Monday arrived with a sky the color of paper and the kind of stillness that made the city feel like it had not yet decided what to be. Sophie woke before her alarm with Margo's sentence still curled in her chest like a lit match.

I will kiss you, Sophie. But not until you ask me to.

She lay still a moment, feeling the words glow through the soft fabric of morning. Wanting them. Resenting the way wanting had become a discipline. When she finally rose, she chose a slate dress with clean seams and a soft jacket that moved when she did. Armor, but gentler. She pinned her hair half up and, at the last second, slipped the thin gold chain over her collarbones. The line it drew across her skin felt like underlining.

By 7:40 she was in the elevator, watching her reflection steady itself between floors. The matte black card hummed her through the turnstiles; the executive floor opened like a promise that remembered its own terms.

The orchids in her office had unfolded another bloom. Someone—Margo—had noticed to water them. The second monitor glowed awake. Sophie set her bag down, exhaled, and began to make order out of the inbox that had grown teeth over the weekend.

At 7:46, her phone buzzed.

Left coffee on your desk. Don't argue.
—M

Sophie smiled before she could stop herself. The cup waited near her keyboard, lid already loosened, the scent exactly right. She took a careful sip and felt the morning sharpen.

A minute later, the glass door beside her slid open. Margo stood there in a dark suit cut as if the fabric knew better than to disobey. Her hair was pinned back, precise; her mouth wore the barest hint of color like a secret. She took in Sophie—the dress, the chain, the steadiness of her posture—with a look that made Sophie feel both seen and arranged.

"Good," Margo said. "You're early."

"Good," Sophie echoed, and the repetition made Margo's eyes warm.

They moved through the morning with the rhythm they had built: Margo setting the tempo, Sophie catching it and making it sing. At nine there was a pricing review that refused to admit it was about power; at ten, a vendor tried to turn a delay into a story about innovation. Margo cut through both with a few sharp sentences that left people grateful for how little blood there was.

Near noon, Rayna's voice brightened through the intercom. "Reminder for the partner showcase," she chirped. "Atria at six. Cocktails, introductions, a few prepared remarks." A beat. "Dress code: the kind that makes people sign."

Margo's mouth tilted. She looked at Sophie. "You'll come," she said. "I want your read on the new VC—Chen & Rowe. And on how Legal performs when someone pours them bourbon."

"Understood," Sophie said, tapping a note. "Do you want talking points?"

"I want your presence," Margo replied, and the simplicity of it made the air an inch warmer.

Sophie spent the afternoon stitching together the day's decisions, converting them into emails that sounded like favors and memos that sounded like choices everyone had always agreed to make. She moved a meeting that would have collided with a flight and shifted a board prep to a day when Margo's patience historically ran higher. She sent a kind refusal to a journalist who had been circling for weeks, embedding a line that kept the door ajar just enough to be useful later.

At 5:40, she stood at the mirror in the executive lounge and decided the slate dress would carry from day to night without complaint. She added a small pair of studs and brushed powder across her cheekbones. When she looked up, Margo's reflection had joined hers—an offer rather than an intrusion.

"You're ready," Margo said simply.

"So are you," Sophie returned, and it felt, for a heartbeat, like something other than work.

They walked together to Atria, the wide, open room named for light. It had been transformed—low lamps, scattered high tables, a bar that looked like it knew the names of its regulars before they arrived. The glass walls made the city part of the décor; the skyline played the role of a very expensive guest.

People turned as they entered. They always did. Margo absorbed the attention like a natural resource and redistributed it with ruthless efficiency. Sophie watched the way faces arranged themselves—deference here, eagerness there, calculation under things that tried to look like admiration. She held a glass of water dressed up as something more and stayed close enough to be called upon, far enough to appear optional.

"Ms. Banks." A man in a tailored navy suit cut a path through the clusters and arrived with his smile already set. "Adrian Chen. At last."

Margo's handshake was measured. "Mr. Chen. Welcome."

Adrian Chen—of Chen & Rowe, as advertised—had a voice like a velvet promise and eyes that took inventory without appearing to. He wore something in his lapel that was not quite a flower and not quite an affectation. His gaze moved—briefly—to Sophie, then back to Margo, then back again as if he'd found a line he wanted to re-read.

"And this must be the famous right hand," he said, turning the full light of his charm on Sophie. "I've already been warned."

"Warned?" Sophie arched an eyebrow. She didn't give him her hand until he had committed to the word.

"That I should be concise," he said, still smiling. "That you translate."

"I prefer the word distill," she said. "And I only warn people who need it."

Margo's mouth didn't move. Her approval rose like heat off a stone.

Adrian laughed, delighted. "Mr. Chen if we're pretending not to be friendly, Adrian if we are."

"Sophie," she said. She allowed him the briefest handshake.

"Adrian," he repeated, as if tasting the room's decision. "Do you have a drink? We should fix that."

"She does," Margo said, and the sentence was ordinary enough to pass, except the look that went with it was not.

Adrian glanced between them with the practiced curiosity of a man who had learned a great deal from reading blank spaces. "Of course," he said lightly. "Perhaps later."

He moved on, leaving a wake of quiet disruption that smoothed itself quickly because the room had other things to watch. Sophie felt Margo's attention gather at her shoulder.

"He's useful," Margo said. "He thinks he isn't predictable. He is."

"Useful in what direction?" Sophie asked.

"In the one he believes he discovered," Margo replied, and Sophie bit back a smile.

The showcase unfurled the way these things always did: small speeches disguised as toasts, laughter loudest near the bar, promises made in a tone that left room for deniability in the morning. Sophie listened and annotated, her mind assembling a topology of power. She noted who flinched when ESG came up and who brightened at the phrase international expansion. She watched a partner from Legal loosen his tie like a confession and made a mental note to keep him far from microphones.

Lucas from Strategy appeared at her elbow, as if conjured by the memory of his Slack messages. He wore a tie that looked like an apology for something it hadn't done and smiled with genuine warmth that didn't feel like a tactic.

"There you are," he said. "I promise, no traps. Just saying hi."

"Hi," she said, grateful for the uncomplicated note in his voice.

"You clean up terrifyingly well," Lucas added, friendly, not greasy. "If you get bored of martinis and mergers, a cluster of us is defecting to noodle soup after."

"Tempting," Sophie said, and meant it. "But probably not tonight."

"Another time," he said easily. "I'll keep my coffee offer alive. Or tea, if coffee offends your principles."

"Coffee offends nothing about me," she said, and his grin widened.

He touched her elbow lightly when someone jostled behind them—a protective reflex rather than a claim. Sophie registered the touch and the lack of charge in it and decided she liked Lucas particularly for that.

From across the room, the air altered. It wasn't a temperature change so much as a pressure shift. A glance told her why. Margo, mid-conversation with the head of a partner firm, had turned her head just enough to see where Sophie stood. Her expression did not change. Her focus did. It narrowed, concentrated, and located Sophie as if they were the only two coordinates that mattered.

Lucas noticed. "Should I run?" he whispered, amused.

"Only if you've done something worth the exercise," Sophie murmured.

"Not yet," he said cheerfully, and lifted his glass in a small salute before blending back into the room.

Margo arrived not long after, her steps unhurried in a way that read as intent. She joined Sophie at the edge of a high table, close enough that the space between their arms learned a new meaning. Her fingers brushed the back of Sophie's jacket as if to straighten something that didn't need straightening. It wasn't possessive enough to be read as anything in public. Sophie felt it as invocation.

"Lucas is harmless," Sophie said, because the night had already earned a kind of candor.

"Only in the way a friendly knife is harmless," Margo replied, and Sophie almost laughed.

"Adrian is less harmless," Sophie said. "But more useful."

"A correct ranking," Margo agreed. "Did he flirt?"

"It would be rude to deny him his hobbies," Sophie said lightly.

Margo's eyes held hers. "You didn't answer the question."

Sophie tilted her head. "Do you want me to say no?"

"I want you to say what happened," Margo said evenly, "and then I'll decide what I want."

The honesty in it defanged the jealousy without removing its teeth. Sophie didn't look away. "He watched me watch the room. He asked my name like he was inviting me to change it. He wanted to know what drink would make me say yes to something. He'll ask again, but he'll choose an angle that sounds less like a line."

"And you?" Margo's voice had shifted—lower, less public. "Did any of it work?"

"It worked at telling me who he is," Sophie said, which was true and evasive all at once. Then, because evasion had stopped feeling like a useful tool between them, "I liked that he's honest about wanting what he wants. I didn't like that he expected to be liked for it."

Margo's mouth softened into that small, private smile that rewired rooms. "You prefer a different kind of wanting."

"I prefer wanting that's willing to ask," Sophie said, and that put heat between them that had nothing to do with the room.

For a quarter hour, they played their parts: Margo absorbing, deflecting, promising with her eyes and not her calendar; Sophie there and not-there, listening, translating, the quiet center of a wheel that kept turning because it had learned what gravity felt like. Twice, Adrian drifted within range. Twice, Margo placed an idle hand at the small of Sophie's back, a guiding touch that made sense to anyone watching and felt like a declaration to the person being guided.

"Ms. Banks," Adrian said at one point, smile bright as a headline. "We should steal your right hand for a meeting next week. Perspective, not poaching."

Margo's answering smile was all teeth and generosity. "Schedule it through me."

"Of course," Adrian said smoothly, as if the detour pleased him.

After the remarks—brief, intelligent, painless because Sophie had polished them—people began to thin. Coats were claimed. The bar gentled. The room eased its shoulders. Margo finished a conversation with the CFO, excused herself with a touch that looked like courtesy and was strategy, and turned back to Sophie.

"Walk me," she said. It sounded like a decision made earlier and only now enacted.

They took the long way, past the glass that made the city part of the building and the building part of the city. The corridor outside Atria was quiet, the light warm, the carpet soft enough to make footsteps feel considered.

Margo didn't speak until the next corner, the one that hid them from the last clusters of guests. Then she stopped and turned. The wall behind her was pale stone; the small plaque that named the meeting rooms on this floor sat at her shoulder like a non sequitur.

"Tell me if I'm wrong," she said, "but I would rather stab my own hand with a letter opener than watch Adrian Chen study you like a thing he might take apart to learn how it works."

Sophie blinked. The sentence should have been violent. It read as comic. It felt, underneath, like an oath.

"You're not wrong," Sophie said. The laugh that escaped her was unguarded. "But I also don't need you to stab anything on my behalf."

"I know," Margo said, and the knowing in her voice made Sophie's chest feel like a room with a light someone had finally switched on. "What I need is for you to hear me say that my dislike of being expected to share is not a thing I intend to make your problem."

Sophie considered that, weighing the shape of it. "My problem," she said slowly, "is when other people assume I can be collected. I don't belong on anyone's shelf."

"No," Margo agreed. There was a pause, and when she spoke again, the word felt like a promise being set down where both of them could see it. "You don't."

They stood there—two people in expensive clothes in a hallway where no one had any reason to look for them—and let silence do the thing it sometimes does better than talk. The air between them remembered the terrace, the bench warmed from within, the hand held like a vow that didn't have to be spoken to exist.

"Jealousy doesn't look good on me," Margo said finally. "It's an inelegant emotion."

"It looked very elegant tonight," Sophie said dryly. "You disguised it as guidance."

"It was guidance," Margo said. "With a strong aftertaste."

"And what does guidance want now?" Sophie asked.

Margo took one small step closer. Not enough to scandalize even a very traditional plaque. Enough to let her take Sophie's left wrist very lightly in her hand. Her fingers circled the bone there, a touch that measured pulse as much as it made contact.

"It wants this," Margo said quietly. "Permission to do exactly this in a hallway where no one is watching, and perhaps to do it where someone is, when it's strategically useful to remind a room who stands with me."

The heat that rose under Sophie's skin had an answer of its own. She didn't pull away. She didn't glance down. She looked at Margo and let her mouth curve in complicity.

"This," Sophie said, "is acceptable."

Margo's thumb moved once against the inside of Sophie's wrist, a small circle that carried more content than some speeches. "And this?" she asked, lifting Sophie's hand—only that, just enough to align their fingers for a breath before letting them separate again.

"This," Sophie said, her voice low, "is also acceptable."

Margo exhaled slowly. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For letting me say mine in a language polite enough to pass."

Sophie felt something inside her slide into alignment. "I'm not offering to be shared," she said. "You don't have to ask me not to be."

Margo's eyes darkened, not with anger, but with the pleasure of hearing exactly the sentence she had wanted. "Good."

A soft footfall at the far end of the corridor pulled them back into the theater of the evening. Margo released Sophie's wrist with the kind of care that made absence feel definite. They walked the rest of the way in companionable silence, emerged into the lobby, and did the polite dance of coats and drivers and good nights as if they had not just negotiated ownership in the gentlest possible terms.

Outside, the air had cooled. The city had put on its night face. Margo's car idled at the curb, patient.

"Dinner?" Margo asked—the word plain, already threaded with habit.

"Not tonight," Sophie said. "I have a headache born entirely of men who pretend they're not performing."

"It will pass," Margo said, not moving. "Come up tomorrow at eight. We'll take the board deck apart and make it sing, and then we'll send it to Music to make sure it doesn't actually sing."

Sophie smiled. "Understood."

Margo opened the car door. Sophie stepped back to let her go, then leaned—just enough—to set two fingers against Margo's sleeve, a touch so brief it might have been an accident if either of them had not been involved.

"Margo," she said, quietly, because the night had earned the name.

Margo paused. The small intake of breath she made belonged in a private room.

"Thank you," Sophie said.

"For what?"

"For not calling me secretary tonight."

Margo's mouth curved. "I call you what makes the room behave. Tonight, that was right hand. Sometimes it will be Sophie."

"And sometimes?" Sophie asked, unable to stop herself.

"Sometimes," Margo said, "it will be something else I will not say in a lobby."

The door closed on a smile Sophie felt like a touch.

Sophie walked home rather than call a car, letting the cold sift the evening into pieces she could carry. Her phone buzzed once.

If Lucas asks you to coffee, say yes. I want your notes.
—M

Sophie snorted aloud, startling a pigeon into rethinking its commitment to the sidewalk. She typed back:

If Adrian asks me to coffee?

The reply came with indecent speed.

Tell him to email me.

Sophie's laugh warmed the air; she hadn't realized her shoulders had been braced until they weren't. She typed, Copy. See you at eight, and put the phone away.

At home, she took off the slate dress and stood a moment with cool floor under her feet and the city humming through the window like a sympathetic string. The thin chain at her throat caught light and gave it back, a pale line a person could follow if they had been invited.

She thought of Margo's fingers circling her wrist, of the careful cadence of ask, of the way jealousy had arrived and been disciplined into something they could use. She thought, too, of her own equilibrium—the honesty that felt less like surrender and more like choosing an arm to lean on in a moving train.

When she slipped into bed, the night came and lay down without argument. Sleep found her as if it had been waiting just around the corner for someone to escort it in. In the half-dream before the real thing, Sophie walked down a hallway with her wrist warm where a hand had been, past plaques that meant nothing and doors that opened without effort. At the end of the hall, the city made its bright, patient sound, and somewhere a woman who did not like to share was learning how to ask.

In the morning, there would be coffee at eight and slides to rearrange and emails to compose that turned weather into pressure. There would also be a text she might or might not send, the kind that began with If I asked you now— and ended with the answer she already knew.

She turned off the light and let the question live, not as torment, but as proof of a future carefully, impatiently, being built.