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Inés levels me with a look. “Do you?”

And for the first time in my life, I understand, with total clarity, why Sophie was always so hard and defensive and aching.

Caring—really caring—when the world couldn’t give less of a shit that you do ishard. It’s dog work. It’s frustrating. It’sexhausting. It’s watching something you actually want to fight for slip through your fingers and knowing you might not be able to stop it, no matter how hard you work. It’s knowing that, for the first time, you actually care about the outcome—an outcome that’s not even guaranteed.

Matt’s phone buzzes on the table. He glances at the screen and his face darkens.

He looks up. “Shit.”

Inés’s already reaching for her laptop. A few quick clicks, a sharp breath. Then she leans back, rubbing her fingers over her eyes.

“What?” I ask, stomach dropping.

She looks at me, and for the first time, there’s real disappointment in her face.

“We just lost Greer Manning.”

Mina slumps down, face pressed into the table with a defeated sigh. Patch whistles low. Matt leans back in his chair, jaw tightening.

I freeze. “Wait. What?”

“She pulled her manuscript,” Inés says. “Inkspill was set to publish her new book,Ink & Vellum.We were the only ones who saw the value in it, because it’s such a dense text.” She sneers. “The exact opposite of the kind of profitable manuscriptyou’dlike us to go for.”

I stare at her. My mind scrambles, trying to make sense of it as I flip through my files for our authors. I find the name Greer Manning and skim-read: she’s a major name in academic nonfiction, a historian with a bunch of awards under her name—one of our heavyweights.

“How?” I ask, looking back. “I don’t get it. What happened?”

Inés shuts her laptop with a snap.

“Probably got wind of your father sending you here. Nobody wants to be the next victim of death bycost-cutting measuresanddownsizing.”

Patch lets out a low laugh, shaking his head. “Fantastic. Well done, kiddo. Great start.”

Shit, shit, shit. For a moment, I can’t formulate any other thought than that.

My eyes fall back to the table in front of me, all my papers, all my carefully calculated numbers. A week’s worth of non-stop work, staying up late, sitting on my apartment floor with my laptop balanced on my lap and paperwork spread out around me.

A week’s worth of work, and nothing to show for it except a team that thinks I’m trying to mutilate their baby and Frankenstein it into some unrecognisable monster, and the loss of an author we simply can’t afford to lose.

Is this really all I’m capable of? A prophecy of failure for me to endlessly self-fulfill?

No. Fuck that.

I stand back up so suddenly even Inés starts, spilling the cup of coffee she was just lifting to her lips with a stifled curse.

“I’m going to fix this.”

Matt laughs out loud, but Mina looks up, raising her face off the table, and Inés’s eyes narrow on me, not in mockery or annoyance, but in genuine interest.

“How?” she says.

“I’m going to speak to her—Greer Manning.”

“You really think she’s going to take a call from—”

“No, I mean I’m going to go andspeakto her. Properly. In person.”

Now even Matt’s not laughing, mouth gaping open, eyes wide.