[Spencer’s POV]
I manage by observation. It's the only skill my father taught me worth keeping—watch long enough and people hand you everything they're trying to hide.
Bailee Reed has been in my office for six days, and she's handed me nothing. Frankly inconvenient, because I'm usually three chapters ahead of everyone else's story and she keeps rewriting the pages before I can turn them.
She's good—not the quiet competence I expected from a resume listing "laundromat attendant" between gas station stints. Sharp in ways that make my senior analysts look like they've been sleepwalking through their six-figure salaries.
"The board presentation." I slide the file across my desk at ten-fifteen, watching her settle into the chair with a notebook and a pen she immediately starts clicking. "The draft needs restructuring—the financials are buried under narrative that doesn't land."
Click. Click. Click. That pen is going to be the thing that finally breaks my composure—not the amber eyes, not the scent of warm honey and something new I can't stop tracking. The pen.
"The narrative is fine." She doesn't look up from the page. "The problem isn't the story you're telling—it's that the board doesn't want to hear what the numbers are actually saying."
My jaw works once, a private recalibration behind closed lips. She's right—completely, irritatingly, precisely right, and nobody on my staff has said that to my face in three years.
They bring me polished drafts and careful agreement—the particular brand of competence that never risks contradiction.
"What would you change?" I lean back. The chair protests in a way that costs more than her monthly salary to repair—a thought I have and immediately wish I hadn't.
"Page four—you've buried the year-over-year decline in a growth narrative." Her pen stops clicking. "The board isn't stupid, Spencer. They'll find it and wonder what else you've hidden."
"I wasn't hiding it." My voice drops half a register—automatic, the frequency I use when someone's crossed a line. She holds my gaze without flinching.
"Then move it to page two. Lead with the problem, frame the solution, let the growth story land as recovery instead of fairy tale." She taps the document. "They'll trust you more for the honesty."
I pick up the file, not because I need to reread what I wrote—but because the alternative is watching her face while she dismantles my work with the calm authority of someone who's spent years watching from outside what everyone inside has missed.
"How long have you been analysing board presentations?" I set the file down, studying her face for the performance I keep expecting and never finding.
"I haven't." Her mouth curves—not a smile, something sharper. "I've been analysing people. The view's clearer from the mop closet."
My hand tightens on my coffee mug. The self-deprecation is so practiced it's nearly invisible, and something behind my ribs registers it like a bruise being pressed by someone who doesn't know what they're touching.
"Why did you stay?" She asks it without preamble. "After Edric died—you could have taken the Wallace name anywhere."
"Walking away from something broken is easier than fixing it." I turn the mug in my hands, porcelain warm against my palms. "I've never been interested in easy."
"That sounds like something a person says when they're too stubborn to admit they're tired." Her amber eyes hold mine, and something shifts across my mouth—not a smile, not just yet.
"Possibly." I set the mug down before my hands betray anything else. "Stubbornness and exhaustion look similar from the executive floor."
"They look similar from every floor." Her voice softens, and for one second she's not performing competence or defiance. She's just here, and the morning light catches those irises in a way that makes my wolf press forward behind my ribs with a focus I haven't felt in years.
I catalogue the rest in silence. The way she angles away from the coffee on my desk—a consistent pattern for six days. Her hand drifting to her stomach when she's thinking, fingers pressing through fabric to something underneath.
The new thread in her scent—sweeter, warmer, impossible to ignore at this distance. My wolf knows what it means. I'm not yet ready to let that knowledge reach my mouth.
"Fix page four." I tap the file, grateful for the excuse to redirect my attention to something that isn't the shape of her mouth. "Revision by three."
"Is that a compliment hiding inside an order?" She stands, notebook pressed against her chest like a shield.
"It's an order. The compliment is that I'm trusting you with the revision at all." I watch her walk to the door and let myself, because self-deception has never been my strong suit.
At two-fourteen, my inbox delivers a reassignment request. Bailee Reed, executive assistant, returned to janitorial—performance concerns. Submitted by Celeste's office, countersigned by a board member whose vertebrae Celeste keeps in her desk drawer.
I kill it in four minutes. Reroute the paperwork, log a formal block on employment changes without CEO sign-off, and email HR a directive so surgical the subtext reads: Touch her file again and I'll audit every decision this department has made since Edric's funeral.
The phone call with Celeste is inevitable. I let it ring twice—a power move so elementary I should be embarrassed. I would be, if she weren't trying to demote the woman I'm—protecting. The woman I'm protecting.
"Spencer." Celeste's voice drips manufactured warmth, the kind that could sweeten antifreeze. "I assume you've seen my request regarding the Reed girl."
"Seen it, denied it, blocked future attempts." Boardroom temperature—the kind that makes people reach for their coats. "Was there something else?"
"Your protection of a half-blood is being noticed." The warmth evaporates. "The pack talks. Three Wallace brothers circling Edric's hybrid daughter—it looks like something the elders won't ignore."
"My personnel decisions don't require your consultation, Celeste." My thumb presses the desk edge until the nail blanches. "Or your approval."
"They will when the council asks why the acting CEO is shielding a janitor from review." She hangs up without goodbye—a move she learned from someone with better timing.
I set the phone down. Through the glass wall, Bailee sits at her desk—pen between her teeth now, that stubborn focus turning a draft I spent three days on into something she'll improve in four hours.
She argued with me this morning like she had every right to be sitting in that chair. No apology, no managed tone designed to protect the ego of the man across the desk.
My palm presses flat against mahogany and my jaw tightens around something I don't have vocabulary for—or rather, I do, but naming it makes it real, and real things can be taken.
My phone buzzes. Miles: Have you noticed her scent? My baby brother has the subtlety of a man who solves every problem by running directly at it.
I lock the screen, place it face-down, and watch her through the glass—pen between her teeth, one hand resting on her stomach, rewriting my presentation like she owns the company. I type back two words: Not yet. The lie sits in my sent messages like a grenade with a very patient timer.
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