Chapter 5
Wyatt went utterly still. His gaze dropped to her mouth, to the delicate hollow of her throat where a silver chain disappeared beneath her sweater.
Piper froze mid-pour.
The distance between them had dissolved to less than three inches. In the quiet apartment, the only sound was the clanking radiator and the soft, hitching rhythm of their breath. Wyatt’s eyes had darkened, turning from cool hazel into molten amber, his intensity so magnetic, so overwhelmingly masculine, that Piper felt a sudden shiver race across her collarbone.
He wasn’t touching her. He hadn’t made a single inappropriate move. And yet the air between them was crackling with a heat that had nothing to do with the stove.
“Wyatt,” she whispered, her voice breathy and uncertain.
“Piper,” he murmured, his eyes holding hers hostage.
She swallowed, her cheeks flushing crimson. She pulled back slightly, clearing her throat with determined professionalism, though her fingers trembled as she set the kettle down.
“Right,” she muttered, fanning herself with a paper napkin. “Platonic alliance. Rule three. Ironclad boundaries.”
“Ironclad,” Wyatt echoed, a faint, wicked smirk playing at the edge of his lips. “I’m merely admiring the tea.”
“Uh-huh. Sure you are.” Piper rolled her eyes to hide her flustered pulse, then reached down and pulled a thick manila folder from her leather bag, dropping it onto the table between them with a heavy thud.
The playful air evaporated.
“What’s that?” Wyatt asked, nodding at the stack of documents.
“My war chest,” Piper said, her expression hardening into sharp, brilliant focus. “If I’m going to survive thirty days until my birthday vesting window closes, I need to know every single flank Landon and Beatrice will attack.”
She opened the folder. Inside were dozens of color-coded spreadsheets, SEC filings, bank routing numbers, and hand-drawn flowcharts tracing capital movements across six shell companies.
Wyatt leaned in, his CEO instincts firing instantly.
He didn’t just look at the papers; he devoured them. Within five seconds of scanning the top sheet, his mind had mapped the architecture of the fraud. It was a sophisticated triangular squeeze: offshore holding companies registering artificial debt against Holloway Logistics, deliberately depressing the company's valuation to force a distressed sale to Landon’s hedge fund.
“This isn't a buyout,” Wyatt murmured, his voice dropping into cold, clinical analysis. “It’s a controlled demolition.”
Piper stared at him, her eyes wide with shock. “You… you read that in ten seconds?”
Wyatt mentally cursed.
*Careful,* he warned himself. *You’re supposed to fix alternators, not dissect corporate asset-stripping.*
“I’ve seen predatory mechanics do the same thing to small garages,” Wyatt recovered quickly, scratching his stubbled jaw with a casual shrug. “Overcharge for parts, run up a fake ledger, and take the deed when the owner can’t make payroll. Same scam, just with more zeroes.”
Piper beamed at him, utterly buying the explanation. “Exactly! You see? You’re a natural analyst, Wyatt.”
She tapped a red-lined column with her pen.
“Look here. Six months ago, three days after my father had his fatal stroke, Beatrice signed an executive resolution granting Pierce Capital exclusive advisory rights over Holloway Logistics’ pension reserve. Landon didn't just advise—he drained forty million dollars out of the employee retirement trust and routed it into a high-risk offshore derivative pool in the Cayman Islands.”
Her voice tightened, a tremor of raw grief and venomous fury lacing her words.
“That pension fund belongs to five hundred machinists, drivers, and warehouse workers in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Men who worked with my dad for thirty years. Men who broke their backs building that company. Landon gambled their entire futures to cover his fund’s margin calls, and Beatrice let him do it because he promised her a cut of the liquidated real estate.”
She slammed her pen down on the table, her knuckles white.
“They didn't just steal my father’s company, Wyatt. They desecrated his life’s work. And they think because I’m twenty-five and out of a job, I’m just going to roll over, put on a designer dress, and let Landon Pierce put a ring on my finger so they can bury the paper trail forever.”
Wyatt stared at the papers, then slowly raised his eyes to hers.
In the cutthroat circles of global finance, Wyatt had seen greed in every grotesque permutation. He had dismantled corrupt boards, destroyed predatory competitors, and watched multi-billion-dollar dynasties crumble overnight without feeling a shred of remorse.
But looking at Piper Holloway—seeing the fierce, protective fire in her eyes, the sheer unyielding integrity radiating from her battered desk—he felt an entirely unfamiliar sensation.
Rage. Pure, lethal, protective rage on her behalf.
And beneath that rage, an awe so profound it knocked the breath out of him.
She wasn’t fighting for jewelry, penthouses, or a society name. She was fighting for five hundred blue-collar workers who didn’t even know she was their only shield.
“They won’t bury it,” Wyatt said quietly. His voice carried an absolute, chilling finality that made the hairs on Piper’s arms stand up.
She gave a small, weary laugh, shaking her head. “I appreciate the faith, Wyatt. But Landon has thirty lawyers on retainer. And I don’t even have a day job anymore thanks to that bastard Wyatt Brandt.”
Wyatt flinched internally, maintaining his poker face with heroic effort. “You really think Brandt was personally involved in your firing?”
“Of course he was!” Piper threw her hands up, pacing the tiny strip of floor between the sink and the fridge. “That man is a corporate parasite. Do you know what his restructuring algorithm did?”
She pulled another sheet from her folder—a printed copy of the termination memo with the Brandt Global emblem stamped at the top.
“Brandt Global acquired my risk division because we had the deepest proprietary forensic audit model in the Northeast. We were the only ones flagging Landon Pierce’s hedge fund as a high-risk systemic liability. And what does Wyatt Brandt do? He doesn’t read our reports. He sits in his multi-million-dollar ivory tower, sips whatever billionaire vampires drink, and pushes a button that deletes our entire department because our quarterly overhead didn't match his automated yield metrics.”
She jabbed a finger at the corporate logo.
“He’s lazy. He’s arrogant. He probably wears three-thousand-dollar loafers and doesn't even know what his own company owns. If Wyatt Brandt had five minutes of actual human courage, he would look at what his automated systems are doing to real people instead of hiding behind armed guards and PR NDAs.”
Wyatt sat back, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
He was wearing a five-dollar thermal shirt and sitting on a wobbly wooden chair, listening to his legal wife systematically eviscerate his character, his intellect, and his entire life’s philosophy.
And the terrifying part was… she was largely right.
He had let his executive committee run wild with the restructuring protocols. He had trusted algorithms to optimize efficiency while ignoring the human friction on the ground. He had become the very thing he had always despised: an insulated monarch detached from the machinery.
“Maybe,” Wyatt said slowly, choosing his words with razor-sharp caution, “Brandt didn't see the full report. Maybe the people under him buried it.”
“Doesn't matter,” Piper said stubbornly, crossing her arms. “The buck stops at the top. That’s what leadership means. My dad taught me that: if a truck breaks down in your fleet, you don’t blame the driver—you check the maintenance log. Wyatt Brandt failed his people. He failed me.”
