Kyle POV
The De Voss Corp building has forty-two floors.
Kyle knows this because he counted them once when he was twelve, standing on the pavement outside with his father, Gerald pointing upward and saying one day this will matter to you. Kyle remembers thinking the building looked like it was trying to scrape something off the bottom of the sky.
He does not take the elevator to the top floor very often. Nathan's assistant, a woman named Claire who has worked there for seven years and has never once smiled at Kyle with her eyes, looks up when he walks in and says, "He's in a meeting."
"I'll wait," Kyle says.
"It may be a while."
"I'll wait," he says again.
He sits in one of the chairs outside Nathan's office for forty minutes. He checks his phone. The video of Mia has a hundred and twenty thousand views now. He has read every comment twice. Some of them make him want to put his fist through a wall. Not the ones about Mia, the ones about him. That poor guy. She played him. He looks so shocked.
He does not want people's sympathy. Sympathy means they saw him lose.
The office door opens. Three men in suits come out looking purposeful. Claire says something into her headset. Then: "You can go in."
Nathan is at his desk. He has not moved to the sitting area, the couches, and the coffee table, where he takes meetings; he considers social. He is behind his desk, which means he has already decided what this conversation is.
Kyle closes the door.
"She signed your contract," Kyle says.
Nathan looks up. "Good morning, Kyle."
"I know about the contract." Kyle steps forward. "I know you went to her building. I know you had a folder. Marcus saw her take it from you. He was parked across the street." He stops at the edge of the desk. "What are you doing?"
Nathan sets down his pen. He does not lean back, does not cross his arms, does not perform relaxation the way Kyle's father does when he wants to seem unbothered. He just stops moving and looks at his nephew.
"I needed someone for the investor dinner," he says.
"You needed someone," Kyle repeats. "Out of every person in this city, you needed my eighteen-year-old girlfriend."
"Ex-girlfriend," Nathan says.
The word lands like a flat stone.
Kyle's jaw tightens. "You don't know that."
"Kyle." Nathan's voice is not unkind. It is something worse clear. "You kissed someone else on her birthday. You didn't text her. You didn't save her a seat. Then you called her twelve times to tell her she embarrassed your family." A pause. "What outcome were you expecting?"
"That is between Mia and me." Kyle's hands are flat on the desk now. He can feel his own pulse in them. "Not you. Mia and I."
Nathan says nothing.
"Why her?" Kyle says, and he hears it, the thing under the anger, the thing he does not want Nathan to hear. The thing that sounds like: why did you choose her specifically, out of all the people in the world, why did it have to be her?
Nathan looks at him for a long moment.
"Because she is exactly what I needed," he says. "Someone sharp, composed, and completely disconnected from the existing power structures in that room." He pauses. "It has nothing to do with you."
"It has everything to do with me."
"No," Nathan says, and his voice is very quiet now. "It doesn't. And the fact that you cannot see past yourself long enough to understand that is the problem, Kyle. It has always been the problem."
Kyle stares at him.
Something old moves through the room, something that has been between them since Kyle was fourteen and figured out that Nathan did not see him the way Gerald did. Gerald looked at Kyle and saw continuation. Legacy. A name carrying forward. Nathan looked at Kyle and saw — Kyle was never entirely sure. Something unfinished. Something that had potential but was not doing anything with it.
Kyle has spent six years trying not to care about that.
He cares about it.
"I'll tell Dad," Kyle says.
Nathan's expression does not change.
"I'll tell him you contracted his grandson's girlfriend to walk into board events. I'll tell him you are using a nobody girl from a debt family to make a move inside the company." Kyle leans forward. "He will shut it down before the first dinner. You know he will."
Nathan looks at his nephew for a long, unhurried moment.
Then he says two words.
"Go ahead."
Kyle expected pushback. He expected the careful negotiation Nathan always deploys, the calm repositioning, the quiet offer of something in exchange for silence. He has seen Nathan talk his way around Gerald a hundred times with patience and precision.
He did not expect go ahead.
He straightens up.
"You're not scared of that," Kyle says slowly.
"No," Nathan says.
"Why not?"
Nathan picks up his pen again. Opens the document on his desk. The meeting, apparently, is over.
"Because your father already knows," Nathan says, without looking up. "He knew before you walked in here."
The floor tilts slightly.
Kyle opens his mouth. Closes it.
"Claire will validate your parking," Nathan says.
Kyle leaves.
He sits in his car in the parking structure for three minutes without starting the engine. His hands are on the wheel, and he is looking at the concrete wall in front of him, and he is doing the math.
Your father already knows.
Which means Gerald had someone at the club Saturday night. Or someone at Mia's building last night. Or someone in Nathan's building who saw the folder and made a call. Gerald always has someone somewhere. Kyle grew up understanding this the way you understand weather, as a fact of the environment, not something to question.
Gerald knows about Mia and the contract, and he has said nothing to Kyle.
Which means Gerald is not shutting it down.
Which means Gerald has a different plan.
Kyle pulls out his phone. He calls Becca.
She picks up on the second ring, her voice bright in the way it gets when she is already ahead of something.
"I was wondering when you'd call," she says.
"I need you to make things difficult for Mia at college," Kyle says. "I need her off balance. Distracted." He pauses. "Discredited."
"Kyle." She says his name like she is enjoying it. "I started three days ago."
Of course she did. Becca has been in love with Kyle since they were sixteen, in the patient, strategic way that does not announce itself but never fully goes away. She does not do things for him after he asks. She does things for him before he knows he needs them done.
"The scholarship angle is the best one," Becca says. "I have a contact on the faculty committee. One complaint, properly filed, and she goes on review. That slows everything down."
"Don't make it traceable," Kyle says.
"It won't be." A pause. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he says, which is what he always says.
"She doesn't deserve him," Becca says. "She doesn't know what Nathan is. She thinks he's doing her a favor." Her voice shifts something harder underneath the bright surface. "She has no idea what that family does to people who get close."
"Neither do I, apparently," Kyle mutters.
Becca is quiet for a moment. Then: "Your dad will handle it. He always does."
Kyle does not find this comforting. He finds it true, which is different.
"Make it difficult," he says again. "Not enough to escalate. Just enough to make her doubt herself."
"Already done," Becca says.
He hangs up.
He sits in the dark of the parking structure.
He pulls up Mia's name in his contacts. Blocked. He stares at the grey text. He thinks about Saturday night, not the dare, not Nathan, not the aftermath. Earlier, before all of it. The hour before Mia arrived, when he was at the booth with his friends, and someone mentioned it was her birthday, and Kyle thought: I should text her. He picked up his phone and put it back down. The game started. He forgot.
He forgot.
He presses his head back against the seat.
He calls his father.
One ring. Two. Gerald De Voss answers on the third, his voice smooth and unhurried, the voice of a man who has never once been caught off guard.
"Kyle," his father says. Warm. Paternal. Completely in control.
"You already know," Kyle says. "About Nathan and the girl."
"Mia Kane," Gerald says, pronouncing her name with a specificity that makes Kyle's skin prickle. "Yes."
"For how long?"
"Long enough," Gerald says.
"Are you going to stop it?"
A pause. The kind his father uses when he is deciding how much to tell you. The kind that means the real answer is already made, and the pause is just dressing.
"Why would I stop it?" Gerald says. "Nathan has brought the girl right into our world." Another pause. "That means she is right where I can see her."
Kyle says nothing.
"Come to dinner Thursday," Gerald says. "We'll talk then." His tone suggests the talking is already done and Thursday is just formality. "And Kyle, stop calling Mia. That chapter is finished."
He hangs up.
Kyle stares at his phone.
That chapter is finished.
His father says it the way you say a thing you have decided, not as observation, but as instruction. Like Mia Kane is a page that has been turned, and Kyle's feelings about that are not a factor Gerald has included in his calculations.
Kyle starts the car.
He pulls out of the parking structure into the grey morning.
He thinks about Nathan's face when he said go ahead.
He thinks about his father's voice saying right where I can see her.
He thinks about Mia in that small back room, her chin up and her hands steady, choosing something that had nothing to do with anyone's plan.
His phone buzzes on the passenger seat.
A text from a number he does not recognize:
"Your father has been watching Mia Kane for eight months. Ask him why. Ask him what happened to the last person Nathan brought close. A friend."
Kyle pulls over.
He reads it three times.
Then he looks up Gerald De Voss's private calendar on the family server, the one he was given access to at eighteen, the one he has never used because knowing too much about his father has always felt dangerous.
He searches for the name.
Mia Kane appears eleven times.
The first entry is dated eight months ago.
Three months before she and Nathan were ever in the same room.