Page 68 of Mane Rival in Store by Milly Taiden

She studied the pages. Her fingers moved across the financial records the way they moved across vendor invoices—quick, practiced, reading the numbers with the same fluency he brought to rare editions.

“He’s been planning this for months.”

“At minimum.”

“Before I signed the SoHo lease.”

“Before you signed.” He let that land. “This isn’t about the building. This isn’t about the lease. This is about both of us. He targeted Sterling & Mane’s authentication—my reputation—while acquiring the building that houses both our stores. He wanted the forgery scandal to weaken the property’s commercial value and my leverage to resist the acquisition. Then he uses the lease to force you out. Two businesses destroyed, one grudge satisfied.”

She was quiet for a long time. The playlist filled the silence—a low, smoky R&B track that thrummed through the speakers.

“You didn’t buy the building.”

“No.”

“You didn’t call your lawyers.”

“I called Dekel. He called an accountant.”

“You could have ended this a week ago. A few phone calls. You told Dekel about them. He told Breezy. She told me—not the details, but the shape of it. That you had the power to make Fallon disappear and you chose not to.”

The growl tried to surface. He swallowed it. “Choosing not to was the worst kind of discipline. Harder than the challenge. Harder than—” He stopped. Reorganized. The speech was there, waiting, but it wasn’t right anymore. The rehearsed words belonged to the version of himself who’d stood in Villainette’s back office, not yet exposed. She knew now. She’d watched him shift and roar and bleed on a sidewalk. The speech was obsolete. What he had left was the truth, unedited.

“I’m not asking you to trust my intentions. I’m asking you to look at the evidence. Every page came from outside—public records, financial disclosures, traceable transactions. Nothing that required me to deploy Sterling resources against Creed. Nothing that put my thumb on the scale. I brought you information. What you do with it is your decision.”

She looked at him. The guard was still there. But the question underneath it had shifted—not why are you here but who are you, underneath the thing I was afraid of.

“I’m not afraid of you.” Her voice was steady. The humor was gone—stripped back to the load-bearing truth that lived beneath it. “I’m afraid of the pattern. Another man with money and access and proximity to my business. The shape of it is the same, even when the person inside it is different.”

“I know.”

“You’re not the pattern. I know that. I’ve known it since you sat in your stockroom for a week and didn’t make the calls. I’ve known it since you walked me to my car every night without asking why I couldn’t look at you. I’ve known it since you stepped between me and an expelled lion on a sidewalk and your first instinct was to put your body between mine and the threat, not to solve the problem from a distance with a checkbook.”

His throat worked. His hair stirred—the strands at his temples rising a fraction, the involuntary tell that she’d been tracking for weeks and now understood for what it was.

“I practiced a speech.” The words came out before he could edit them. “Dekel made me rehearse. Three times. Standing in the stockroom with him rating my delivery. He gave notes.”

The guard cracked. Not all the way—not yet—but the corner of her mouth moved.

“He gave you notes.”

“He said my first version was ‘too corporate.’ The second was ‘too rehearsed.’ The third he described as ‘adequate, if she’s grading on a curve.’”

The crack widened. A sound escaped—not a laugh, not yet, but the breath before one. “You rehearsed a speech for me in your stockroom with your beta giving you director’s notes.”

“He also made me hydrate. He said dehydrated alphas make poor romantic decisions.”

And there it was. The laugh. Not the full, room-filling laugh he’d heard through the shared wall for seven weeks—a smaller version, cautious, testing the air. But it was hers. The sound landed in his chest and settled there and the restless thing behind his ribs went quiet for the first time in eight days.

“Let’s go to your home,” she said.

He blinked.

“To the den. The rooftop. You said you were going to tell me about the lion in a controlled environment with Burgundy and Dekel on standby.” She slid off the desk. Collected the folder. Pressed it against herself like a shield or a bridge—he wasn’t sure which. “I’d like the Burgundy. Dekel can have the night off.”

THIRTY

LARK