fixing other people’s mistakes, who fires people for being late because she believes time is respect. I held her gaze. You scare everyone in that office, Sophia. But you don’t scare me. You inspire me. Her breath caught. Maverick, I’m not asking you to fall for me. I’m asking you to let me catch you just for today, just until we save your father’s building. She looked at the climbing wall behind me, then at the windows, then at her watch.
We have 87 minutes, then we need to leave now. She slipped on her heels. They clicked against the gym floor as she walked toward the exit, then stopped. She turned back. If I promote you, Sterling will say I’m showing favoritism. He’ll say, “I’m making emotional decisions again.” Let him. Because when the Crown Tower stands for the next hundred years, when it becomes a Seattle landmark, when people look at it and say, “That’s a Cooper building.” Sterling’s opinion won’t matter.
Something shifted in her face. The fear was still there. But underneath it, I saw something else. Determination. The same look I’d seen in soldiers before a mission. “Draft the paperwork,” she said. “Your senior engineer effective immediately.” She walked toward me, closing the distance until we were inches apart. But Maverick, if I fall up there, you won’t. If I do, then I fall with you. Her eyes searched mine. You mean that? Every word. She reached up and touched my face.
Just her fingertips against my jaw so light I almost didn’t feel it. Maybe falling for you is not bad, she said again, softer this time. Then she walked out of the climbing gym and I followed her, not knowing that in 87 minutes someone would cut the safety cable on the 47th floor of the Crown Tower and the jump she was about to take wouldn’t have any rope at all. The Crown Tower construction site smelled like welding metal and rain.
Seattle weather had turned the way it does in September when summer gives up and fall moves in without asking permission. Clouds hung low over the unfinished building. 47 stories of steel skeleton reaching into gray sky-like like bones waiting for skin. Sophia stood in the sight trailer staring at the hard hat the foreman had handed her. Her hands were shaking again. I could see it in the way she gripped the yellow plastic knuckles white breathing shallow. “Put it on,” I said quietly.
“It’s just equipment.” My father was wearing one when he fell. Her voice was flat. They found it 30 ft from his body. Didn’t even have a scratch on it. I took the hard hat from her hands and set it on her head myself, adjusting the strap under her chin. My fingers brushed her jaw. She didn’t pull away. Your father fell because a contractor used substandard bolts on the scaffolding to save money, I said. Not because hard hats don’t work.
Not because he was careless. Because someone cut corners. I tilted her face up so she had to look at me. We’re not cutting corners today. She nodded once. Sharp. Outside the trailer, voices rose. I recognized Richard Sterling’s tone before I saw him. That particular frequency of condescension that rich men perfect in boardrooms. This is a waste of everyone’s time, Sterling was saying to a man in an expensive suit, the developer Marcus Chen. Sophia’s always been sentimental about her father’s designs.
She can’t see that the market has moved on. The dampers are unnecessary expenses. The cantaliever is overengineered. Grayson International would streamline this project and and turn it into every other forgettable building in the city,” Sophia said, stepping out of the trailer. Her voice carried across the muddy construction yard. “She’d put her armor back on. The fear was still there. I could see it in the tension of her shoulders, but she’d buried it. under three years of practice at being the ice queen.
Sterling turned. He was 60, silver-haired, wearing a Burberry coat that probably cost more than my truck. Sophia, I didn’t realize you’d actually come. I thought you’d send Jones here to present while you stayed safely on the ground. Marcus Chen looked between them, sensing blood in the water. He was younger than I expected, maybe 45, with the sharp eyes of someone who’d built a fortune by knowing when people were lying. Ms. Cooper Chen said, “I appreciate you coming, but I’m going to be direct.
I’m investing 200 million in this tower. Sterling tells me there are structural concerns with your redesign. He says your attachment to your father’s original vision is clouding your judgment. He says you haven’t been on a construction site since your father’s accident.” He paused. “Is that true?” Sophia’s breath hitched just once. Only I was close enough to hear it. It’s true, she said. Sterling smiled. It was the e smile of a man who just won. But Sophia continued, her voice strengthening.
