thank you, Nell."

I nodded and went back to my screen because we were both professionals and neither of us needed to make a scene. Had she been Addie, we would've been squeeing over our triumph. I'd always imagined Addie next to me on my arrival at the top. Now we were both at the top. Just in different skyscrapers.

By Thursday, the days had a shape that was almost comfortable. I was in the office by seven, which was two hours before anyone else arrived and one hour before the building's coffee service started. My detail didn't like me out in the open grabbing a cuppa from the cart on the corner. There were two of them within arm's distance at all times. Different faces on rotation, but the same quality of stillness. Wolves on the prowl in human skin. They didn't speak to me unless I spoke first. They didn't interfere. They were simply present, a constant peripheral fact of my new life, like my name on the building and the corner office.

I'd like to say that I stopped noticing them. But they were like the hum of a refrigerator. You might tune the sound out, but never the sight of the large, immovable rectangle in the corner of your kitchen.

My new bodyguards aside, the work was good. Every decision was mine. Every restructuring, every renegotiated contract, every account call where I introduced myself as CEO and heard the brief recalibration on the other end of the line — the pause, the adjustment, the pivot to the new reality — was a satisfaction that I had been waiting ten years to feel.

It should have been enough.

It was enough.

I told myself this at regular intervals and found it slightly less convincing each time.

The office was full by ten. I moved through the day in the efficient, high-velocity register that my staff had learned to match. The difference without James Jr. was not subtle. Junior had operated like a weather system — unpredictable, frequently damaging, requiring everyone around him to spend thirty percent of their energy managing the fallout of his latest decision rather than doing actual work. Without him, the office breathed differently. People made decisions at their own level without looking over their shoulders. Meetings ended when the agenda was finished rather than when Junior ran out of things to have an inconsequential opinion on.

I had not realized, until he was gone, how much energy I had spent for a decade simply navigating around the obstacle of a mediocre man with an inherited title.

The absence of that weight should have felt like pure relief.

It did feel like relief.