From Wolfless Omega To The Rival Alpha's Queen novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

Orson Crane offers Keira a ninety-day job and she sets her terms: Phoenix stays hers and he does not touch her unless someone is watching. He tells her Derrick sent for the car and has been his informant for two years.

I got in the car because I had nowhere else to go.

That was the honest reason, and I disliked it.

The seat was cold leather, and Orson Crane sat at the far end of it with a tablet on his knee.

The car pulled into traffic.

"You've been in the news," I said. "Broderick says your pack is finished by spring."

"Broderick says a great deal." He did not look up. "Your hand."

I had forgotten it was in my lap.

"It's fine."

"It was covered in coffee ten minutes ago." Now he looked, once, at the clean skin across my knuckles. "Fine is a good word for it."

He went back to the tablet.

The car smelled of pine and woodsmoke and something under both that I could not name.

It pressed on the back of my throat the way a word does when you can't remember it.

I put it down to cologne.

We went up in a private elevator to the top floor of the tallest glass building on the river.

The sign in the lobby said Crane Holdings.

His office was bare, one desk and one window and a wall of rolled blueprints.

He put a folder on the desk and slid it toward me.

"A ninety-day contract," he said. "Strategy chair, reporting to me. Your salary is double what he pays you, and I know what he pays you."

"You know that."

"Derrick told me."

I stood very still.

"Derrick called you."

"Derrick has been telling me what Broderick does for two years," Orson said. "Not the secrets of your pack. Only what concerns you."

"Why would he do that?"

"You should ask him."

"I'm asking you."

"And I'm telling you it isn't mine to say."

I opened the folder.

The contract was four pages long, and it was clean.

I read every line, because I have read every line of every paper I ever signed.

That was how I knew I could say no.

"Why me?" I asked. "You can hire any strategist in the city."

"Because you wrote the market plan Broderick took credit for at the investor dinner. I was at that dinner." He put one finger on the desk. "I sat three tables away and watched him accept an award for your work."

"That was two years ago."

"I remember it well."

His voice was even, and I could not tell if he meant it kindly.

I closed the folder.

"Terms," I said.

"Yours."

"Phoenix stays mine. The vendor contracts, the permits, the city's letters, they all carry my name. I take them with me, and nobody at Davenant touches them."

"Done."

"I'm not your weapon."

His face did not change.

"You'll be my strategy chair. Whatever else you are, you'll be that."

"You don't touch me," I said. "Nothing personal. Not in this office, not anywhere."

"If we're seen together in public, I'll have to take your arm."

"Then in public, someone has to be watching."

For the first time something moved at the corner of his mouth.

"Someone watching," he said. "Agreed."

"Ninety days. Then I choose what comes next."

"Then you choose."

I signed on the last page.

My hand shook once, on the N, and then it stopped.

Orson took the folder, checked the signature, and put it in a drawer.

"There's a guest suite on the floor above this one," he said. "Your own door and your own key. Use it when you need it."

"I'm not moving into your building."

"Then use it as a place to sleep when you can't face his."

I thought about the penthouse I shared with Broderick.

I thought about my toothbrush and my winter coat and the framed photo of my mother on the nightstand.

"If I leave today, he'll know why," I said. "I'll tell him I'm at my mother's all week, planning her birthday. He'll believe it. He thinks I have nowhere else."

"Then he'll go on thinking it until you tell him differently."

I stood and put my bag on my shoulder.

At the door I stopped.

"Derrick knows I bring the coffee at nine ten," I said. "When did he send for you?"

Orson turned a pen between two fingers.

"At nine. The car was at your curb before you finished the elevator."

I felt the floor tilt.

"He knew I'd be at that door."

"He left the door open for you," Orson said. "He's been trying to get you to hear it for a year. This morning is the first time he told me to hurry."

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