ella!

There were nights when Bruce came home late enough that the sky had already begun to lighten at the edges. There were times when he no longer blended into the black of Gotham's night as it began to thin into that particular gray that belonged only to the hour before sunrise, when the city seemed to hesitate between exhaustion and another day.

Those nights had their own rhythm. You learned it without ever meaning to. The distant hum of tires along the drive, the almost imperceptible click of the door, Alfred's footsteps somewhere below, and then Bruce's quiet presence moving through the house as though he were trying not to disturb it.

You had learned, too, that there was a difference between Bruce being late and Bruce being late.

Late meant two in the morning, at the worst, it would push three.

Late meant you would wake to the mattress dipping beneath the weight of his knee, and feel his hand brush your hip in apology before he disappeared into the bathroom to wash the night from his skin.

But this? This was entirely different.

The clock on your nightstand had passed five when you woke. For several seconds, you didn't move a muscle.

Sleep had left you slowly, leaving behind that strange, heavy awareness where the room felt both familiar and wrong, every ordinary object sharpened by the absence of another person. The curtains were drawn, the bedroom was dark except for the faint amber glow of the city leaking through the edges, and beside you the sheets were perfectly smooth.

Cold.

You reached across the mattress anyway, your hand landed on the empty side of the bed.

Bruce's pillow was still where you had left it, the indentation from earlier in the evening barely visible beneath the dim light, and his side of the comforter remained folded back exactly as it had been when he left.

You stared at it for a moment then you looked at the clock.

5:17.

"Bruce?"

The word came out quietly, almost foolishly, because some part of you still expected him to answer from the bathroom or from the hallway or from somewhere downstairs where he had gone to make coffee because apparently sleeping like a normal human being had become an unreasonable request.

Nothing answered.

You pushed yourself upright immediately. The tiredness was gone already, your eyes were alert and darting around from the bed, to the bathroom, to the door.. anywhere he might be.

The room was cold.

Bruce always kept the bedroom cooler than you preferred, claiming that he slept better that way, and over the years you had learned to sleep beneath an unreasonable number of blankets while he lay beside you as though he had been personally designed for winter. Usually you complained about it. Usually he would pretend not to hear you while reaching over in the dark and pulling the blankets higher around your shoulders.

Tonight, there was no one there to do it.

You reached for your phone. No messages. And the last one from Bruce had been hours ago.

'I'll be home late.'

Nothing unusual about that, nothing unnerving or stomach dropping.

You had answered with a 'I love you, stay safe,' and a simple heart, because you knew better than to ask how late? when he was already out there. You had learned that asking for a timetable from Batman was like asking the weather to behave itself.

Still, there had been something different about the way he had kissed you goodbye.

You remembered it now with uncomfortable clarity.

He had been standing at the foot of the stairs in the entryway, already dressed, already somewhere else in his head. His fingers had brushed along your jaw before he kissed you, and it had been brief, almost distracted, except for the way he had lingered for half a second afterward with his forehead against yours.

You had laughed softly and asked him if he was planning on coming back before breakfast.

He had smiled. A real one. A small, tired, private. "I'll try."

You had rolled your eyes. "That's not an answer."

"It's the best one I have." He grumbled, and you had kissed him again anyway.

Now, sitting alone in the dark, you wished you hadn't let him leave with that answer.

You got out of bed, your eyes stinging, and a simple swallow felt like a manual task.

The hallway was silent. Wayne Manor had a particular kind of silence at night, one that could never quite be mistaken for peace. The house was way too large for that. Every sound had somewhere to travel, every floorboard seemed capable of remembering footsteps from decades ago, and the darkness gathered in the corners in an almost theatrical manner.

You walked downstairs barefoot, pulling Bruce's old sweater around yourself because it was the closest thing within reach and because, despite everything, you still found comfort in wearing something that smelled faintly like him.

The kitchen was empty.

You turned on one of the small lamps over the counter rather than the overhead lights, leaving the room in a pool of warm gold that did very little to make the house feel less enormous.

There was a mug sitting beside the coffee machine.

Yours.

You had forgotten to put it away after dinner, and now you couldn't stop yourself from staring at it.

That was the sort of thing that happened when you were waiting for someone. Ordinary objects became evidence. The cup meant you had been here. The untouched half of the dessert in the refrigerator meant you had expected him to come home. The book lying open on the couch meant you had sat there reading while listening for the sound of his heavy boots.

You opened the refrigerator and stared inside without actually seeing anything.

You weren't hungry. You weren't thirsty.. but you desperately needed something to do with your hands.

So you made tea in the mug that read 'Mrs.' It was part of the set that Jim Gordon gifted you two on your wedding as a joke.. you all knew Bruce would never buy himself something like that, but you loved when Bruce returned one night with them tucked in the gift bag.

It was a stupid thing to make tea in this moment, almost embarrassingly domestic, but the ritual gave your mind somewhere to go. Kettle. Mug. Tea bag. Water. Honey. You moved through the motions automatically, and for a few minutes you managed to convince yourself that you were simply awake because you couldn't sleep.

Then your eyes landed on the clock above the stove.

5:31.

You set the spoon down, and picked up your phone again.

Still nothing.

Without even a second to waste, you called him.

The phone rang.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then it went to voicemail.

A heavy sigh left you and you hung up without leaving a message. You told yourself that he probably couldn't answer and his phone was probably buried beneath the armor. You told yourself that there were a hundred perfectly reasonable explanations for why Bruce Wayne, your husband, had not come home yet.

You told yourself these things because the alternative was admitting that something was wrong, despite the fact that your cheek was torn to bits on the inside while your teeth gnawed at it. So was the skin around your nails as you picked and pushed it.

You knew Bruce, so you sure as hell knew the way he treated danger.

You knew the way he treated pain.

You knew that there was almost nothing he would ever willingly tell you if he believed telling you would make you afraid.

That was the problem with loving someone like Bruce.

He could look you directly in the eye with blood drying beneath his collar and tell you that everything was fine, and because he loved you, he would mean it.

Not because he thought nothing was wrong.

Because he had decided that whatever was wrong belonged to him.

The first hint of dawn appeared sometime after six.

You were sitting on the bottom step of the staircase when it happened, knees drawn against your chest, Bruce's sweater pulled around you like a blanket. The tea had gone cold beside you hours ago.

You had stopped checking the clock. There was no point when time had become something ugly that moved whether you wanted it to or not.

You heard Alfred before you saw him. His footsteps were quiet, measured, and familiar, which was exactly what you needed at the moment.

He appeared at the end of the hallway already dressed, his expression composed in the way it always was, though you had known him long enough to recognize the tension beneath it.

He stopped when he saw you, and for a moment, neither of you said anything. Then his eyes moved toward the clock.

"You should be in bed, Miss." He said in that polite tone he held even when everything felt like it was falling apart.

You almost laughed, but it came out as something closer to a breath.

"So should you." You quipped back in a faint voice.

Alfred's mouth tightened slightly, but he didn't correct you. Instead, he walked toward you and sat on the step beside you with the careful dignity of a man who had spent his entire life pretending that nothing could surprise him.

You stared at your hands. "He's never been this late." Your voice was barely even audible, you couldn't bring yourself to talk any louder in the fear that it might break the quiet that you carefully crafted to ignore the truth.

Alfred was quiet, and that was answer enough. Your eyes met his, brows turned up in an effort to hold back all of the worries in your head. Your lips tight and downturned like they were the dam holding back all of the truths you didn't want to believe.

"Has he contacted you?" You whispered.

"No." The word settled between you in a way that was too final and too heavy.

You swallowed thickly and rubbed your hands slowly and harshly against each other in an effort to soothe yourself.

"That's not normal."

"No," Alfred said gently. "It isn't."

Something in your chest seemed to fold inward.

You had spent hours trying not to think the worst, and now the worst had been spoken aloud in a way that was somehow more gut wrenching that saying it directly.

You looked toward the windows.

Outside, Gotham was beginning to wake.

The sky had gone pale over the trees, and somewhere in the distance a siren wailed before fading into the morning traffic. People were getting into cars. Stores were opening. Coffee was being poured. Somewhere, someone was complaining about the weather to their husband while getting ready for work.

The world was continuing.

It was an obscene thing, sometimes, how easily the world continued when your own had stopped.

"I should've stopped him." You said through a thick, tightening throat.

Alfred turned toward you. "You could not have."

"I could have tried." Your head fell into your hands, as all of the painful ideas of the future without your husband began to flood your mind.

"You have tried."

You shook your head. "I should've said something this time, told him no or-.. or something."

"You did, Miss. You do every night, it is something Master Bruce truly hears." Alfred assured you, his eyes intent on your hunched-over figure.

"I should've-.."

Alfred cut you off, "Mrs. Wayne."

The gentleness in his voice stopped you, your head raised from your hands just enought to look at him, and Alfred looked at you for a long moment.

"Master Bruce knows precisely how much you love him."

Your eyes burned. "Then why does he keep doing this?" Your voice finally cracked. The composure you had learned to keep over the years of loving Bruce finally breaking just enough for someone else to see.

Alfred's expression changed, not much, but enough. "His love for you is precisely why he does it."

You looked away at that, your fingers pressed into your temple.

Truthfully, you hated that answer. You hated it because some part of you understood.

Bruce had always been afraid of losing things. He had built an entire life around preventing it. He had made himself into something harder, stronger, faster, more relentless than the boy who had once watched his parents die in an alley.

But none of that had made him less afraid. It had only given his fear somewhere to go.

You stood abruptly, wanting to keep your thoughts from spiralling further.

"I need to call him again." You mumbled while wiping your eyes and keeping your head turned from him. Alfred had seen the worst of Bruce many times, he had seen some of your worst moments as well, but you refused to let anyone see this because then it made it too real.

Alfred didn't stop you as you walked into the kitchen and found your phone where you had left it on the counter.

Your thumb hovered over Bruce's name.

Then you called. This time, it rang.

Once.

Twice.

Your heart climbed into your throat.

Three times.

Four.

Five.

Then... a click. A click that caused you to freeze with your head angled down and your left arm tucked under your right.

"Bruce?"

Nothing. You could hear breathing, but only barely. Nothing was clear, and no one was saying anything.

Your entire body went cold. "Bruce?"

Then voice came through the line. "Mrs. Wayne?"

You stopped breathing. The room seemed to tilt around you. You leaned against the counter to prevent yourself from going down as your hand came to your mouth. You knew Bruce would rather shit in his hand and clap than let someone answer his phone.

"Who is this?" Your voice was so faint that it was painful to hear. It was hoarse from holding back tears and the state of shock you were in wasn't allowing for it to have any depth to it.

There was a pause.

Then the voice said, carefully, "This is Detective Gordon."

You gripped the phone so tightly your knuckles hurt.

And suddenly, all the little explanations you had built throughout the night — the forgotten phone, the late patrol, the traffic, the weather, the possibility that he had simply fallen asleep somewhere in the cave — collapsed beneath the weight of one terrible certainty.

Something had happened.

You closed your eyes as a way to brace yourself. "Is he alive?"The question barely made it past your lips.

There was silence on the other end. Too much silence.

"Yes."

Your knees nearly gave out as the sob you had been holding back slipped through your defenses in one, weak sound.

"But he's hurt." Gordon muttered gruffly, and solemnly

You closed your eyes and pursed your lips while swallowing down the emotions that were trying to rip through you, "How badly?"

Another pause.

"I think you should come to Gotham General."

You didn't remember hanging up. You didn't remember telling Alfred. You didn't remember putting on shoes.

You only remembered the feeling of your wedding ring against your finger as you gripped the steering wheel, twisting it unconsciously with your thumb while the city blurred beyond the windshield.

You remembered thinking that you had spent the entire night waiting for Bruce to come home. You remembered thinking that maybe you had misunderstood what home meant because home had never been Wayne Manor.. no that place was far too deliberate and far too big to be home.

It sure as hell had never been Gotham. It had never been the enormous house or the money or the cave hidden beneath it.

Home had always been the man who came through the door eventually, the man who left his shoes beside the bed, the man who stole the blankets, the man who kissed your forehead when he thought you were asleep. The man who, no matter how late it was, always came home.

And as you drove toward the hospital with your heart beating so hard it hurt, you realized that the thing you were most afraid of was not that Bruce Wayne might die.

It was that you might have to learn how to live in a world where he didn't come home.

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The quarterly acquisition meeting had been scheduled for nine in the morning, and by nine seventeen, Bruce Wayne already knew he had made a mistake.

The mistake was assuming you had come into the room intending to negotiate, when, unfortunately for him, you had come intending to win.

Bruce sat at the head of the conference table with Lucius on one side of him and three members of the Wayne Enterprises development team scattered along the opposite wall. Across from them, you had your laptop open, a stack of financial reports beside you, and the particular expression Bruce had learned to associate with impending trouble.

You had worn that expression during your last three negotiations, and every single time it had ended with one of his executives quietly revising a proposal they had spent weeks preparing.

You clicked to the next slide, before folding your hands neatly infront of your freshly pressed suit with an entirely unreadable expression. You'd done this long enough. you knew if even a crack of emotion or opinion showed your chances were shot because they'd assume you were.. "too emotional," or "clearly underprepared."

"Your projected operating margin is inflated."

One of the senior executives frowned. "We've accounted for the revised construction costs."

"You've accounted for the costs your contractor gave you in May, it's August now."

You tapped the screen with the end of your pen.

"The contractor raised their steel estimate twelve percent last month. Their labor projections are also outdated because the union renegotiated their contract two weeks ago. You're carrying a contingency reserve of eight percent." (this means extra money and time that's an emergency fund for known issues)

The executive glanced toward Bruce.

You smiled politely, though it was entirely a facade. You genuinely could give less of a shit if you were polite or not, you needed this to work. Otherwise, the.

"You'll need at least fourteen percent."

Bruce looked down at the report in front of him.

He had already checked the numbers multiple times before the meeting — once in the car, once in the elevator, and a third time out of habit the moment he sat down. Nothing about them had changed. The acquisition was sound, the projections conservative, the risk profile acceptable.

And yet... You were right, because of course you were. Quite frankly, it was becoming a pattern he did not appreciate noticing.

"I thought your company used the same contractor," he said, looking up at you.

You didn’t even glance at your notes before answering. "We did."

"Then why didn't you use the same projection?"

"Because we dropped them."

Your eyebrows lifted slightly as you watched him, like you were mildly curious how long it would take him to catch up.

"They tried to increase our costs by twelve percent without providing a revised materials breakdown. I gave them forty-eight hours to justify it. They couldn't."

Bruce leaned back in his chair, the leather barely creaking under the controlled shift of his weight. His eyes stayed on you a moment too long, tracking the ease with which you said it — no hesitation, no embellishment, just the plain fact.

"And you terminated the contract."

"I replaced them."

"That quickly?"

"Why would I wait?"

There was no arrogance in your voice. That was what made it worse.

You weren’t performing competence for the room. You weren’t trying to impress anyone seated at the table, least of all him. You simply stated outcomes the way other people stated weather conditions — inevitable, already decided, sure as hell not up for debate.

And you were becoming increasingly amused by the fact that Bruce kept asking questions he already suspected you could answer.

Lucius looked down at his notes, the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth suggesting he was failing to remain professionally neutral.

Bruce caught it immediately.

"You seem entertained."

Lucius cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses with deliberate slowness. "I'm observing."

"Mm."

You turned another page, the paper crisp under your precisely polished nails. You knew you needed to overcompensate to be taken seriously in the business world, but you also knew that no matter who you are.. appearance was everything in this business.

"I haven't gotten to the financing structure yet." The tip of your tongue poked out to wet your glossy lips before returning to the presentation.

Bruce’s attention snapped back to you.

There was a warning in his eyes now — not quite irritation, but not not. Whatever it was, was calculating and intent, and had it been any other man? You would already have been sliding your number into his hand.

"You have a problem with the financing structure?"

"No." You replied curtly, "I have several problems."

That got his attention in a way the contractor discussion hadn’t.

You turned your laptop toward him, the screen casting a cool light across the table, and tapped once at a projected debt schedule that had already been approved by three separate departments.

"You're financing sixty percent of the acquisition through short-term debt." (wayne enterprises is borrowing 60% of the money to buy the project but the loan has to be dealt with before the project is done)

"At favorable rates."

"Currently, favorable rates."

Bruce’s fingers tapped once against the table — precise, controlled, almost imperceptible. A habit more than a tell, but still a tell if someone knew where to look.

"The rates are locked for eighteen months."

"And the project has a thirty-month construction schedule."

"They'll refinance."

"At what rate?"

Bruce didn’t answer immediately, and the pause he had wasn't uncertainty, you knew that for damn sure. He was calculating, already running through contingencies, market conditions, political shifts, interest projections, everything that would take the average man a day's worth of work was nearly finished in just his mind. That's why it was his company after all.

You may not like Bruce Wayne, but you would have to be an utter idiot to say he wasn't good at what he does.

"Exactly." You finally interjected, deciding that, though this was his boardroom, it wasn't his meeting.

One of the executives shifted in his seat, suddenly very interested in the grain of the table.

Bruce’s gaze stayed on you.

"You've clearly done your homework."

"I don't walk into negotiations without doing my homework."

"Neither do I."

"I know." That was all you said. Two simple, certain words.

Something about them tightened his jaw — not because they were provocative, but because they were true in a way that left no room for rebuttal. You weren’t challenging his intelligence. You were simply refusing to assume he was the only one in the room who had it.

You weren’t intimidated by him.

You didn’t flatter him.

You didn’t soften your criticism because he was Bruce Wayne, or because the room expected you to.

You stood across from him in a tailored suit that cost more than most people’s monthly rent and dismantled his company’s financial strategy one assumption at a time, speaking with the calm precision of someone who had already run every version of this conversation in their head and found all of them lacking.

It was infuriating.

It was impressive.

And, to Bruce’s growing irritation, it was incredibly attractive in a way that had no business existing in a boardroom.

You advanced to another slide.

"Now, here's where you've really made a mess."

Bruce stared at the projection. Lucius coughed into his hand in a poor attempt to disguise his chuckle. His chuckle, which, for the record, was not at you, but rather at Bruce.

You looked between them with narrowed eyes before allowing yourself to slowly get back into your groove.

"The acquisition price is too high."

Bruce's jaw was jutted a bit and was certainly clenched in frustration. "We're aware of the market."

"Clearly." Bruce’s eyes narrowed slightly, but you didn’t pause. "You paid a seventeen percent premium because you assumed another bidder would enter the negotiations."

"There was another bidder."

"They withdrew six hours before you signed, Mr. Wayne."

That landed, and rather hard at that.

Bruce’s expression changed in a way most people in the room would have missed entirely the moment a variable he had accounted for turned out to be wrong.

You noticed, because of course you did. "You didn't know that." You had assumed he did, but you weren't surprised he didn't.

"How did you-..."

"I spoke to them."

Silence.

The room didn’t move. Even the air felt like it had stopped trying.

Bruce stared at you. He stared so intently that he was unintentionally soaking in the way your hair was so perfectly styled. The way your nails were so perfectly manicured and matched the bag you had brought. The bag, which might he mention, had a fucking sunflower charm.. as well as a heart charm with what he could only assume was either a boyfriend or pet's name -- he was hoping the latter.

There was no way in hell the woman who was actively disassembling his company's strategies had a red bag with charms on it.

You folded your hands on the table, posture relaxed in a way that suggested you were perfectly comfortable sitting in the center of a storm you had personally engineered.

"They were never going to match your offer. You overpaid because you believed you had to win."

Bruce leaned back slowly, the chair responding with a soft, controlled shift.

"And what would you have paid?"

You gave him a number. There was no hesitation or theatrics, just a figure that hit the table like a verdict was substantially lower.

Bruce went very still. "You would've lost the acquisition."

"No. I wouldn't have."

"How?"

"Because I would've waited."

"For what?"

You looked at him like the answer was obvious. "For you."

His eyebrows rose slightly in nothing but interest.

You continued, entirely unfazed by the fact that you had just implied you would outmaneuver him by doing literally nothing at all.

"You've demonstrated a consistent pattern over the past three years. You become more aggressive when you think someone is challenging you. Your competitors know that, and they use it against you. I knew you'd overbid."

Bruce stared at you.

There were several possible responses available to him.

He could point out that your analysis was based on incomplete information. He could challenge your valuation model. He could bring up your own company’s acquisition history and expose the assumptions you had made in previous negotiations. He could turn this into a war of data, numbers, leverage.

Instead, his mind supplied a far less useful observation.

Jesus fucking christ.

You were devastating.. and you knew it, that was the worst part.

Bruce shifted slightly in his chair, a movement so small it would have been invisible to anyone else in the room. But you noticed anyway.

Of course you did.

You continued talking, completely unaware — or perhaps entirely aware — of the effect you were having.

"Your problem is that you're emotionally attached to winning, which is not going to help you run a multi-trillion-dollar company."

"I'm not emotionally attached to anything." He nearly scoffed at the thought, his arms crossing tightly over his unfairly broad chest.

Your eyes lifted from the spreadsheet.

"Really?"

"Really."

"You spent forty million dollars above market value because another company irritated you."

Bruce’s mouth tightened.

"That's a business decision."

You let out an involuntary bark of a laugh. "That's a tantrum with a legal department."

Lucius made a sound that suspiciously resembled a laugh and immediately disguised it as a cough.

Bruce looked at him with an eyebrow raised and a wildly incredulous expression. "Do you have something to add?"

Lucius cleared his throat with a shake of his head, "Nope."

Lucius’s expression was carefully neutral in a way that suggested he would absolutely be adding something later, just not in this room.

Bruce turned back toward you, and you were smiling again. That was the problem. Not all the critqueing or the painful accuracy of it, hell not even the fact that you were correct more often than you had nay right to be.

It was that smile. That confident, controlled, and mildly amused smile. It was like you were enjoying the fact that he was still following along, or rather, like you were enjoying him.

Bruce had spent years surrounded by people who either feared him, needed him, or wanted something from him badly enough to pretend they didn’t.

You wanted his company to lose money.

And you were doing it with the same calm focus other people used to sign contracts and use his money for their own benefit.

Apparently, that was doing something profoundly unfortunate to his self-control.

He shifted again, and you noticed immediately the way the creases in his pants folded a little more, particularly around his thighs. Not that you were looking, it was just kind of in your face.. considering how large they were and the fact that he had his leg resting on top of the other.

Your eyes narrowed slightly. "Are you uncomfortable?"

"No."

"You've been moving around for the last five minutes."

Bruce looked directly at you. "I'm fine."

You studied him for a moment longer than necessary, then returned to your laptop.

"Good." You clicked to the next slide. "Because we're not finished."

Bruce almost laughed. Of course you weren’t, why would you be.

You spent another forty minutes walking him through the acquisition, identifying every weakness in his financial model with surgical precision, and proposing alternatives that would save both companies a considerable amount of money — if anyone in the room had the discipline to implement them.

By the time you reached the final slide, three of his executives had stopped taking notes entirely. They weren't lost, instead, they had been staring at Bruce. He had become unusually quiet and focused, but they all had a feeling it wasn't just on your presentation.

"That's my position."

Bruce looked at the closed computer, then at you.

He cleared his throat, sitting up straighter while never letting his eyes leave you. "You've essentially rewritten our acquisition strategy, is what I've gathered."

"To put it simply, I'd say so."

His forehead creased while his eyes narrowed in thought. "You expect us to adopt it."

"I expect you to recognize that it's better."

"And if I don't?"

You stood, gathering your papers with efficient, unhurried movements. Carefully, tucking everything in a neat pile, then into your bag. Making sure to adjust the charms so they were facing the correct way.

"Then I'll buy the property myself." You stated simply, not looking up from your bag. You weren't bluffing either, that's what both worried him and excited him.

Bruce’s gaze followed you as you moved around the table.

"You'd have to beat my offer."

You paused beside his chair, just long enough to see his posture become more rigid and his chest just barely puff out a bit.

"I already told you, Bruce. I know how to beat you."

He looked up at you, and you simply smiled.

"Wait."

Then you walked away, and Bruce watched your every step as you left the conference room, then the line of sight from the large windows that lined the walls facing into the rest of the office.

Silence settled over the room in layers after the click of the door came, softly but final.

Lucius waited approximately three seconds before standing up with a poorly held-back smile. "Should I reschedule your afternoon?"

Bruce continued staring at the door, his hand splayed over his bottom lip and stubbled jaw in complete awe.

"No."

"You have a meeting with the board."

"I know."

"And then the charity committee."

"I know."

Lucius gathered his papers, unhurried.

"All right." Then, after a moment, he glanced at Bruce with an expression that was far too knowing to be professionally appropriate. "You seem distracted."

Bruce finally looked at him. "I'm not."

Lucius smiled faintly. "Of course." He waved a hand to be as dismissive as Bruce was being then saw himself out of the conference room after the other executives, although not before one of them muttered something about how you might as well run the business.

Bruce remained alone in the conference room, staring at the financial projections you had left behind.

The numbers were good.

Your strategy was better.

And unfortunately, Bruce had just discovered that watching you dismantle his business model while looking that pleased with yourself was going to become a significant problem.

He rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled slowly.

"Fuck." He exclaimed under his breath, one word full of every emotion he had been feeling while watching you.

From somewhere outside the room, Lucius’s voice carried faintly through the glass.

"I heard that."

Bruce closed his eyes. This was going to be a very long quarter.

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