Page 28 of The Associate
Another minute shift from the submissive below, a wobble, a sag of the spine, and Gael felt a fresh thread of tension pull taut through his own shoulders.
He stood up abruptly, the movement fluid but charged.
Landen blinked, his amused expression faltering. “Where are you going? You arrived.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Gael said sharply.
“Not in the mood for the club?” Sebastian asked.
“Not in the mood for any of this,” Gael clarified, his gesture encompassing the table, the lounge, the environment.
Adrian studied him for a long, silent beat. “You’re unsettled. Actually unsettled. That’s rare.”
Gael said nothing.
Jaden’s voice cut through, quieter now. “Who is he?”
Gael didn’t react. But the prolonged, heavy silence that followed answered the question.
He stepped back from the table, the carpet swallowing the sound of his retreat. The ambient music swelled, ropes creaked faintly, laughter drifted from the bar.
None of the familiar inputs cut through the static now filling his head.
This place had always functioned as his calibration chamber. It had always reset something essential.
Tonight, it didn’t.
And the reason, infuriating, simple, and undeniable, had a name.
Samuel Ruiz.
Chapter 7
Gael
The late afternoon light cut across the vast glass walls of Gael’s office in long, pale, stripes that made the room feel sharper. The city skyline behind him was beginning to soften toward evening, hues bleeding into muted gold and grey, but inside the conference room everything remained crisp; the polished ebony table, the immaculate surfaces, the pens aligned just like he liked it. His space tolerated no disorder. Neither did he.
Samuel Ruiz was proving to be an unmanaged variable.
Gael sat at the head of the table, his suit jacket draped neatly over the back of his chair, his shirtsleeves rolled back one measured fold on each arm. His team filled the seats opposite him. Alina, to his immediate left, closed a folder with a soft, definitive click.
“The misclassified assets first appear in the Q2 filings,” she said, her voice unflappable. “But the fiscal impact clearly extends into Q3.”
“Good,” Gael said, his tone a low baritone. “Move the taxation precedent to appendix B.” She nodded, her pen already scratching the adjustment.
The senior associate to her right, Harding, began next, flipping open his binder. “I reviewed the CFO’s amended filings again overnight,” he said, his voice slightly louder than necessary.
Gael’s attention, solid a moment before, began to fracture.
His gaze lifted from Harding’s face, drifted over the clutter of binders and exhibits, and landed on the figure at the far end of the table.
Samuel.
The boy sat with his back straight. His head was bowed over a blank notepad, his focus painfully narrow, as if the wood grain held the answers. The pale light glossed the sharp line of his jaw, caught the soft sweep of his eyelashes against his cheek. His lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line.
Harding’s voice rose, hitting a percussive note on a legal term.
A minute tremor went through Samuel. His shoulders tightened, a defensive, reflexive hike toward his ears. His slender fingers curled around the pen before him, knuckles whitening.
