“I want to do it right,” he says. “No shortcuts. No more skeletons.”

  Natalie is silent for a moment. “That’s rare in our business.”

  He shrugs, then remembers she can’t see it. “Maybe it’s time to try something rare.”

  She softens a little. “Keep digging, then. Let me know if you find anything. I’ll hold off the PI for now.”

  “Thanks, Nat.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she says, then hangs up.

  He spends the next hour sorting through the tapes, the notebooks, the endless annotated drafts of speeches Jocelyn never gave. He finds a folder, yellowed with age, full of handwritten recipes and, between them, a single page torn from a legal pad.

  At the top, in Jocelyn’s unmistakable script: “What would you die for?”

  He stares at the question for a long time.

  Then he picks up the phone, dials Natalie back, and says, “We’re not going after Richard’s dirt. We’re going to beat him clean. I’ll call you in the morning with a plan.”

  He hangs up, sits in the glow of the ancient desk lamp, and lets the question echo in the silence:

  What would you die for?

  He’s still searching for the answer when the sun comes up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The lab at sunrise is a world apart, glassware catching the gold edge of morning, chemical solutions glinting like rare jewels, and the white counters a runway for Celeste’s restless pacing. She’s been here all night, numbers marching across her screen, projections and test results vying for dominance in a color-coded, unholy mess of PowerPoints and hand-sketched graphs.

  She’s waiting for Thad, who finally arrives, hair still damp from a too-cold shower, eyes red but alive with a kind of haunted purpose.

  She pulls up the first slide on her monitor and jabs at it with a stylus. “You need to see this.”

  He leans in, still smelling faintly of city rain and spent adrenaline.

  She points out, “Cosmic isn’t a new product. It’s the cornerstone of next year’s revenue. Richard has already started prepping the pipeline for a transition. If he takes over, he’ll cancel the launch and sell the formula to a holding company by spring.”

  Thad scans the numbers and tries to assemble them into a shape that means survival. “Are we that exposed?”

  Celeste shrugs, not unkind. “We’re that innovative. But only if we keep control.”

  She switches slides and shows him a chart labeled “Brand Equity,” the line jagged but trending upward. “Your mother changed lives, Thad. She banned animal testing before it was fashionable. She kept the wet lab open during the pandemic and paid everyone hazard pay rates. Half my team would die for her.”

  He nods, the words landing harder than any financials.

  She clicks again, this time to a video: Jocelyn, three years ago, discussing the importance of beauty in a world consumed by destruction. “Perfume isn’t frivolous,” she says on the screen, her voice like good whiskey. “It’s memory. It’s a possibility.”

  Thad stands back and lets the gravity of it settle. “How do we win this?”

  Celeste closes the laptop and faces him. “You beat Richard at his own game. You show the board that the only thing riskier than you… It's him.”

  He lets the silence stretch. “You in?”

  She gives him a look, a mix of affection and challenge. “Always.”

  ***

  They drive to the manor together, the city’s morning traffic parting for Thad’s grandfathered plates and Celeste’s steady hand on the wheel. The house is colder, and the staff is gone for the weekend. They move through the portrait gallery, generations of Hastings women staring down in oils and pastels, each gaze more withering than the last.

  At Jocelyn’s study, Thad hesitates before the door. “She used to say this room was her only real asset,” he says.

  Celeste smiles slightly. “Then let’s find what she left us.”

  Inside, the desk is a fortress of stacked folders, the drawers lined with color-coded tabs and sticky notes in a rainbow of rage. They search together, Thad flipping through contracts and Celeste scanning the shelves for anything out of place.

  It’s Celeste who finds the hidden compartment, a false back in the lowest drawer, behind a decoy binder labeled “Holiday Cards, 2006.” Inside: a series of notebooks, all in Jocelyn’s hand, each dated and indexed with the obsessive logic of someone who trusted paper more than pixels.

  Thad flips to the last entry. It’s a list of names, board members, shareholders, and a few journalists. Next to Richard’s name, Jocelyn has written: “Needs cash - desperate. Watch for quick movements.”

  He reads it twice, then hands the page to Celeste.

  “He’s not after the company,” she says. “He’s after the buyout.”

  Thad’s jaw sets, his eyes sharper now. “He’s going to try to force a sale before the next board meeting. If he gets enough votes, we’re done.”

  Celeste stands and runs her fingers along the edge of the desk. “So we stop him.”

  He looks up at her, something new in his posture, a steadiness that wasn’t there before. “We do it together.”

  She nods, then leans in and kisses him quickly on the cheek. “Let’s get to work, boss.”

  They leave the study arm in arm, the ghosts of the house finally on their side.

  The study is all shadows and mahogany, the dust motes bright in the late afternoon sun between the towers of books. Thad paces, fingers laced behind his head. Celeste is curled in the window seat, legs tucked under, a stack of Jocelyn’s journals open in her lap.

  For the first time in weeks, the silence between them isn’t tense. It’s charged, anticipatory, like the air before a thunderstorm.

  Thad stops, presses his forehead to the glass, and speaks. “My mother believed in honesty. Ruthlessly, sometimes. But she also knew how to fight.”

  Celeste looks up and closes the journal with a muted thump. “You don’t have to destroy him to win. You have to protect what matters.”

  He nods slowly. “Richard won’t take a loss gracefully. If we go public, it’ll turn into a bloodbath.”

  Celeste stands, crosses to the desk, and lays a hand on his arm. “If you do it behind closed doors, he might settle. Give him an out, something he can take and still save face.”

  He considers this, eyes flicking to the photo on the wall: Jocelyn at the old R&D site, hair wild in the wind, arms thrown around a group of chemists like she owned the whole world.

  “I want to do it the way she would,” he says.

  Celeste squeezes his arm. “Then do it with style. Quiet, fast, no casualties.”

  He breathes in and out. “Okay. We call him in. Make the offer.”

  Celeste pulls out her phone and starts typing. “I’ll set it up. He won’t say no, not if he thinks he can still walk away with something.”

  They work in tandem: Thad crafts a letter in his mother’s careful, unambiguous prose while Celeste lays out the conditions, the soft threats, and the non-negotiables.

  When it’s done, they sit side by side on the old leather couch, watching the city’s shadows stretch across the rug.

  Thad says, “Are you scared?”

  Celeste smiles, a half-curve. “Not with you.”

  They sit in silence, shoulders touching, as the last of the light fades from the room. When the grandfather clock chimes, Thad stands and squares his shoulders.

  “Let’s end this,” he says.

  Celeste nods, and together they press send.

  The living room is a cathedral of old money and older secrets, with tall ceilings, silk drapes, and a fireplace big enough to roast a family of secrets. Thad stands at the bar, pouring a deep red into two crystal glasses, the kind that ring when you tap them but could break a tooth if you weren’t careful.

  Celeste is on the velvet chaise, shoes off, one leg draped over the other, her hair spilling loose for the first time since he’s known her. The fire paints her in amber and gold, softening the hard lines she wore all day.

  He hands her a glass and clinks it lightly. “To endings,” he says, then amends, “and to what comes after.”

  She sips, tongue pink where it meets the rim. “What do you think comes after?”

  He settles beside her, their knees touching. “I have no idea. I used to think it was about survival, one crisis after another. But now…”

  She waits, patient, the silence heavy but not suffocating.

  He tries again. “Now, I think maybe you build something out of the wreckage. Not the same as before, better, or at least different.”

  She laughs, low and real. “You know, for a so-called wild child, you’re pretty wise.”

  He shrugs and sips. “Don’t spread it around. I’ve got a reputation to protect.”

  They sit in companionable quiet, the world outside having fallen asleep for the night. After a while, Celeste turns, her eyes reflective in the firelight. “If you weren’t here, if none of this happened, what would you be doing?”

  He thinks, then answers honestly. “I’d be on tour. Playing shit clubs in Germany. Sleeping on floors. Writing music nobody would ever hear.”

  She nods. “Would you want to go back?”

  He shakes his head. “Not now. Not without you.”

  She leans in and kisses him, slow, deliberate, with the assurance of someone who knows exactly what she wants. He kisses back, and when they part, he touches her cheek gently.

  “I never thought I’d find someone who got both sides of me,” he says.

  She tucks her head onto his shoulder, glass balanced on her knee. “Maybe you had to stop running long enough to let them catch up.”

  They sit like that, the night deepening, the fire settling to a steady burn.

  Eventually, Thad stretches out, pulls her close, and they fall asleep together on the chaise, the velvet soft under their bodies, the future unwritten but, for once, not terrifying.

  Above the mantel, Jocelyn’s portrait watches over them, her painted eyes warm in the reflected glow.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The morning after the night after, the marketing war room on the 36th floor looked like the aftermath of an untelevised coup: half the staff in yesterday’s clothes, the other half in branded fleece zipped up over pajamas, all of them wielding cold brew and clutching their sanity like a security pass.

  Celeste entered through the side door, shoes silent on the pitted carpet, and was immediately forced to dodge a barrage of paper airplanes, actual ones, launched by the social coordinator as a method of routing urgent memos. One of the planes caught an updraft from the wall-mounted AC and landed point-first in her hair, where it perched like a bird of ill omen.

  She plucked it out, unfolded the wings, and found herself holding a laser-printed meme of Thad’s face, captioned: KEEP CALM AND LAUNCH ON. She raised an eyebrow, handed it off to the nearest intern, and wove through the narrow alleys between whiteboards and clusters of folding chairs. The entire room was calibrated for maximum panic and minimum oversight. This was not the version of the marketing team you put on recruitment posters.

  At the back, two assistants were arm-wrestling over the last working phone charger, their elbows splintering the corner of a desk. Another was weeping softly into a container of cut fruit while composing a tweet thread about "the beauty of authentic chaos." In the makeshift “crisis comms zone,” a woman in a leather jacket and Louboutin knockoffs was muttering obscenities into a Bluetooth headset, her laptop open to a spreadsheet color-coded with more red than a triage ward.

  Celeste bypassed the worst of the chaos, caught the eye of a junior strategist who looked like she’d gone four days without REM sleep, and nodded. The strategist tried to stand, thought better of it, and instead waved a trembling hand in the direction of the dry-erase board at the head of the room.

  It was a crime scene of contradictory instructions:

  - LAUNCH DATE MOVED UP-PER RICHARD.

  - DISREGARD ALL PREVIOUS LAUNCH DATES.

  - SOCIAL PUSH: USE "INFINITY" THEME, NOT "REBIRTH."

  - DELETE "INFINITY" FROM ALL MATERIALS (URGENT).

  - CELESTE TO APPROVE FINAL MESSAGING ASAP.

  Below these, someone had scrawled a tally of how many cups of coffee had been consumed since Monday. The count was in the high three digits.

  "Nice of you to visit the trenches, Dr. Bellamy," called the department head, who materialized at her side with the stealth and desperation of a hunted animal. She was holding a sheaf of printouts, every page annotated in three different highlighter colors, all of it trembling from the force of her grip.

  "Happy to lend an ear," Celeste said. She kept her voice even, her posture neutral, betraying none of the fatigue that circled her eyes or the sleeplessness etched along her jaw. "You said the revisions were critical?"

  The department head, Claudia, herded Celeste to the window, away from eavesdroppers, and thrust the printouts into her hands. "He wants to kill the entire campaign. Rebrand everything for the Meta launch, fold Cosmic under 'post-human luxury,' and run dual assets on Insta and TikTok with two different sets of copy. But also, keep the original tone for all legacy media, except where it conflicts, in which case, defer to Natalie."

  Celeste scanned the first page, then the second, eyes moving so fast that Claudia had to check if she was reading or memorizing by osmosis. "And he said this needs to be ready for the morning news cycle?"

  "Three cycles ago," Claudia said, voice gone thin. "He’s got someone feeding him analytics from the West Coast, so every hour the metrics shift, he panics and re-briefs. The social team is down to one meme generator and a minor in comparative literature." She gestured helplessly at the rest of the room. "We’re hemorrhaging credibility."

  Celeste nodded. "Let me talk to the team."

  She moved to the front of the room, stepped up onto the nearest table, and in a tone that was not quite a shout, called, "Five minutes. Everybody." The room wavered, the AV specialist froze with her finger on the play button, and a flock of analysts abandoned their calculator-powered fort to gather around.

  "We have a launch date, and we have a formula," Celeste said, tapping the heel of her hand on the Cosmic sample bottle she’d brought as a talisman. "All the rest is noise. I know you’re being pulled in twenty directions, but the only thing that matters is the fragrance itself. It’s final. It’s perfect. No one, not even Richard, can screw that up now."

  A ripple of laughter, bitter but real, ran through the room.

  "If the board wants to pivot the campaign, let them. But we do the work we believe in, and we keep it tight. Claudia will have my full edits by eleven. No further changes without my signature." She paused, eyes sweeping the faces. "We’ve survived worse. You can do this."

  Someone in the back murmured, "At least we’re trending," and the room groaned as one.

  Celeste climbed down, handed the bottle to Claudia, and said, "If you need anything else, call me."

  Claudia mouthed, "Thank you," as if Celeste had thrown herself onto a grenade.

  She started for the exit, but the social coordinator intercepted her, brandishing a tablet with three competing versions of the Cosmic campaign queued up. "Which one do you like?" the coordinator asked, eyes hopeful.

  Celeste barely looked. "The one with the real people, not models."

  The coordinator nodded, visibly relieved, and set off to spread the gospel.

  Celeste reached the glass doors, and her phone buzzed. Maya's assistant spoke urgently in her ear. "Dr. Bellamy? Thad needs you. Now. He says it’s an emergency."

  Celeste pivoted, already moving for the elevator. As she passed the kitchenette, she caught a snippet of conversation between two junior staffers, their voices pitched for secrecy but not quite succeeding.

  "She says it’s perfect, but you saw the memo, right? The ingredient, what if it’s true?"

  "Can’t be. She would never risk it."

  "But Richard…"

  The second voice hissed, "Shut up, she’s coming," and the pair scattered like roaches at dawn.

  Celeste rode the elevator alone, the rumors trailing her like an aftertaste.

  As the doors closed, she found herself smiling, not from amusement, but from the old, familiar thrill: the sense that the real work was beginning and that, whatever disaster waited on the other side, she was already halfway through the fire.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Thad’s office looked like a budget panic attack. The shades were all half-drawn, letting in strips of late-morning sunlight that divided the room into alternating zones of gloom and forensic overexposure. On the desk, printouts fanned out like the crime scene photos of a high-profile homicide; the murder weapon, apparently, was a single unopened bottle of Cosmic, which sat at the exact center of a spiral of Post-its, pens, and crumpled notecards.

  He was pacing in front of the window, his suit jacket off, his shirt rumpled in a way that managed to look both accidental and deliberate. He registered Celeste with a flicker of relief and something more dangerous: guilt, maybe, or hunger.

  “Tell me you’ve seen your email,” he said, saying hello.

  She hadn’t; she’d gone straight from the elevator to his door, only slowing to flip her phone to Do Not Disturb. “No time,” she replied and closed the door behind her.

  He stopped pacing and leaned on the window ledge. “Richard’s lost it. He sent a mass email to the board, CC’d half the company, subject line ‘URGENT: Quality Control Issue in Cosmic Pipeline.’” He rolled his eyes, but the laugh came out thin and dry.

  She crossed the room, scanning the top sheet of paper as she walked. “What’s the actual allegation?”

  He pulled out a page and handed it to her, fingers brushing her palm, static crackling between them. “He claims the last batch failed final QC. ‘Unstable ingredient supply, possible contamination, risk of allergenic exposure.’ He wants to halt the launch. He wants you suspended pending review.”