The night shift king

Chapter 6: The fitting

Percival Thorne's atelier occupied the top floor of a narrow building downtown, the kind of place that didn't advertise its name on the street level because it didn't need to. Selene had arranged the appointment two days earlier, and when Malcolm stepped off the private elevator into a room lined with bolts of fabric in colors he had no names for, he felt distinctly out of place, the same way he'd felt his entire marriage, standing in rooms built for people who belonged there.

Percival himself was a narrow, precise man in his sixties, moving around Malcolm with a measuring tape draped over one shoulder and an expression of intense concentration, as though the half-inch difference between two sleeve lengths might alter the course of history.

"Chairman material requires chairman posture," Percival muttered, mostly to himself, adjusting the drape of unfinished fabric across Malcolm's shoulders. "Stand straighter, Mr. Reyes. You've been slouching like a man apologizing for taking up space."

"Old habit," Malcolm said.

"Break it before the gala." Percival stepped back, studying him in the mirror with narrowed eyes. "The board will be watching how you carry yourself before they hear a single word out of your mouth."

Malcolm was still adjusting to the sound of that title attached to his name when the atelier's front doors chimed, and he watched in the mirror's reflection as Constance swept in, trailed by a young man Malcolm recognized immediately despite not having seen him in years. Grady Ferris had grown taller, more polished, but his expression carried the same lazy contempt Malcolm remembered from every family holiday he'd endured.

Constance spotted him in the mirror before Malcolm could decide whether to acknowledge them at all.

"Well," she said, loud enough for the entire floor to hear, "isn't this a sight. Malcolm Reyes, getting fitted for a suit he clearly can't afford, in a shop clearly out of his depth."

Grady wandered closer, smirking at Malcolm's reflection. "Let me guess. Odalys felt sorry for you and sent you here on her way out the door? Very generous, considering the divorce papers are already being drafted."

"I'm here on my own business," Malcolm said evenly, refusing to turn around, meeting Grady's eyes instead through the mirror.

"Your own business." Constance laughed, a short, sharp sound. "What business does a paramedic have in Percival Thorne's atelier? Unless you've finally found honest work as someone's driver. Grady's actually looking for one, aren't you, sweetheart? Reliable, doesn't ask questions, knows how to stay quiet in the front seat while the people who matter talk in the back."

"I'll pass," Malcolm said.

"You're in no position to pass on anything," Constance snapped, some of the polish slipping from her voice now. "You sold your own father's workshop to fund my daughter's company, gave away everything he built without blinking, and now you stand here pretending you have options. You have nothing, Malcolm. You never did. You were always going to end up exactly where you belong."

Malcolm turned fully to face her then, calm in a way that seemed to unsettle her more than anger would have. "I gave Odalys everything my father built because I believed in her, once. I paid every debt this family ever pretended I owed, in money, in silence, in years of being told I wasn't enough at every dinner table I sat at. I don't owe either of you anything else. Not an apology, not an explanation, and certainly not a driving service."

Constance's jaw tightened, and her eyes flicked toward the black card Malcolm still held loosely between two fingers, forgotten mid-fitting. Something shifted in her expression, calculation replacing contempt, and she reached forward with surprising speed, fingers closing around the card as though she intended to inspect it herself, or perhaps simply to remind him whose hands still held power in rooms like this one.

"Let's see what kind of card a jobless leech is carrying around these days," she said, tugging it free before Malcolm could react.

"Madam." Percival's voice cracked across the room like a whip, sharper than Malcolm had heard from him all afternoon. Every head on the floor turned. "You will return that immediately."

Constance blinked, momentarily thrown by the force behind his tone. "Excuse me?"

"I said return it." Percival crossed the floor in three quick strides, his earlier fussy precision replaced entirely by open fury. He turned toward a saleswoman near the register who had been watching the entire exchange with a poorly hidden smirk, clearly enjoying the spectacle rather than intervening. "And you. Why is a client being harassed on my floor while you stand there smiling? Is this the standard of service I'm paying you for?"

The saleswoman's smirk vanished instantly. "I didn't think it was my place to—"

"It is precisely your place," Percival cut her off. "You're removed from the floor, effective this moment. Collect your things."

The room had gone entirely silent, every eye now fixed on the unfolding scene. Constance still held the card loosely, her earlier confidence visibly cracking under the sudden reversal of attention. Percival turned to her next, his tone dropping into something colder, more deliberate.

"That card belongs to Chairman Reyes," he said, letting the title land fully in the quiet room, watching it register across Constance's face like a slap. "Chairman of Halcyon Meridian, whose family's name has funded this atelier's finest commissions for longer than your son has been alive. You will hand it back to him now, and then you will leave my floor."

Grady's smug expression collapsed entirely, his mouth working soundlessly for a moment as though searching for some way to salvage the exchange and finding nothing to say. Constance's fingers went slack around the card, and Malcolm reached forward to take it back without a word, watching the color drain slowly from her face as decades of casual cruelty curdled into something that looked, for the first time, like genuine fear.

"There must be some misunderstanding," Constance managed finally, her voice thinner than Malcolm had ever heard it.

"There isn't," Percival said flatly, already turning back toward Malcolm and gesturing for his assistants to resume the fitting as though the interruption had been nothing more than a minor draft from an open window. "Mr. Reyes, if you'll step back onto the platform, we still have the shoulders to finish before you go."

Malcolm did, watching in the mirror as Constance and Grady retreated toward the elevator without another word, the confident stride they'd entered with entirely gone, replaced by something smaller and considerably less certain.