Page 159 of Twisted Knight

“Great.” I take a seat, jet-lagged as fuck, but curious as to how Rowan works in these situations. “Don’t mind me. Carry on.”

Rowan gives me the strangest of looks before taking a deep breath. “Now, where were we?”

The four of them continue their conversation. Price points. Inventory thresholds. Markups. Restocking fees. The give and take. The back and forth. Over and over.

I’m turned on by her all the time now, but Rowan Rothschild negotiating? Now that’s fucking hot.

She’s firm when she needs to be. Auspiciously compliant when it suits the request. There’s a savviness to her that I knew she had but I had yet to see in action.

I’m impressed. More than I expected to be and that’s a rarity for me.

Audrey texts me that she needs me. Torn between getting to her and leaving this negotiation, I decide to jump into the conversation.

“Great. Perfect.” I rise from my seat and draw the attention of the room. “How about we shave two percent on sticking point one. Offer a referral program under number three. And since we’re shaving on one, Akiro, you take what we’ve offered on point four.” All eyes stare at me. “Good? Good.” I don’t wait for a response. If you leave an inch, the opposition will take a mile. “Great to have met you gentlemen. I look forward to doing business with you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some pressing matters to get to.”

I exit the conference room with a few handshakes and a nod, then spend the next hour catching up on things with Audrey. There’s too much to do and not enough fucking time—land deals to squash, buyers to vet, unknowing enemies to reacquaint myself with—but isn’t that the best part about all of this?

Being right under their noses and them not knowing it? Shaking hands. Looking them in the eyes. And getting the knife ready for their backs.

“Holden?”

“Mmm?” I don’t look up at Audrey’s voice as I continue typing my email.

“You’re being called down to storage. Something about an issue with the server—a break in the firewall that someone—Harold, I think—wants to show you,” Audrey says at my doorway.

“Because that’s the last thing I want to do,” I grumble.

“I can go for you.”

“You, look at firewalls? C’mon now,” I tease. Audrey is a self-proclaimed ostrich, purposely keeping her head in the sand when it comes to anything other than the basic tech.

And I’m fine with that for a lot of reasons.

But this? Our IT manager summoning me for something that he should be able to take care of himself is a tad irritating.

Then again, why is someone other than me poking their nose in our firewall? A few keystrokes from my desk could easily find out the answer. But Harold needs to know that I know what I’m talking about.

“I’m going.”

“See and be seen, huh?” She raises an eyebrow.

“Exactly.” Especially after there was an apparent temper tantrum while I was gone. A very loud, very public freak-out by Rhett.

One that may have had me pouring a glass and toasting my empty hotel room while I gloated after Audrey told me about it.

One that I may have had a small hand in.

“We’re at that stage of the purchase already?” she asks because, to everyone besides Rhett and myself, the timeline is unknown.

“We’re at that stage of seeing which managers are competent enough to stay onboard.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Fun times,” I say with a sarcastic lift of my eyebrows that she’s known me long enough to interpret—someone might be about to get fired—and I rise from my seat. I’m on the elevator and off at the seventh-floor storage room within minutes. The receptionist there, Gina—I think her name is Gina—is on her cell phone and throws it down like it’s on fire the minute she sees me. If she was trying to hide that it was a personal call, she needs to learn how to be more subtle. But she’s young, biding her time with this job while she gets her degree, and more than intimidated by me.

As I like it to be.

For that reason alone, I let it go.