The number on the board hit **0**.
No fanfare. No sound. Just the silent flip at 6:00 a.m., when the timer reached the end of its cycle.
Raj was there to see it.
He snapped a photo and sent it to Margot with the caption: *We did it. Or we’re about to. Or we’re all screwed. Pick one.*
She saw it at 6:23, bleary-eyed, blearier-souled, sitting on the edge of her bed with her coffee in hand.
Her stomach clenched.
Day Thirty.
Thirty days ago, she’d picked up a phone and heard a voice say, *I don’t want to waste your time.*
Now her life was a lattice of his demands, her choices, their shared ghosts.
She texted back.
> *All of the above.*
***
Hale Innovations on Day Thirty felt like a hive under a magnifying glass.
Everyone moved a little faster. Spoke a little louder. Smiled a little tighter.
She stepped out of the elevator into a corridor of suits and sensible shoes.
Investors. Lawyers. Comms people. NexTelis dignitaries.
The war room was packed.
The big screen showed a split: one half the deal-closing agenda, the other a rolling news ticker.
*Hale-NexTelis deal expected to close today in what analysts call “one of the most significant infrastructure acquisitions of the decade.”*
She ducked into Declan’s office before anyone could grab her.
He stood by the window, tie already on, jacket hanging on the back of his chair. The skyline beyond the glass was a wash of gray and steel.
He turned at the sound of the door.
“You’re late,” he said.
“It’s 7:58,” she said. “Your first official thing is at 8.”
“I woke at five,” he muttered.
“Of course you did,” she said. “Status?”
He counted it off like a litany. “Contracts ready. Regulators green-lighted. Boards aligned, mostly. NexTelis’s CEO is already in the building. He smells like smug and expensive aftershave.”
“Lovely,” she said. “Internal?”
“Terrified,” he said. “But less than last week. Your FAQ helped. So did not lying.”
“You’ll have a chance to not lie again at two,” she said. “All-hands redux.”
He made a face. “Joy.”
She studied him.
“Color?” she asked.
“Plaid,” he said. “Preemptively.”
“Try again,” she said.
He hesitated.
“Red,” he admitted.
She exhaled. “Okay. Good. Honesty. Here’s what we’re going to do. First, you’re going to eat this.” She held up a small sandwich she’d grabbed from the kitchen on her way in.
He grimaced. “I’m not hungry.”
“I didn’t ask,” she said.
He took it.
“Second,” she went on, “you’re going to give me your phone.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“So you’re not playing whack-a-mole with ten different people while you’re supposed to be signing your name a hundred times,” she said. “You get one input stream this morning, and that’s me.”
He opened his mouth.
She stared him down.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
Handed it to her.
Trust landed in her palm with the weight of glass and responsibility.
“Third,” she said more softly, “you’re going to tell me the worst-case scenario running in your head so we can say it out loud and it’ll feel less like a monster under the bed.”
He sank into his chair, sandwich untouched.
“That the deal falls apart at the last minute,” he said. “That NexTelis’s board balks. That the FTC changes its mind. That we’ve spent thirty days and millions of dollars for nothing.”
“Okay,” she said. “Logically?”
“Low probability,” he said. “We’ve de-risked. A lot.”
“Emotionally?” she asked.
“Feels… likely,” he said. “Because my brain is wired to prepare for failure.”
“Okay,” she said again. “Other worst-case.”
He hesitated.
“That it *doesn’t* fall apart,” he said. “That it closes. That we own them. That all their shit is now my shit. That I become the man on the other side of the table I’ve hated my whole life.”
Her chest ached.
“That’s not inevitable,” she said quietly.
“No,” he said. “But it’s… possible.”
“And best case?” she asked. “Say it.”
“That we close,” he said slowly. “That we integrate without breaking more than we have to. That we build something… actually better.”
“Can you hold both?” she asked. “The worst and the best? Without short-circuiting?”
“I can try,” he said.
“Then do that,” she said. “One hour at a time. One room at a time. One decision at a time.”
He looked at her.
The rawness in his eyes made her want to step back.
Or forward.
She did neither.
“If this goes sideways,” he said softly, “you’re allowed to quit. You don’t owe me more than thirty days of insanity.”
“Stop trying to pre-dump me,” she said, exasperated. “It’s weird.”
He actually laughed.
“It is,” he admitted.
“Eat,” she said. “We have a deal to close.”
***
The actual closing was… boring.
Legally, it was monumental.
Emotionally, it was anticlimactic.
They sat in a boardroom too small for the number of people in it. Lawyers slid documents across the table. Declan signed and initialed and signed again.
So did NexTelis’s CEO, Connolly, his pen strokes loopy and confident.
Outside, somewhere, algorithms twitched.
Stock tickers inched.
Power shifted.
Inside, paper shuffled.
“Congratulations,” someone said.
There were handshakes. Smiles. Flashbulbs.
Declan’s face remained composed.
Only Margot, watching from the corner, saw the moment his knuckles whitened on the pen.
Saw the moment he let go.
When it was over, when the last document was signed and the lawyers filed out like satisfied vultures, Connolly clapped him on the shoulder.
“Hell of a thing,” he boomed. “Take care of her.”
His *her* was NexTelis.
Declan nodded. “We will.”
Margot’s stomach turned.
He just promised to take care of the thing that had almost killed her father.
She reminded herself: systems. Not people.
Except people were systems too.
After, in the hallway, as they walked back toward the war room, Raj whispered, “We did it.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Eliza muttered. “Nothing’s real until the wires hit.”
“The wires hit,” Margot said, checking her notifications. “Press already picked it up.”
Her phone buzzed with an alert.
*Hale completes acquisition of NexTelis in $15.6 billion deal.*
Her heart thudded.
So did her inbox.
Internal emails.
External pings.
A text from Priya: *Congrats. Don’t fuck it up.*
She smiled, faintly.
Then froze.
A text from her mother.
> *Your father saw news. He very quiet. I don’t like it.*
Cold spread through her chest.
She ducked into a side alcove, hands suddenly clammy.
> *I’ll call you as soon as I can. Stay with him. Don’t let him watch too much TV.*
Her mother replied with the thumbs-up emoji she used to mean *I hate this but I’ll do it.*
She shoved the phone back into her pocket and willed herself not to think about her father’s face.
Not now.
Later.
There was always a later for her own pain.
For now, there was the all-hands.
***
The auditorium was more crowded than last time.
NexTelis faces dotted the sea of Hale employees, their expressions wary, closed, hopeful, resigned.
Margot stood in the wings again, headset on, tablet in hand.
This time, she noticed little things.
The way Jess sat straighter near the front.
The way a cluster of men in NexTelis-logo fleeces whispered intensely, eyes darting.
The way a young Black man in a Hale hoodie at the back crossed his arms, jaw tight.
Declan paced again.
Less.
He looked… more contained.
Less flammable.
“You’re on in thirty seconds,” Marissa said. “Please don’t improvise a revolution.”
“Tempting,” he said.
“You’ll have time for revolutions later,” Margot murmured. “Today, be… steady.”
He nodded once.
“You’ll be there,” he said. “Right?”
“Stage right,” she said. “Like last time. Ready to mute you if you try to moonwalk.”
He smiled, quick.
Then walked out.
He spoke.
He didn’t repeat his entire previous speech.
He didn’t have to.
He built on it.
“We signed,” he said simply. “It’s done. NexTelis is now part of Hale. Which means… we own their assets. And their ghosts.”
He didn’t flinch at the word.
“You’re going to hear a lot of noise in the next few weeks,” he went on. “Press. Analysts. Politicians. LinkedIn thought leaders. They’ll all have hot takes about what this means. I can’t control that. What I *can* control is what we do in here.”
He pointed at the stage. At the room.
He laid out the plan.
Timelines.
Integration waves.
Task forces.
He didn’t sugarcoat.
“Some plants will close,” he said. “Some teams will shrink. Some roles will disappear. You’re not stupid. You know that. I’m not going to pretend otherwise to make you feel better for ten minutes and worse in ten months.”
He also didn’t wallow.
“There will also be new roles,” he said. “New products. New chances to fix things NexTelis ignored for years. If you’ve been banging your head against a broken process there, I want to hear it. If you have an idea for how we can do this without repeating their mistakes, I *definitely* want to hear it.”
He gestured toward her again.
“Go to your managers. Go to HR. Go to Margot. She knows how to find me.”
The crowd laughed.
She flushed.
He took questions.
One from a long-time NexTelis engineer who asked, voice tight, “What happens to our pensions?”
“We’re honoring them,” he said. “Full stop.”
One from a Hale PM who asked, “What if we disagree with how this is going?”
“Then you tell us,” he said. “Directly. Not on anonymous forums. We might not change course every time, but we’ll listen.”
One from Jess, who stood, chin high. “Will there be a clear process for suppliers to bring forward their issues? Not just the big ones. The small shops.”
“Yes,” he said. “We’re building it now. Margot is… yelling at me about the wording as we speak.”
Laughter.
She smiled.
He didn’t throw her under the bus.
Not even playfully.
He closed with something that surprised her.
“When I was twelve,” he said, “I watched my grandfather sign away his store in a boardroom not unlike this. Today, I signed something bigger. In a boardroom just like it. The difference is… now I had a choice. So do you. You can leave. You can stay. You can resist. You can help. Whatever you pick, I hope, when you look back in twelve years, you feel like you made the choice that let you look in the mirror without flinching.”
He paused.
“I intend to,” he said.
Then stepped back.
The room was quiet for a beat.
Then applause.
Not thunderous.
Not tepid.
Real.
She watched his face as he turned toward the wings.
He looked… wrung out.
Alive.
Scared.
All of it.
She met him just offstage.
“Water,” she said, shoving a bottle into his hand.
He took it.
“You didn’t faint,” she said. “Always a plus.”
“I thought about it,” he said.
“You were good,” she said. “Really.”
He studied her. “You’re not just saying that.”
“I don’t ‘just say’ anything,” she said. “You know that.”
He nodded once.
He looked…
Soft.
Like if she pushed, he might fold.
“Board in thirty,” she said briskly. “You get a buffer before they start asking if you can pull another billion out of your hat.”
He groaned. “I hate them.”
“You hate what they represent,” she said. “Old money. Old power. Old bullshit.”
“Yes,” he said. “That.”
“Remember,” she said. “You have something they don’t.”
“A conscience?” he said dryly.
“Me,” she said.
He blinked.
Then smiled, slow and dangerous.
“I’m… very aware,” he said.
Her skin prickled.
She stepped back.
“Don’t get used to it,” she said.
“Too late,” he murmured.
***
The board meeting that afternoon was bloody.
Not literally.
Numbers.
Questions.
Risk.
They’d approved the deal. They’d smiled for the cameras.
Now they wanted their pound of flesh.
“What are you doing to manage cultural risk?” one demanded. “NexTelis is toxic.”
“What guarantees do we have that we won’t see a wave of lawsuits from small suppliers?” another pressed.
“How does this impact our EPS in the next six quarters?” a third asked, eyes flicking to the stock chart.
Declan fielded them.
Calm. Precise.
He used some of Margot’s language. Some of his own.
He refused to overpromise.
Once, when someone pushed, “We can just push some of these claims past the statute of limitations. Clean it up. Quietly,” she saw his jaw flex.
“We’re not doing that,” he said flatly.
“But—” the man began.
“We’re not,” he repeated. “If that’s the kind of return you want, invest elsewhere.”
The man shut up.
Margot’s chest swelled with something dangerously like pride.
After, when the room emptied, Declan stayed seated, staring at the table.
She waited until the door clicked shut behind the last board member.
“Color?” she asked.
“Plaid,” he said. “On fire.”
She laughed. “Descriptive.”
He looked up.
“Did I… fuck it up?” he asked.
“With them?” she said. “Maybe. A little. They don’t like being told to invest elsewhere.”
“With you,” he said.
Her heart stuttered.
“No,” she said quietly. “You did… right.”
Relief flashed across his face.
“You looked… proud,” he said.
“I was,” she said.
Silence stretched.
“Go home,” she said. “Both of us. For once, there’s nothing else we can do tonight that won’t make things worse.”
He frowned. “Integration—”
“Starts Monday,” she said. “You working until two a.m. won’t move that needle. It’ll just make you shaky in front of cameras tomorrow.”
He made a face.
“Fine,” he said. “Home. But if I wake up at three—”
“You text Kline,” she said. “Not me.”
He smirked. “Jealous?”
“Yes,” she said. “Of her hourly rate.”
He laughed.
As she walked out of the building that evening, the city felt… different.
The same streets. The same scaffolding. The same hot dog carts.
But somewhere, in thousands of inboxes, the news had landed.
Hale had bought NexTelis.
Her father’s executioner now belonged, in some twisted way, to her boss.
Her phone buzzed before she reached the subway.
Her mother.
> *Your father watching TV. They say name NexTelis. He very quiet. You call him.*
Her chest squeezed.
She ducked into a quiet doorway and dialed.
He picked up on the second ring.
“Hi, Baba,” she said.
Silence.
“You saw,” he said finally.
“Yes,” she said.
“You knew,” he said.
Her throat closed. “Yes.”
“For how long?” he asked.
“Thirty days,” she whispered.
A beat.
“Thirty days,” he repeated. “And you did not tell me.”
“I wanted to,” she said. “I tried. I couldn’t… find a way that didn’t feel like ripping you open all over again.”
He inhaled, sharp.
“You watched that man sign papers,” he said. “Same kind of room. Same kind of pen. Same kind of face.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And you helped him,” he said. “You moved his meetings. You fed him. You protected his time. You told him when to eat.”
She closed her eyes.
“Yes,” she said again.
“These men,” he said, voice rising, “they take everything. And still you… help them. You hold their hands. You make them coffee. You smile in their faces while they sign away people’s lives. *My* life. Our lives.”
“Baba,” she said, tears burning. “It’s not—”
“What?” he snapped. “It’s not like that? He’s different? He’s ‘ethical’? He writes nice articles about your grandfather’s store so now he can buy NexTelis and be hero?”
She flinched. “That’s not fair.”
“Life is not fair,” he said viciously. “You told me that. You *showed* me that. When you went to work for first man. And second. And now third. Always for them. Never for us.”
“That’s not true,” she whispered.
“You think because you bring mango cake and sign papers with Priya, everything is fixed,” he said. “It is not. You cannot fix this. You cannot fix *him*.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m not trying to—”
“Then what are you doing?” he demanded. “Why are you there? Why are you on *his* side?”
The words hit harder than any bank letter.
“I’m not on his side,” she said, voice shaking. “I’m on… reality’s side. I can’t stop him from buying them. Or someone else. I *can* sit next to him and say, ‘No, don’t fuck them like NexTelis did.’ I can’t do that from the sidewalk, Baba.”
“You’re not on the sidewalk,” he spat. “You’re in the room. With the man who signed. And you say you’re not on his side? You say you’re there for me? Bullshit.”
Her stomach churned.
“I am there,” she said, “for *both* of you. Maybe that’s impossible. Maybe I’m stupid for trying. But I can’t—”
“You can’t stand to not be needed,” he said coldly. “You and your mother. Always need someone to fix. To save. To organize.”
“That’s not—”
“You want to help me?” he cut in. “Quit. Today. Walk out of that building and say, ‘I will not help you become what you hate.’ That would help.”
Her chest seized.
He might as well have asked her to cut off her hands.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Then do not tell me you are doing this for me,” he said. “You are doing this for you. For your pride. For your need to be in middle of everything. Do not use me to feel better about your choices.”
Tears blurred her vision.
“Baba,” she said. “Please—”
He hung up.
The silence in her ear was louder than any siren.
She stood there, pinned between a nail salon and a deli, phone pressed to her ear, heart pounding.
It felt like the night he’d gotten the bank letter all over again.
Except this time, she was the envelope.
Her phone buzzed.
A new message.
From him.
> *You okay?*
She stared.
She could lie.
Like always.
> *Family stuff. I’m fine.*
She typed.
Deleted.
Typed again.
> *No. I’m not.*
Three dots.
> *Do you want to talk?*
Yes.
No.
She didn’t know.
> *Not right now. I need to… feel this first.*
> *Okay. I’m here. When you’re ready.*
She swallowed.
> *You shouldn’t be. That’s half the problem.*
She sent it before she could stop herself.
No reply for a long minute.
Then:
> *I might be half the problem. I intend to be part of the solution.*
She laughed.
It came out like a sob.
She put her phone away.
And walked.
Into the city.
Into the mess.
Into the life she’d chosen.
Even if, right now, it felt like it was choosing her back in ways she wasn’t ready for.
---