Chapter 128: A Day After! [FIXED!][21/08!]
Mrs. Harriet walked into her office the next morning with a lightness in her step she hadn’t felt in longer than she cared to admit. Things had unfolded exactly the way she’d hoped, and there was a quiet satisfaction sitting underneath everything she did that day — the kind that came from having a need finally, properly met.
It wasn’t easy, finding someone like Liam. Competent, sharp, genuinely engaged in a way that went beyond simple attraction — he’d actually held her attention, which was rarer than most people assumed for a woman in her position. Most men either couldn’t keep pace with her intellectually or were too intimidated by her standing to approach her as an equal. Liam had managed both without visibly trying.
It was part of why things with Richard had drifted the way they had. Not out of malice, not even out of neglect exactly — just years of accumulated distance that had calcified into a kind of permanent arrangement neither of them bothered questioning anymore.
Richard traveled constantly. Deals in three cities in a given week, sometimes more, and by the time he came home he had nothing left to give anyone, least of all her. He understood that she had needs — had always understood it, in that clinical, practical way he approached everything — and years ago, he’d been the one to propose the arrangement in the first place.
She’d rejected it initially, offended by the suggestion, reading it as a rejection of her rather than what it actually was. It took time to understand the truth underneath it: Richard’s drive had simply never matched hers. Low, almost nonexistent some months, a mismatch that had nothing to do with how he felt about her and everything to do with biology neither of them had any control over. Once she understood that, the arrangement stopped feeling like an insult and started feeling like the only realistic solution to a problem with no other fix.
It also meant she never worried about him straying in the traditional sense. Whatever discretion he required from her, he extended the same courtesy in return, and in all the years since, she’d never once caught a thread suggesting otherwise.
She pushed the thought aside as she reached the conference room, straightening her blazer before stepping inside.
The meeting today was with Halloway Motors, one of the larger domestic auto manufacturers looking to restructure their legal representation after a string of supplier disputes had left their existing counsel scrambling. It was a significant account — the kind of client that, if secured, would matter considerably for the firm’s numbers this quarter.
She took her seat at the head of the table, greeting the small delegation already assembled. Halloway had sent three representatives, but it was immediately clear which one held the actual authority in the room.
“Mrs. Harriet.” The man extended a hand as she sat, his grip firm, his smile a fraction too wide for a first business meeting. “Jimmy. Chief Operating Officer.”
“Mr. Jimmy. Pleasure.”
He held onto the handshake a beat longer than necessary, his eyes tracking over her with an appraisal that had nothing to do with legal competency. Mrs. Harriet had encountered his type before — men who mistook confidence in a boardroom for an invitation, who looked at a woman across the table and saw something to be evaluated rather than negotiated with.
She didn’t flinch. She simply retrieved her hand and opened the folder in front of her, redirecting the room’s attention back to the matter at hand.
“Let’s get started. I understand you’re looking to restructure representation following the supplier litigation in Ohio.”
“That’s right.” Jimmy leaned back in his chair, still watching her more than he was watching the documents. “Frankly, our last firm couldn’t keep up. We need someone sharper. More — aggressive, let’s say.”
“Aggressive within the bounds of what actually protects your position,” Mrs. Harriet corrected smoothly. “I’ve reviewed the filings your team sent over. The supplier’s breach claim has three weak points we can exploit immediately.”
That got his attention shifting, if only briefly, toward the actual conversation. “Go on.”
“Their contract language around delivery timelines is ambiguous at best. Section four, paragraph two — they never clearly defined ’reasonable delay,’ which means their entire claim about missed shipments rests on an interpretation, not a fact.” She flipped to the relevant page, sliding it across the table.
“We challenge that ambiguity first, and their case starts to unravel before we even get to damages.”
One of the other representatives, a younger woman taking notes furiously, nodded along. “That’s — actually, that’s a stronger angle than what our previous counsel proposed.”
“Your previous counsel likely didn’t read past the summary page,” Mrs. Harriet said dryly.
Jimmy laughed, low and appreciative, though his eyes hadn’t moved much from her face the entire exchange. “I like her already.”
“I’d prefer you like the strategy, Mr. Jimmy.”
“Can’t I like both?”
Mrs. Harriet held his gaze evenly, her expression giving nothing away, professional to the point of being unreadable.
“You’re paying for the strategy. Everything else is irrelevant to this conversation.”
The room went quiet for a beat, the younger woman glancing between them, clearly picking up on the tension without fully understanding its shape. Jimmy recovered quickly, clearing his throat and leaning forward, shifting — outwardly, at least — back into business mode.
“Fair enough. Walk us through the damages exposure if we move forward with this argument.”
Mrs. Harriet continued, laying out the numbers with the same precision she’d carried into every negotiation for the last two decades, watching Jimmy nod along at the appropriate points while his attention still drifted, every few minutes, somewhere it had no business drifting during a legal briefing.
She’d deal with that separately, if it became necessary. For now, the numbers were what mattered, and by the time the meeting wrapped an hour later, Halloway Motors had a signed letter of intent sitting on the table in front of her.
Jimmy stood to shake her hand again on the way out. “Looking forward to working with you directly, Mrs. Harriet.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said, her smile polite, professional, and entirely closed off from whatever he was hoping it might open into.
–
Arthur sat in his office long after everyone else had left, scrolling back through the photos on his phone. The car, parked outside the restaurant, timestamped across two separate visits now. Her car, sitting there for hours at a stretch, no explanation that fit anything resembling a business meeting.
He’d had someone track the plate before. He didn’t need to check twice to know whose vehicle it was.
It didn’t add up cleanly, not yet — not enough to bring to Richard, not enough to survive the kind of scrutiny his brother would apply before believing a word of it. Richard wasn’t a man who acted on suspicion. He required proof, clean and undeniable, the kind that left no room for a counter-narrative. Arthur had learned that lesson the hard way more than once.
He needed one more piece. And that piece required Sara.
He’d been waiting on her return for a while, checking flight manifests through a contact who owed him a favor, refreshing his phone at hours he wasn’t proud of. She was somewhere in France still, as far as he knew, in no particular hurry to come back and finish what she’d started.
That was the problem with Sara. She was useful — more useful than almost anyone else he’d brought into this — but she was also unpredictable in a way that made his skin crawl.
She didn’t operate on his timeline. She operated on her own sense of amusement, twisting variables just to see what happened, treating the entire arrangement like a game with stakes that only mattered to everyone except her.
He needed her precise. He needed her controlled. Instead he had a woman currently sunning herself on a terrace somewhere, in no rush to deliver the one thing that would actually move this forward.
He set the phone down and rubbed at his temples, frustration building in his chest.
The thought crept in again, the one he kept pushing down and failing to fully bury — how long had this actually been running. Months, technically, since the termination. But the groundwork underneath it stretched back further than that, quiet observation long before Sara had ever been positioned in Liam’s life at all.
That detail bothered him more than he let himself sit with most days.
A single junior associate. Talented, yes — more talented than most of the people currently occupying senior positions at the firm, if he was being honest with himself. But talent alone didn’t explain the amount of resources Arthur had funneled into ensuring this specific man’s downfall unfolded exactly the way he wanted it to.
Ordinary terminations didn’t require this much architecture. Didn’t require planted girlfriends, engineered financial ruin, humiliation staged with this much precision.
This wasn’t business. He knew that. Had known it for a while now, if he was being fully honest with himself, and had simply refused to examine why closely enough to find the actual answer sitting underneath it.
He picked the phone back up and typed out a message to Sara, short and clipped.
“I need you back. Now.”
He stared at the screen for a long moment after sending it, waiting for the read receipt that didn’t come, and told himself — again — that this was still about business.