Chapter 2 - The Gift Card and the Boardroom
By Sunday evening, my phone remained mercifully quiet. My father must have assumed I was stewing in my room like a petulant teenager, waiting for an apology that would never come. Instead, I spent the weekend reviewing architectural blueprints, analyzing supply chain bottlenecks, and preparing a comprehensive risk assessment for the board of directors.
Kaleth Robotics was on the verge of expanding its automated manufacturing division across the Pacific Northwest, and as executive vice president of engineering, every structural and technical decision rested squarely on my shoulders. When I walked into the glass-walled boardroom on Monday morning, the twelve senior executives seated around the mahogany table immediately quieted down. People waited for me to finish speaking. They challenged my technical proposals, sometimes sharply and with fierce data-backed arguments, but they respected what I did and why it mattered.
I led that meeting through three hours of rigorous debate, defended our capital expenditure estimates against aggressive pushback from the CFO, and walked out with unanimous approval on all three core initiatives. The ordinary, professional respect of it felt almost jarring after the casual cruelty of the family group chat just forty-eight hours prior.
That evening in my condo, I briefly considered telling Colton the truth about Larkspur Lane. The original property deed and purchase agreement were sitting right in my digital filing cabinet. One screenshot of the county registry would have blown their entire world apart and changed the power dynamic of our relationship forever. But it would also have turned my quiet act of kindness into a weapon the moment I felt hurt. I closed the folder. I wanted to think carefully about what I actually hoped would happen before I did anything irreversible.
By Friday afternoon, the accumulated stress of the engineering rollout caught up with me. I had postponed several routine administrative reviews over the board meeting prep, so I decided to go into our downtown corporate office on Saturday morning when the building was quiet and empty.
I traded my usual tailored blazer for a soft cashmere sweater, pulled my hair up into a loose clip, and set to work at my standing desk. The nineteenth floor of the Kaleth Tower was a sanctuary of polished concrete, glass partitions, and sweeping views of the river. Most of the engineering floor was completely deserted.
Around 11:30 a.m., my desk phone chimed with an internal transfer from the ground-floor security desk.
“Vanessa?” my executive assistant, Maya, asked over the intercom. “You have two visitors downstairs who claim to be family. They don't have visitor badges, but they’re quite insistent.”
She rattled off their names.
I looked down at the phone for a long, silent second, wondering whether my father’s gift-card suggestion had somehow evolved into an in-person collection agency. Colton knew the company name because it was listed on my tax documents and corporate insurance cards, though I had never told him the exact address of our corporate headquarters.
“Send them up, Maya,” I said evenly. “And please have security hold off on escorting them out unless I page you.”
I stood up, walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of my corner office, and waited.
Through the clear panels across the open-plan floor, I watched the private elevator doors slide open with a soft chime. Briana stepped out first, wearing a bright floral dress that looked entirely out of place in a high-tech corporate facility, and she carried a glossy presentation folder pressed tightly against her chest. Colton followed a few paces behind her, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, looking around the sleek engineering floor as if he expected to find rows of dusty auto-repair benches and greasy tools.
They stopped dead in their tracks when they reached the brushed brass plate mounted beside my double glass doors.
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF ENGINEERING.
VANESSA HOLT.
May you like
Colton leaned closer, his eyes narrowing as he read the title letter by letter. Briana went utterly still in the middle of making some remark, her mouth slightly open as she stared through the glass pane straight at me.
I reached over, grabbed the door handle, and pulled it open. For once in their lives, neither of them had a clever joke ready.
