"Sure," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "Just don't regret it when the time comes."
Dominic laughed, a rich, booming sound that echoed off the mahogany walls. He patted my cheek, treating my warning like a child’s pout.
"You are adorable when you try to sound tough, Ro," he said. "Go approve those ad buys. We can look at catering menus tonight. I want oysters."
"Oysters," I repeated.
"Sienna mentioned a great place downtown. She can get us a reservation."
I stepped back, letting his hand drop. "I will get right on it."
"Good girl," he murmured, turning his attention back to his monitor. "Oh, and make sure you cc Sienna on the final approvals. She needs to stay in the loop for her portfolio."
"I will include her on every email."
"Perfect. Close the door on your way out."
I walked out of the general manager's office, the heavy glass door sealing his voice away.
I navigated the bustling corridors back to the design department. Three days earlier, at the height of our cold war, Dominic had loudly agreed to take Sienna on a month-long road trip just to provoke me. He had stood in our shared hallway, waiting for a screaming match, but I had simply handed him his coat and calmly seen him to the door.
Now, I settled into my chair and stared at my blank monitor. My workspace had been stripped of personal items. I had stayed at the office until dawn the night before, wiping every trace of my proprietary code from the company servers. Everything I owned, every algorithm that made this company function, now lived inside a single encrypted file in my pocket. The desk held only company-issued pens and a blank notepad. My framed photos, my lucky coffee mug, my custom mechanical keyboard—all gone.
"Rowan?"
Sienna leaned over my partition, waving a silver tablet. "I really hate to bother you again, but the Q3 projections are stalled."
"Pull up a chair," I said, my tone bright and accommodating.
She dragged a stool over and dropped the tablet on my desk. "Dom wants the revised pitch by five. I told him I could handle it, but looking at these spreadsheets just gives me a headache. The numbers keep shifting, and the formulas are broken."
"Let me see." I took the tablet and swiped through the document, a tangle of broken links and mismatched formulas.
"The formulas in the third quarter are broken," I explained, pointing at the red cells on her screen. "You linked the revenue to the overhead costs instead of the sales projections."
Sienna waved a hand dismissively. "That sounds like technical jargon. The investors only care about the bottom line."
"The bottom line is currently showing a two-million-dollar deficit because of this error," I said flatly.
Sienna’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second. "Well, that is why you are here to fix it. Dom said you have a real talent for all the tedious work."
"I will correct the formulas."
"Exactly what I thought," Sienna lied smoothly, twirling a pen between her fingers. "Could you just rewrite the budget section? You are so much faster at the math than I am. Plus, you know the vendors better."
"I will have it done by four," I said, opening a new blank document on my computer.
"And the presentation
