Chapter Text
The week after the reunion felt like the lab itself held its breath.
Tony moved through the R&D division with a professional calm that was part armor, part performance. Meetings blurred into prototype reviews, into investor calls, into late-night troubleshooting sessions where the soft blue of a monitor was the only light. He smiled at the right moments, dropped jokes that landed with precisely measured wit, chaired discussions with the kind of authority that made people defer without resentment. On the outside, he was impeccably, infuriatingly composed.
On the inside, his chest was a drumline.
You were in his lab more than he expected. You arrived on Tuesday with a quiet competence that made the team fall into place around you like the missing piece of a machine that had been humming a little out of tune. You moved through the space with a practiced grace — calibrating, adjusting, sketching rapid calculations on a whiteboard with a hand that never trembled in front of others.
They said you were brilliant. They said you were level-headed. They said a lot of things that made Tony both proud and irrationally territorial.
Tony Stark had always loved places like the R&D. He had built his life on them. He'd made himself into someone who solved problems with code, caffeine, and the kind of blithe confidence that bent reality in his favor.
Which was why it felt so wrong to be standing in Howard Stark’s private office and realizing he now faced a problem he couldn’t engineer away.
Howard had not changed much since the last time Tony had seen him in a context that required deference. Age had given him gray at the temples and a sharper edge around the eyes, but he still moved like a man who expected reality to accommodate his will. He still had that same, slightly theatrical voice—warm with affection for the idea of family, and cold with the efficiency of a business titan.
“Tony,” Howard said, folding his hands across a desk polished to a mirror sheen. “We’re hosting the Stark Winter Gala next month. It’s important—partners, press, donors. An opportunity to show stability, growth, and a certain… social grace.”
Tony blinked, because that sounded suspiciously like a sentence that required him to do something painful.
“And?” he asked.
Howard’s gaze landed on him like a warm, restraining hand. “Bring a date. It’s time for you to appear in a social context that reassures people you’re balanced.”
Tony’s mouth twitched. “Dad.”
“There are optics,” Howard persisted. “And prospective partners will be much happier if you’re seen in congenial company. I’ve spoken with Mitchell-Morrison about a potential pairing. Their daughter, Catherine—business-savvy, understands optics, philanthropic leanings. Perfect.”
Tony’s internal monologue did what it always did when he encountered an obstacle that involved feelings and social niceties: it made an early, panicked list.
List item one: don’t marry a stranger for optics.
List item two: the word partner does not mean wife—I know that, Dad.
List item three: Howard will not take "no" for an answer if the idea is wrapped in the word “partnership.”
“Dad,” Tony said again, because repetition was sometimes necessary in family negotiations. “I’m not—this isn’t The 1950s. Also—Catherine? Really?”
Howard smiled like a man who’d already rehearsed this. “Catherine is charming, intelligent, and will reflect well on Stark. She’s been involved with Mitchell-Morrison for years. It’s a connective opportunity.”
Tony pinballed between irritation and dry amusement. “So, you’re matchmaking with a corporate ally by way of an out-of-office networking gala. Dad, that’s—efficient. And slightly terrifying.”
“It’s practical,” Howard corrected. “And I would like to see you there with a steady—someone charming to reassure the board. You’ve been a little—unpredictable in the press. It’s time to show them the human side of Stark Industries.”
Unpredictable. The word landed like a joke at his expense. He’d refashioned unpredictable into disruptive and profitable; why was Howard using it like a rebuke?
“But I’m not really—” Tony started.
“That’s why you’ll have a date,” Howard said. “I’ve arranged it. You will go. You will be with Catherine. You will smile with restraint and charm the board into good decisions. Simple.”
Tony’s lips curled, half complaint, half concession. “Dad, have you met Catherine? She’s probably very nice. She also probably has an entire resume of philanthropic causes and a tasteful pearl necklace. That’s not— I don’t want that.”
Howard’s hands tapped the desk in an approving, authoritarian rhythm. “Tony—”
“I’m not bringing a prop to the gala, Dad.”
“For the last time, this is not a prop,” Howard said, amused and unmoved. “It’s good optics.”
Tony imagined a thousand passive scenarios: him tray-smiling next to a carefully chosen woman who would later be credited with his “turn to maturity” in glossed profiles; him making a graceful speech about synergy while camera flashes tried to capture the beguiling onscreen moment that his father was clearly designing. The whole idea felt performative to the bone, and Tony’s ribs prickled with a rude kind of embarrassment at the thought.
“And if I refuse?” he asked.
Howard’s smile thinned, almost imperceptibly. “I don’t relish pushing you, Tony. But sometimes a little nudge from family is necessary for the company.” His voice softened the way it did when he wanted to hide the fact that he was aware of how coercive he could be. “You owe some stability to the board.”
The word owed unmoored something. This gala had nothing to do with Tony’s desires. It was a ledger, a performance, a careful rehearsal of the image Howard sold investors and politicians. Tony had, for most of his adult life, stood on stages and sold himself with the practiced ease of someone who knew how to control their narrative. But the idea of bringing a date prescribed by his father—someone picked for him—felt like the erosion of an autonomy he rarely surrendered.
He could imagine Howard’s pleased look if he agreed. He could imagine Catherine’’s polished curiosity. He could imagine photo ops. He could not imagine himself satisfied.
“No,” Tony said finally, quiet, defiant in a way that startled even him.
Howard’s eyebrow rose. “You’re refusing my suggestion.”
“I’m refusing being treated like a dataset in need of cleaning.”
Howard’s eyes softened again—but not into apology. Into calculation, the fatherly version of a chess master planning a move. “Tony, you misjudge how much influence the board takes from perception. This gala is what our partners will remember.”
Tony took a breath. He hadn’t intended the conversation to escalate into this, but he also wasn’t prepared to be oiled into a social performance. “If I must go, I’ll go alone.”
Howard blinked, maybe because he hadn’t expected such a flat-out refusal. Then he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands. “You think you can manage a gala without a date and persuade them that you’re stable? I admire your confidence. But understand—this is not a whimsical family gathering. It’s business. I expect you to attend, and I expect you to present a coherent face for Stark Industries.”
Tony stared at the smooth, stubborn plane of his father’s face, the same face that had once told him to prioritize outcomes over comfort. He’d learned adaptability from Howard, and the lesson had worked extremely well at making him the CEO he’d become. The old gears of learned obedience clicked in his head for a moment—go along, maintain the image—but something else answered: a memory with you on the other side of the lab, the almost-kiss, the unfinished goodbye. That memory had changed the shape of what Tony wanted and what he feared.
“If Catherine’s name is mentioned again, remind me to update all press photos with a holographic prop,” Tony said, forcing a laugh that felt brittle and thin.
Howard smiled, kindly and exasperated. “Very well. Just—consider your options. This gala will reaffirm crucial alliances. Don’t be reckless.”
He meant it. The idea of “don’t be reckless” contained layers: don’t upset the board, don’t risk partnerships, don’t be a lone wolf in a moment when optics mattered. Tony had never liked being told what not to be. He’d preferred to define what reckless looked like on his own terms. Besides, there was the absurdity of thinking he could perform a long evening of careful civility while avoiding every person who might be chosen for him. He’d be the least interesting man in a room where every smile was a premeditated asset, and he didn’t want to waste his time gamifying his public persona.
He promised himself he would refuse gently and then avoid the fallout. He would bend nothing; he would take no passive-responsibility for Howard’s plan. He would handle it his way: by making himself scarce when necessary, by finding a polite exit route, by shepherding his own presentation with minimal attendance time.
Except that Tony’s plans to sidestep family mandates always seemed to run into life’s small, humiliating ironies. He had a tendency to leave the hard, social tasks to assistants. He would delegate the human interactions to people with better patience or fewer emotional stakes. He would avoid uncomfortable face-to-face confrontations, because the irony of doing so was that they made for worse stories later but better short-term survival.
Howard’s office had been a warning, and Tony felt it in his bones. He walked out with the kind of cool steely composure he’d cultivated in boardrooms, but inside he was a network of small chaotic thoughts. He would not be paired off like an exhibit, he decided. He would be present, solo, functional.
He also decided—without telling anyone—that he would not let that gala be the only night Howard defined for him. He would be in control. He would ensure none of his life’s scripts were handed to other people to stage.
At the small hours of Wednesday, when the rest of the machines had folded into the soft hum of overnight systems, Tony found himself standing at the glass wall that separated his office from the main lab. You were a silhouette in the soft fluorescent light, sleeves rolled up, brow furrowed over a soldering point. The scene should have felt ordinary — a professional at work. Instead it felt like a private event he’d somehow intruded upon. An old ache unspooled in his chest: the way the light used to catch your hair, the way your concentration softened your jaw. Ten years of adult decorum tried to rule the moment; ten years of history made his mouth dry.
He tapped the glass, a ridiculous, childish impulse. Your head lifted. For a second, you looked surprised — as if you hadn’t expected anyone to pay attention to the small miracle you were building.
“Coffee?” he offered by way of greeting, because he’d read somewhere that offering coffee was less threatening than confessing everything.
You glanced up, a small, amused tilt to one corner of your mouth. “Working through the night?”
“Mostly pretending I have better self-control than I do,” he admitted. “Come up to my office for a break.”
You hesitated just long enough for him to feel every second as an accusation. Then you stood, rubbing your hands together as if the motion would settle your pulse, and walked the short corridor to his office with that even, measured gait that made him want to reach out and steady you for reasons he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—name.
In his office, surrounded by tasteful art and an inconveniently large model of an engine, Y/N talked like colleagues at first. Project scope. Timelines. The new energy module. Your voice was practical, low, threaded with an undercurrent of curiosity that made Tony want to argue and collaborate and confess all at once.
“And you want me to lead the prototype integration?” you asked finally, pen poised over a thin notebook he realized you were always carrying.
He nodded. “You’re the better person for it. Hands down. But it’s not just about badges and titles. It’s a lot of exposure—board reviews, press. You’ll be front and center.”
You gave him a flat look. “That’s fine.”
Tony watched you more than he needed to, cataloguing the way your fingers curled around the pen, the slight hooding of your eyes when you considered risk. He found himself improvising transparency—a ridiculous honesty that was part charm, part desperation.
“I’ll protect you from the worst of it,” he said, and immediately felt childish for sounding protective. Of all the things he could offer, it was both absurd and the only honest thing that came to mind.
You blinked. Something like warmth flickered, then became a practiced neutrality. “I don’t need protection, Tony. I need a leader who trusts my work.”
He wanted to tell you that he did trust you—deeply, irrevocably—but instead he said, “Then call it a partnership. Lead it. Push it. Break my toys if you must.”
A laugh escaped you then—short, surprised, real. “And your toys?”
“Replaceable,” he said mildly. “Mostly.”
There was a fragile truce in that exchange, the kind that forms when two people acknowledge an old hurt and agree to bury it for the sake of present work. It was honest, professional. It should have been enough.
It almost was.
Two days later, it wasn’t.
There was a leak—small at first, the sort of thing that would normally be absorbed into the background noise of tech journalism. A gossip column about Tony Stark’s personal life, phrased in breathless speculation: who he was dating, whether a certain new hire might be more than just a colleague. The headline had no cause; it had been spun from a misread photograph of Tony at a charity event months earlier. Still, in the fragile ecosystem of corporate optics, a rumor could become a wildfire.
By the time PR knocked on Tony’s office door, the rumor had already sprouted wings.
“You should address it,” PR said, steady and calm, though Tony noticed the tautness in her jaw. “Investors hate uncertainty. The board doesn’t like distractions.”
He could have issued a standard denial. He could have ignored it. He could have hired more security, issued fuller statements, planted a more boring alternate headline about an acquisition. Instead, in a moment of dizzy, impulsive lucidity, he thought of you—standing in the lab, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed. He thought of how the rumor might make you shrink in ways you didn’t deserve.
He also thought, with a more selfish honesty, of how he reacted when you looked at him like you had on that first morning—like he was a surprise he hadn’t expected but couldn’t ignore.
He made a decision that was equal parts theater and cowardice.
“Fake dating,” he said aloud before he realized he’d said it. The words tasted foolish and electric.
PR blinked. “Sir?”
Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. “Publicly acknowledge a relationship. Short-term. Controlled narrative. We release a joint statement—photos at controlled events. Keeps the press from inventing flightier stories.”
“And you expect—?” PR began, skeptical.
“You’re certain it’ll blow over faster if we control it than if we deny it,” he said. “And I’ll control it like everything else. No messy confessions. No emotional press conferences. A neutral, professional—”
“You want them to think you’re in a relationship with Y/N,” PR finished with a slow, appraising tilt of her head. “That’s audacious.”
“It’s audacious,” he agreed. “And audacious is my brand.”
He walked out of the office in a carefully rehearsed mood: casual, imperturbable. He knew—at some level—this was ridiculous. He also knew he couldn’t let the rumor strip you down to a character in someone else’s story.
The thing about audacity, though, is that it requires a partner.
He found you in the lab, hunched over the energy module, scales of blue light pooling across your face. The team had dispersed; the hum dwindled to a hush. He watched you for a beat, the fabric of the room reluctant to rearrange itself into normalcy. Then he entered, took two strides, and stood in front of you with a calm he had to manufacture from the inside out.
“You know that article?” he asked. “The stupid one.”
You looked up, and in the pool of reflected light, he caught the instant—the micro-expression that told him you’d seen it. A tightening in the jaw. A slow, almost imperceptible exhale.
“Of course,” you said. “The one with the terrible headline.”
“Right.” He held onto her gaze. “Help me with something reckless.”
You arched a brow. “I’m sorry, what?”
“We fake-date,” he said simply. No preamble. No flourish. Just the words, flat and audible in the quiet of the lab.
You blinked. There was a long internal negotiation in your features — disbelief, amusement, a smoldering annoyance that felt dangerously close to curiosity.
“That’s your solution?” you asked. “Rather than a press release that says the article was inaccurate?”
“Press release doesn’t control the rumor mill,” he said. “Being a visible, undeniable pairing gives us a narrative the press can track. It’s staged. Controlled. Short-term. I take it back when it’s safe.”
You laughed then, a small, startled sound that scattered the tension like sunlight skittering across metal. “You want me to pretend to date you.”
“Yes.” He watched as your expression softened in an unsolvable way that made his stomach lurch. “For the project. For the board. For… optics.”
“And you—” You hesitated, weighing the absurdity, the possibility, and something else that made his throat tighten. “You’re asking me to weaponize myself for PR.”
“Not at all,” he protested, immediately aware of how it sounded. “I’m asking you to keep the press from making you into a headline. I’m asking you to let me be obnoxious and theatrical for five weeks while we get the module to a stable demo phase.”
You stared at him for a long moment. The lab hummed around them — a cathedral of science that had seen a hundred safer conversations.
“You’re asking me to fake an intimacy,” you said finally. “With you.”
“Yes.” He swallowed. “With me.”
You closed your eyes for half a breath, and when you opened them again, that steady professional mask had eased back on — not cold now, but considered.
“I’ll consider it,” you said. “Because you make a compelling case and also because I don’t like being turned into someone else’s rumor.”
“And you’ll—” He almost asked the question that wanted to be asked — would you do it because you wanted to protect him as well as yourself? — but he didn’t. The question was too dangerous, and he wasn’t ready to hear the answer.
“Terms?” you offered instead, because nothing was easier for either of them than negotiating like engineers.
“Terms,” he agreed.
They wrote rules on the fly: no public displays of genuine affection; no private declarations in front of the wrong people; a plan for staged photographs and a script for interviews that kept them politely evasive. They rehearsed a bland, plausible cover story: two colleagues becoming close while building something monumental. Like that was a novel angle.
When they shook hands to seal the pragmatic contract, the contact was brief — no electricity, no confession, only the exchange of warm, slightly calloused palms. Somewhere in that contact, though, something small and reckless sparked. Both of them felt it and promptly decided, with varying degrees of professionalism, to ignore it.
The first staged photo was set for the company’s winter gala. It would be controlled: a photo taken by the in-house photographer before they stepped into the main hall, a casual arm around the shoulder, a smile that said “connected” but not “consumed.” It was theater. It was safety. It was also, painfully, intimate in a way neither wanted to admit.
Walking back to the lab after the meeting, they passed the same cable that had humiliated Tony only days ago. He pretended not to see it. He didn’t.
He tripped.
This time, gravity was kinder. He caught himself with the practiced ease of someone who did it often. You didn’t laugh. Instead, you reached out as if to steady him — a reflex he wanted to claim as his and resent as being claimed.
The week ahead promised rehearsals and press talking points and a choreography of small lies. It also promised something far more dangerous: proximity.
Both of them knew, with the same quiet dread and terrible hope, that pretending could tilt toward something honest very quickly. They both knew what had happened once between them—what could happen again.
And both of them were, in different and alarming ways, unprepared.
Outside the office, his assistant, Alice, approached with the efficient gait of someone who ran on calendars and contingency plans. They talk while walking to his office.
“Sir,” she said, balancing a digital tablet, “just a reminder—the Gala invites went out last week. Marketing pushed a preview to the board. Howard called to confirm bodies. Mary Ann from Mitchell-Morrison reached out about Catherine. Shall I confirm?” Her tone hid a laugh.
Tony took the tablet with the kind of distracted focus that made him appear purposeful. He scanned the guest list, the seating map, and the proposed timeline. The gala looked like a meticulously curated ecosystem—timed entrance music, seating arrangements that guaranteed certain conversations, a staged moment for Howard to deliver some fatherly toast while Tony stood at the side and nodded.
“I’ll go,” Tony said finally. The words were a minor defeat because they meant attendance, but he added, “but with a guest.”
Alice raised an eyebrow. “You sure? Howard was fairly specific.”
Tony smiled in the way he used when deflecting unpleasant realities. “I’m sure. Book one after-party slot. I’ll be there for the optics but not the romance.”
Alice hid a grin. “Right.” She left before arriving at Tony's office.
Tony stood alone inside his office for a beat and realized how ridiculous he must look: a man convinced he could veto the will of his own family, who was, in practice, exactly the man Howard had expected him to be when he handed him a company and a family script. That realization did not make him happy.
A week later, the invitations arrived in glossy envelopes. The gala had a theme—old-world opulence paired with modern innovation—and the invite carried Howard’s embossed crest. On the guest list, next to his name, a tiny italicized note had been added in his father’s handwriting: With a guest? and someone had circled it for effect.
Tony threw his hands up dramatically in the privacy of his private elevator. “Howard,” he muttered. “The man is relentless.”
He tried to handle the problem pragmatically—avoid, minimize, control. But the universe proved full of human variables he hadn’t counted on. For instance, he’d been working late when his R&D team’s new senior designer—someone the company was excited about—had walked past the lab and waved.
“Morning, Mr. Stark,” she’d said, crisp and professional. Then she had paused in the doorway. “Mr. Stark?”
Tony had looked up—instinct, muscle memory—and halted, because the person who’d said it was you.
You had been in a black coat and simple scarf, portable CV folder tucked under your arm, hair neat and businesslike. You’d been carrying the quiet, efficient air of someone whose life had been carefully aligned to purpose. You’d met his eyes and the world had folded into a sliver of the past that made him breathe oddly.
“Tony, are you okay?”, you'd asked, as if this were casual office conversation.
Tony felt everything fold into a smaller, vocalized confusion. “I—” He hadn’t told you that he’d been forced into something his father had engineered. He hadn’t said that he was trying to defy, negotiate, and survive in a public relations minefield.
So instead he did what felt easiest at that particular public–private seam. He smiled that perfectly calibrated corporate smile. “I’m okay..”
You nodded, and then tilted your head, a small, curious, private expression that used to ignite chapters in his memory. “Good,” you said. “See you.” Then you left—an ordinary exit, a closed door behind you, and what felt like a centuries-old hurt tugged at something inside him.
He considered telling you everything—about Howard’s request, about the Mitchell-Morrison daughter, about his wish to refuse. He considered telling you that he was trying to decide whether to show up at all. But he stopped. This was Tony, he reasoned: he had learned to protect people from corporate entanglements. He had also developed the charmingly disastrous habit of failing at direct honesty when it mattered most.
Instead he planned: show up alone, be charming, keep it short. Avoid the scripted date his father wanted. Protect his autonomy. Keep the company’s best interests intact.
And yet, the thought of you at the Gala—of your presence at his father’s curated event—unsettled him more than it had any right to. He found himself drafting entire escape algorithms for how to find you on the floor, how to ensure she didn’t get cornered into a conversation with Mitchell-Morrison’s lobbyists, how to simply be near you without having to explain ten years of complicated silences.
Which is to say: Howard’s plan had worked. Not in the way Howard intended, perhaps, but with a clarity Tony couldn’t wholly accept.
For days after the meeting, Tony did what he did best when confronted with emotional landmines: he overcompensated with work. Meetings multiplied, and he buried himself in prototype reviews, funding pitches, and partner calls, a feverish immersion that possessed his mind and left little room for sentiment. He delegated social tasks with ruthless efficiency, assigned PR to produce a sanitized narrative, and choreographed his presence in a dozen spreadsheets.
But avoidance has a way of collapsing on itself. Invitations circulated. Adjustments were made. A corporate liaison (who loved a good problem) interpreted Howard’s circle around the question mark as an actionable item and took liberties. An email appeared on Tony’s screen with a friendly subject line: Gala—Guest Confirmation Needed. It included a picture of Catherine—graceful in a Mitchell-Morrison press photo, smiling into a camera like she’d been wired for networking protocol.
Tony closed the message with a groan.
He already said with a guest, but the company, the board, Howard—these were complicated, living things. They need a name. The idea of being compelled into a public performance was as painful as it had been in his twenties. The difference was that now he had more to lose.
He considered calling you—telling you his side, telling you how ridiculous his family’s intentions were, telling you how small and stubborn his ego could be even now. He considered asking if you’d entertain letting him bring you as a legitimate, non-scripted guest—not as a prop, not as charity, not as an arranged business meet. He considered confronting Howard and asserting himself—publicly, finally.
He did none of those things at first.
Instead, he became an expert in evasion.
He ducked meetings. He rescheduled dinners. He took unexpected calls that whisked him away. He found plausible reasons to be absent from family luncheons. He replied to Alice’s scheduling questions in a fog of ambiguous commitments.
When Howard called again—a softer call, the kind of call that carried disappointment with the politeness of a man who expected compliance—Tony smiled agreeably and promised to “work something out.”
He promised himself the same thing nightly: he would act at the last moment, definitely on his terms.
The Gala loomed like a machine whose gears were turning and whose consequences would be unforgiving. Tony told himself he would be precise, decisive, and self-possessed. He would show up as himself. He would refuse to be commodified.
And yet, beneath that self-possessed layer, something else moved: the stubborn ache at the thought of you standing across a room where his father’s alliances would be sealed. That ache made him reckless in private and indecisive in public. It made him an illogical engineer in the one place he cared not to be — his own heart.
He thought, absurdly, that running away would make the problem fade. Instead, avoiding the confrontation only added pressure. The more he refused to play Howard’s game, the more it escalated into a personal conflict that Tony had no schematic to solve.
So the plan became: refuse out loud, avoid quietly, show up on his terms, and if he had to suffer through a staged moment, ensure it was brief enough that the cameras barely thought about him.
He rehearsed excuses that were plausible, charming, and easy to execute. He told himself he would be the man his younger self aspired to be—strong in boundaries, clear in purpose. He would not be the man who crumpled under public pressure.
He also, privately, acknowledged a small, humiliating fear: that you might accept Mitchell-Morrison’s polite attention. That you might choose a path that didn’t include him. The idea sharpened like a contraption he couldn’t disassemble.
That fear, quietly and dangerously, because the kind of thing that made Tony take small, uncharacteristic risks.
He had always been a problem solver. Howard’s plan had not been about attempting to cause him pain. It had been a logistical problem.
But it had mapped itself onto something else altogether.
And in the last quiet hour before the Gala invitations would need a definitive RSVP, Tony found himself staring at his reflection—tailored suit, charred cuff evidence from late lab nights, eyes that had learned to hide more than they revealed—and realizing he was not sure what the right answer even looked like anymore.
He was thirty-two and had built a company that changed industries. He had invented escape velocity and hair products and failed prototypes. He had a list of activists suing for patent rights and a PR team with loyalty like armor.
He was also thirty-two and might ruin his relationship with the one person who made his chest tighten just by being on campus at the same time as him.
Howard’s plan, after all, had succeeded in the only way plans like that ever do: it surfaced the things Tony could no longer ignore.
He had choices. He had agency. He also had ten years of silence and a gala where optics would rule the night.
It was a complicated ledger. It was, somehow, precisely the kind of problem Tony loved to solve—if only he'd stop running long enough to look at the math.
He didn’t make the final decision that night. He planned, hesitated, and then let the calendar remain ambiguous. The narrative would have to wait until the gala’s last RSVP. He would either show up and be his own man, or he would be shaken into someone else’s narrative to placate investors and family prestige.
Either way, Howard’s idea had set events in motion. And Tony, for the first time in a long while, felt like he was being tested not by physics but by feeling.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked out, avoiding the conference floor where a dozen eager staff members were comparing fashion notes.
On his way down the elevator, a notification pinged on his phone: Catherine Mitchell-Morrison will be attending. She just confirmed.