The week after the Arcturus signing should have been a victory lap.
In a way, it was. The stock bumped. The board was pleased. The Journal ran a Sunday spread titled *“The Man Who Now Owns the Pacific’s Back Roads”* accompanied by a photo of Marcus on the dock in Long Beach, sleeves rolled, wind mussing his hair.
“He looks like a mafia prince,” Maya’s best friend texted with the screenshot. *Are you sure you’re not accidentally in a Netflix show?*
Maya: *If Netflix paid my rent, I’d get better lighting.*
But the high didn’t last.
Big deals never ended cleanly. There were always loose ends. Integrations. Disgruntled mid-managers. Surprise liabilities.
By Tuesday, a new problem had emerged.
“Somebody leaked the retention package numbers,” Jenna said, sliding into the chair across from Maya’s desk, phone clutched like a grenade. “Not the whole thing, just enough to piss people off.”
“Internal?” Maya asked.
“Has to be,” Jenna said. “We only sent that deck to twelve people. Union leadership’s already calling it a bribe. Portvale’s spinning it as ‘Kane Global buys loyalty while they sharpen their knives.’”
Maya rubbed her temples. “Can we even trace the leak?”
“I’ve got IT crawling over it,” Jenna said. “I’m more worried about the narrative. Arcturus people are reading this like ‘take the money now because they’re going to screw you later.’”
“Are they?” Maya asked.
Jenna gave her a long, level look. “Depends on who you ask. You’ve been here long enough to know we’re not a charity. We’re also not the devil.”
“I thought that was Marcus,” Maya said.
“That’s Tuesday,” Jenna said. “Today he’s ‘complex protagonist with a morally gray arc.’”
Marcus himself emerged from a conference room just then, expression carved in stone. Oliver trailed him, face tight.
Maya straightened instinctively.
“Update,” Marcus said.
Jenna didn’t waste time. “Leak on the retention slide. Numbers are out. Narrative is ‘Kane buys silence before the slaughter.’”
“Of course it is,” Marcus said, voice flat.
“We can spin it,” Jenna said. “Emphasize investment, long-term vision, all the usual. But the more interesting question is *who* leaked.”
“Legal?” Maya suggested. “Or Arcturus’s internal counsel?”
“Arcturus counsel is in CYA mode,” Oliver said. “They’re not stupid enough to poke the bear while we’re still in the honeymoon phase.”
“Someone in this building, then,” Marcus said softly.
Maya felt the temperature drop two degrees.
He looked at her. “Clear my afternoon.”
She scanned his calendar. “You have CapEx at two, Ops at three, and a one-on-one with Daniel at four.”
“Move CapEx,” he said. “Ops can stay. I want them there when I rip out whatever rotten plank we’re standing on.”
“And Daniel?” she asked carefully.
“Daniel,” he said, “can keep his four p.m.”
Something in his tone said the head of Legal should start updating his résumé.
***
At four sharp, Daniel stepped into Marcus’s office carrying a folder and the faint air of a man walking toward a firing squad.
Maya hovered at her station, door closed but not soundproof.
She shouldn’t listen.
She listened.
“Sit,” Marcus said.
A chair scraped.
“Marcus, if this is about the leak, I want you to know—”
“It is,” Marcus said. “And I already know.”
Silence.
“I—”
“Save it,” Marcus said, voice like a razor. “There are four people in this building who had editing permissions on that retention slide. You’re one of them. IT traced the off-network access to your home router at eleven thirty-eight p.m. last Thursday. The day after we signed. The night before Portvale’s ‘anonymous source’ dropped those exact numbers into their pitch to Arcturus mid-management. Do you want to revise your opening statement?”
Maya’s stomach flipped.
“Marcus,” Daniel said, the practiced lawyer charm cracking, “I have always acted in the company’s best—”
“You sold us out,” Marcus said calmly. “To Portvale. For what? A board seat? A golden parachute? I’m actually curious. It must have been a hell of a carrot to make you think this was worth the risk.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t insult me,” Marcus said. “You’re better than that.”
Silence pulsed.
When Daniel spoke again, his voice had lost its polish. “They approached me six months ago,” he said. “Just to…talk. They were sniffing around logistics. I told them no. Then Arcturus came on the table. They came back.”
“And you thought you could play both sides,” Marcus said. “Feed them just enough to make yourself useful.”
“It wasn’t personal,” Daniel said desperately. “It was business. Hedging my bets. If this blew up, I needed an out—”
“You had an out,” Marcus said, voice suddenly deadly quiet. “You had a front-row seat to a multibillion-dollar deal with a company that actually occasionally follows through on its promises. You had equity. You had access. But you wanted more. Or you were afraid I’d cut you loose when we were done. Which is interesting, because I hadn’t thought about cutting you loose *until now*.”
Maya exhaled slowly. Her fingers tightened around her pen.
There it was. The ruthless everyone warned her about.
“I’ve given this company ten years,” Daniel said. “I’ve cleaned up messes you don’t even—”
“And you’ve been compensated handsomely,” Marcus cut in. “No one put a gun to your head. You made your choices. Now I’m making mine.”
Silence.
“You’re firing me,” Daniel said thickly.
“I’m giving you an opportunity to resign,” Marcus said. “Right now. You’ll get the standard package. Two years’ base. Vested equity only. No reference beyond confirming dates of employment. If you refuse, I’ll terminate you for cause and let the SEC decide what to do with your little moonlighting experiment.”
“That’s…insane,” Daniel said. “You have no–”
“I have IT logs,” Marcus said. “I have timestamped access. I have a partner at Portvale who will confirm your ‘conversations’ if I dangle his NDA over a regulatory hearing. Don’t test me on this, Daniel. You know how I fight.”
A long, heavy pause.
When Daniel spoke again, his voice was small.
“I have a family,” he said. “Kids. A mortgage.”
“So do a lot of the people whose pensions you put at risk when you fed our strategy to our biggest competitor,” Marcus said. “You didn’t seem too concerned about *their* families.”
Maya closed her eyes briefly. She almost—almost—felt sorry for him.
Then she thought of her mom, of nights staring at the ceiling wondering if they’d be able to keep the apartment, and her sympathy dried up.
Everyone had choices. Some had better ones than others. But leaking sensitive information to a rival didn’t land on the “no other options” side of the scale.
“Will you call the SEC?” Daniel asked hoarsely.
“That depends on how much more rot I find when I dig,” Marcus said. “Right now, I’m inclined to treat you as an opportunist, not a saboteur. Don’t give me a reason to reevaluate.”
Paper rustled. A pen scratched.
“I’ll…write the letter,” Daniel said.
“You’ll hand-deliver it to Veronica by five-thirty,” Marcus said. “And you’ll surrender your access card before you leave. From this point on, you no longer speak for this company. To *anyone*.”
“I understand,” Daniel whispered.
The chair scraped again. Footsteps shuffled. The door handle rattled.
Maya straightened, hands folding over her notepad, expression carefully neutral as the door opened.
Daniel emerged, face ashen, eyes not quite meeting hers.
“Ms. Brooks,” he said, voice thick. “Good luck.”
It sounded less like a pleasantry and more like a warning.
“Good luck to you too,” she said quietly.
He walked away.
She swallowed, then pushed Marcus’s door open a crack.
“Do you want me to give you a minute,” she asked, “or send in the next sacrificial lamb now?”
He sat behind his desk, tie loose, eyes on the city beyond the glass. For a second he looked…older. Not in his face so much as in the set of his shoulders.
“How much did you hear?” he asked.
“Enough,” she said. “To know you shouldn’t get on your bad side.”
“I thought you already knew that,” he said.
“Now I have…audio evidence,” she said weakly.
He didn’t smile.
“Do you ever get used to it?” she asked.
“To what?” he said.
“Cutting people out,” she said. “Terminating. Making calls that change someone’s life in ten minutes.”
He was quiet a beat.
“No,” he said finally. “You get better at it. Clearer. But if it ever feels…easy, that’s when I’ll know I’ve lost something I can’t afford to lose.”
Her chest tightened. “What something?”
“Perspective,” he said. “Pain tolerance. The line between necessary and cruel.”
It sounded like he’d thought about it more than once. Like it kept him up at night more than he’d ever admit.
“You did what you had to,” she said gently. “He betrayed the company.”
“He betrayed me,” Marcus said, stark. “Don’t dress it up. We’ve been through enough together that he knew exactly what he was doing when he fed Portvale that slide.”
“And you still gave him a soft landing,” she said. “Two years’ base and no SEC call is generous, considering.”
“It’s self-protection,” he said. “Publicly dragging him through the mud drags us with him. We cut, we cauterize, we move on.”
“So clinical,” she said softly.
“Clinical keeps the company alive,” he said. “If I start making decisions based on hurt feelings, we all lose.”
She stepped inside, closing the door fully.
“Just because you’re clinical,” she said, “doesn’t mean you don’t…feel it.”
His gaze cut to hers. Sharp. Unnervingly perceptive.
“Why does it matter to you if I do?” he asked.
She should have deflected. Joked. Changed the subject.
Instead, the truth slipped out first.
“Because I don’t want to work for someone who enjoys this,” she said. “And because if you don’t feel it—at least a little—what’s to stop you from cutting *me* loose the moment I’m inconvenient?”
Silence.
The question hung in the air like a live wire.
He stood, slowly. Rounded the desk. Stopped in front of her, closer than strictly necessary.
Her pulse tripped.
“I don’t hire people I plan to cut,” he said quietly. “I hire people I plan to build with. Sometimes I’m wrong. Sometimes they make choices that force my hand. But I don’t enjoy it.”
He held her gaze a beat longer.
“I don’t plan to enjoy it with you either,” he added.
Her mouth went dry. “Planning is your thing.”
He huffed a breath, something like a humorless laugh. “You’re…different.”
“In what way?” she asked, hating how breathless she sounded.
“You ask questions no one else asks,” he said. “You say things to me no one else says. You refuse to be afraid even when you should be. It’s…irritating.”
“And yet,” she said, “here I am.”
“Here you are,” he agreed.
Their eyes locked. The space between them felt very, very small.
She could smell his cologne. Feel the heat radiating off him. Hear the faint, almost imperceptible exhale he gave when he looked down at her.
Her body swayed, just a fraction. Toward him.
He noticed. Of course he did. He noticed everything.
His hand twitched, like he almost—almost—reached for her.
Then he stepped back.
“Veronica will need access to Daniel’s files,” he said, voice clipped back into neutral. “Coordinate that.”
The shift was so abrupt it made her blink.
“Okay,” she said, forcing her brain to catch up. “I’ll make sure Legal gets whatever they need.”
He retreated behind his desk as if it were a fortress.
“Close the door on your way out,” he said.
She did.
Her hand shook the tiniest bit on the handle.
In the hallway, she leaned against the wall and let out a slow, controlled breath.
She’d been…close. Too close.
He had too.
She wasn’t making it up. That almost-touch, that half-second of hesitation, the way his eyes had dropped to her mouth again—
She pressed her palms against her eyes.
“Don’t be stupid,” she whispered. “Don’t be every cautionary tale HR has ever written.”
But as she pushed off the wall and walked back to her desk, one thought wouldn’t leave her alone.
She wasn’t the only one on the edge of something.
So was he.
And sooner or later, one of them was going to lose their balance.
***