You can call me Yenzy’s girl 🤓🧡 Thanks for stopping by my little corner of tumblr. My blog is 18+ ONLY.
I write reader insert with mostly Chris Evans characters. If you don’t read and REBLOG or write Chris Evans’ character fanfic- this isn’t the blog for you.
This beautiful drawing was commissioned by the insanely talented @chrissquares ♥️
Cranky!Grumpy!Stabby! Oh, My! Challenge
Masterlist
Current obsessions:
Second Shot Masterlist
Lucky Charms hockey AU
Recent:
Thanksgiving Takeout (Ransom Drysdale)
PSL (Lloyd Hansen)
Second Shot- Chapter 6 (Andy Barber)
The Dare (James Buchanan)
Farmer Ted’s run-in (Freezy/Cole Turner)
Ducky Tales (Cappy & Yenzy)
Cappy’s Secret Missions (Steve Rogers)
Fill ‘er Up (Freezy)
3’s a Party (Johnny Storm)
Lucky Charms hockey AU
Second Shot- Chapter 5 (Andy Barber)
If you’re seeing too much of my posts- filter out the tags # reblogging the love & # reblogging 🫶
If you’re also melting somewhere out there, consider this your daily dose of fan-powered emotional support. And don’t forget to stay hydrated. Happy Caturday 😽🤍
I have a random question about MU (Murder U) the dark themed college in the Lucky Charms verse.
When you think of MU- what type of college are you picturing?
An elite private school
An average state school
A community college
Just a regular college/university
Never really thought about it
Voting ended onFeb 23
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
Goal lines are Red, Neutral zones are Blue… you might be a duster if you warm the bench through…
Pairings: college hockey coach Andy Barber x "the one that got away" female reader
Warnings: none really- family dynamic fluff, Andy and reader’s Dad being the best Girl Dad’s around 🥺, mention of kids bullying but no graphic depiction.
Word Count: ~2.2K
A/N: this was really fun to write 🥹 it was inspired by an Instagram post/trend. It’s not set in any specific time of the series- can be read as a stand alone. Thanks for checking it out ♥️
Second Shot Masterlist
Not beta read. All mistakes are my own.
The rabble rousing and cheerful merriment was not at all what you expected to hear as you rushed into your parent's house- assuming there'd be tears and all the dramatics of 6 year old emotions. Instead you heard your Dad's deep laugh as your daughters continued to shout with glee.
In the entryway of your parent's home you struggled out of one sleeve of your coat and dropped your bag and keys on the floor before kicking out of your boots. Andy must had heard you over the elated chaos coming from within the house as he was on you the moment you turned around, helping get your coat off.
"Hi, sweetheart" Andy smiled, all soft sweater causal and smelling like a Cedarwood dream.
"What's going on?" you tried rushing past him with not so much as a hello, determined to get to the girls, but Andy moved with you, "... they got in trouble in class?" you rushed, "what happened? Are they OK?"
The garbled voicemail you received from Lenny's teacher had cut in-and-out in the stupid cement slab of a parking ramp at work and all you managed to hear was something about Lenny, trouble and Lottie...
And sure the girls squabbled at home- but this was different- they didn't get in trouble at school.
"They're OK..." Andy didn't even notice he had moved with you again, blocking your path in a dance that you didn't have the time or patience for as he continued, "... it really wasn't..."
"Andy..." it can out as a frustrated whine, "Move! I need to see them... I don't even know what happened...."
And then he say it, the tears spilling over as you blinked up at him with so much fear in your eyes-your babies were in trouble, maybe even hurt and you'd be damned if...
"Hi, Mommy!" your head whipped around so quickly in the direction of that sweet little voice that you almost pulled a muscle.
Lenny came skipping down the hallway with an ear-to-ear grin and the remnants of a chocolate dipped cone - her favorite- all over her face.
"Lenny" you breathed out her name on a relieved sigh, "what...?"
"We got ice cream..." she stopped to lick a few stray sticky sprinkles off the back of her little fingers.
"I can see that" you laughed, the relief you felt quickly spreading warmth through your chest and prickling your eyes.
Lenny's eyes twinkled up at you with so much happiness -or maybe it was a sugar rush- that you couldn't help the relieved watery laugh that escaped the back of your throat, turning to Andy, confused as you wiped a tear from your cheek with the back of your hand before returning your attention to your daughter.
"Lenny, how was your day, sweetheart? Mommy got a phone call from..."
"Mommy's home?" Lottie's question was muffled with chewing as it drifted down the hallway, hearing her before you saw her- face and fingers covered in ice cream too, it had started running down her forearm to her elbow as she popped the last of a cone in her mouth.
"Hi, Mommy!" she beamed up you, a sticky mess- moving to hug you until Andy swooped in, scooping her up and whisking her back down the hall.
"Let's get you washed up... for dinner" Andy added, the last part in a stage whisper - catching your scowl as the girls cackled as if they had gotten away with murder.
"They haven't had dinner yet?" you asked, following Andy to the back of the house towards the kitchen, Lenny by your side, her little hand in yours.
"Not yet" Andy at least had the decency to look a little sheepish as he cleaned Lottie up at the kitchen sink, wiping her hands and face with a wet paper towel.
"Daddy said I earned ice cream before dinner!" Lenny smiled, squealing when Andy turned on her.
"Hey, you ratting me out?... you little fink!" Andy laughed chasing her back down the hall and out of sight.
You bent to give Lottie a hug and a stealthy inspection- making sure she was OK.
"Daddy said I earned ice cream too, Mommy!" Lottie told you, "... cause I'm brave and strong..."
"You are brave and strong, sweet pea!" you agreed, "now... what happened today?"
You watched Lottie's little nose scrunch as she gave it some thought.
"Max was being mean again" Lottie scowled.
"Oh, Sweetheart, I'm sorry!" you blew out a sigh, pulling your daughter into a tight hug- your blood boiling because of that little shit. You really hated that kid- he loved picking on the girls- especially Lottie.
You were still hugging Lottie when Andy returned with Lenny hanging over his shoulder just as your Mom called from the dining room that dinner was ready.
"Andy, ice cream before dinner will likely ruin their appetite..." your brow furrowed even as your heart bloomed, standing as you watched Andy dip to hoist Lottie over his other strong shoulder.
"Promised" Lenny's Cheshire like grin didn't have you convinced- even if it was one of the cutest things you had ever seen.
"I said they could have ice cream first because they both promised to ..." Andy's words were cut off by your Dad.
"Hope everyone's washed up..." your Dad poked his head out from the dinning room, "Nana’s made your girls' favorite..."
The girls nearly jumped from Andy's hold as they tore off in the direction of food.
"Bottomless pits" you laughed, shaking your head with a good natured eye roll.
"Oh, hey, peanut" your Dad added, walking into the kitchen and giving you a side squeeze.
"Hi, Dad" you leaned into him, "you need any help?"
"Nope, just gotta grab a salad from the fridge and..." he gestured to an empty ice cream cup ready to be discarded.
"That was your doing?" you smirked, knowing that your Dad had developed a bit of a sweet tooth since the girls were old enough to sneak treats with him, "Dad, you know they won't touch their dinner now..."
"I have no idea who got out the ice cream..." he winked at you before glancing over at Andy with a Fatherly approving nod.
"Am I missing something here?" you snorted, "if they got in trouble at school, why are they getting ice cream... before dinner?"
"Well Mrs Jacobson didn't get the entire story..." Andy started in, "she called because there was an issue with the Valentines for school..."
"What? No, way! We all helped them with their Valentines..." you insisted, "there was one for every student... even that brat Jillian..."
"I know..." Andy nodded, smirking as if he knew something you didn't, "but your daughter decided to add a little something to a few of them and a parent complained."
You could tell Andy and your Dad were having a hard time containing themselves. Andy's smirk threatening to turn into a full blown smile- even though he was fighting it. Your Dad laughing as he made his way to the fridge.
When you narrowed your eyes at Andy, pursing your lips, he pulled a couple folded Valentines from his back pocket- it had the girls favorite characters on it. When he handed them to you, you noticed one was for Max and the other for Owen- both annoying puck hogs the girls played hockey with in past seasons.
You opened the Valentine to Max and turned it over to the added message from Lenny...
do better!
"Oh, my gosh!" you unfolded the other Valentine. Owen's simply said...
duster
All of Lenny's R's were backwards.
"What?" you chirped, "how did she... when did she?"
"I don't know... we checked them all when they were done..." Andy confirmed as you were just about to say the same. The girls had worked on their valentines at your parent's dinning room table last week after dinner.
"We finished them and then Lottie needed a bath so..." you frowned, trying to remember where Lenny had gotten off to during Lottie's bath.
"Dad?" you and Andy turned to your Dad who was at the kitchen island now, adding the ingredients together for the salad your Mom had prepped earlier in the day.
"Do you know who helped Lenny add those extra messages to her Valentines?" you asked- knowing your daughter would've needed help spelling the word "duster."
"Lenny told me she wanted to add something top secret after you and Andy had gone upstairs to help Lottie and Nana was finishing up in the kitchen.
"Dad... do better?" you questioned, "duster?"
Andy snorted behind you and you turned, trying to swat at him.
"What?" your Dad shrugged, adding another ingredient to the salad bowl, "it's a good message..."
"And Duster?" you asked.
"Well, I didn't know what that one meant" he admitted as you huffed in protest, "but Lenny said it was their nicknames from hockey..."
"They really are dusters?!" Andy couldn't contain his laughter and you tried swatting him again but this time he caught your wrist. You yanked it away but not before Andy's smile had a smile cracking your lips too.
"Dad..." you blew out a sigh, "it means bench warmer... like collecting dust..." you called after him as he walked out of the room, huffing your frustration when you heard your Dad laughing.
"Dusters..." Andy laughed, shaking his head as he left you in the kitchen to join the rest of the family.
"But why would Lenny add that?" you frowned, still siting at the dining room table after everyone had finished their meal. Your parents and Andy sipping their -after dinner coffees- as the girls played in the other room.
"She said Max and Owen were being mean to Lottie" Andy sighed, taking a sip from his cup.
"Then she should be telling the teacher..." you frowned.
"She said she did, but they keep trying to start stuff... she said that Max told Lottie that girls can't be good at hockey..." Andy looked like he was ready to commit a crime.
"What?" you scowled, "that little shit..."
"Mommy!" Lottie's eyes went wide as she climbed up into Andy's lap, "you said a bad word?!"
Your daughter's jaw was comically on the floor- your usual composure completely gone when those twerps were messing with your sweet Lottie.
"Yes" you confessed, "and I shouldn't have... I'm sorry. Mommy was not happy that Max and Owen were being mean to you..."
"Owen pushed me..." Lottie folded her little arms over her front, "... and I was crying."
"Oh, sweetheart" you leaned into Andy's space, cupping her cheek in a consoling way.
"But then Lenny pushed them" Lottie continued, "and they feel on their butts..." she giggled when you gave her a faux stern look that dissolved into a smile. Your gaze flickered up to Andy's where he shared your proud smile.
"Mommy, is Lenny in trouble?" Lottie asked, concern for her sister suddenly clouding her soft features.
"No, sweet pea" you smiled at her, "Lenny's not in trouble" feeling your heart ache when the sweetest smile spread across Lottie's pretty little face.
Andy watched in awe as the same smile spread across your pretty face- feeling a warmth blooming from deep within his chest.
From across where you, Andy and Lottie sat your Mom silently placed her hand over your Dad's hand as it rested on the table in front of him- she gave him a knowing look as he smiled fondly back at her.
"Hey, Papa... is there more ice cream?" Lenny's voice broke through the silence, skipping back into the room and pausing at the side of the table where your Dad sat.
"I don't think so..." your Dad chuckled, standing and gathering dishes, "but if you help me clear the table, I'll see what I can find..."
"Dad" you started protesting as Andy handed you Lottie before standing to gather your dirty dishes.
"I think Mommy needs some ice cream..." Andy gave you a wink that made your belly do a flip-flop before he left the room dishes in hand.
"More, ice cream" Lenny's words were like a battle cry, taking off down the hall after your Dad and Andy.
"Lenny..." you called after her, your warning -mom- tone activated.
"If Lenny gets more ice cream, I want more ice too" Lottie whined taking off after her sister as you rolled your eyes at your Mom, pushing up from the table to go after them. Your Mom just sitting there with that smile on her face.
By the time you caught up to your little sugar fiend gremlins everyone was shrieking...
"You think you get MORE ice cream?!" Andy in a half kneel as if he'd been pulled down to the floor- the girls attacking him from either angle.
"You said..." Lenny squealed though gasped breaths, "... that I was brave..."
"And girls rule!" Lottie added with a giggle- shriek.
"Girls do rule!" Andy roared, reaching up and sweeping you into the family pile.
You couldn't help the startled cry as you joined the mix, laughing right along with them- your heart suddenly feeling so full.
"And boys drool" you shouted happily, rolling to your side as Andy welcomed you against his chest with an open arm.
"Do, better, Max and Owen.... Ya dusters" Andy shouted with laughter from the bottom of the pile while the girls giggled with delight- strategically plotting the attack on their parents from both sides!
The lovely and talented @firefly-graphics made the hockey dividers used in this verse ♥️
The lovely and talented @saradika-graphics made the heart divider used in this drabble ♥️
MIRAC- Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee is a volunteer grass roots organization that has boots on the ground (literally- because it’s -20 in Minneapolis today) and is fighting for immigrant rights. Another great place to donate if you want to help Minneapolis but don’t know where to start:
MIRAC - Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee
Summary: Still reeling from the breakup, Lloyd throws himself into a new case to prove he can fight his battles alone. When the investigation forces him to accept help from an unexpected source, he’s confronted with the cost of shutting people out.
Word Count: 7,765
Warnings: Some bad language, angst, depression, drug smuggling, criminal activity, and disordered eating
Masterlist
Author’s Note: I used every second of 2025 to finish up this chapter and came in just under the wire. Happy New Year everyone!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Chapter 33: Subtraction
The arrival of April turned Bishop & Howard into a madhouse.
It started on the first floor, where tax lawyers scrambled to meet deadlines, their offices littered with W-2s and extension forms. One floor up, divorce attorneys fielded angry calls about spring-break custody disputes. The nonprofit team above them raced to close their fiscal year before the cutoff as grant money hung in the balance. Lloyd's floor buzzed with criminal litigators buried under packed court calendars. Trial prep consumed conference rooms around the clock. Upstairs, corporate hammered out a deluge of first-quarter filings: 10-Ks, proxy statements, and urgent SEC documents. On the top floor, the patent department fought to settle final details before the wave of summer product launches, racing against competitors and the glacial pace of the patent office.
Phones trilled. Printers rumbled. Stressed out colleagues clashed in the halls. The firm was running at full steam. Everyone was in motion. Everyone was drowning in work.
Except Lloyd.
His desk was bare. The silence pressed in, claustrophobic, as he listened to the storm of effort around him while his corner office stayed as silent as a cathedral on Monday. He braced for someone to come and drag him upstairs to corporate, back to the field he’d trained in and hadn’t touched for thirteen years. As much as he dreaded it, he suspected even that wasn’t coming.
When he first joined the firm, he’d been the office pariah. No one wanted to share an elevator with the ex-spy turned international criminal. He didn’t get approached in the halls and when he entered a room conversation stopped. People shifted out of his path if they saw him coming their way. He’d liked it that way. The distance had eroded over time. He couldn’t pin down exactly when the change occurred, but it was after Princess joined his staff. She’d sanded down his sharpest edges and made him easier to be around. In turn, people relaxed.
It wasn’t that he was warm or friendly. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Just…non-threatening. Less scary.
People rode the elevator with him.
In the wake of Princess’ abrupt departure he was the office pariah again, but in a more personal way. Before, people kept their distance because they were afraid of him. Now they felt entitled to their opinions. Conversations around him went quiet not out of fear, but because he’d been the topic at hand. The reactions proved this was a new era. Five years ago he’d been a lone wolf. In trying to resume the mantle, he discovered solitude didn’t fit the way it used to.
Princess had changed him and everyone else at the firm. Without her curled into the corner of the sofa working on her laptop, his office felt smaller. He told himself it was just the room playing tricks on him, but even in his own mind the lie couldn’t hold back the truth.
Lloyd continued to arrive at seven sharp. This morning, his desk was stacked with briefs from the criminal attorneys, cases he’d promised to review and hadn’t. They were too busy to press him and likely assumed he was swamped when he didn’t respond. They were wrong.
He tossed his briefcase onto the sofa and sank into his chair. The red message light on the phone blinked. For one hopeful moment, he thought it might be Zach, or Landon. He pressed the button.
“Mr. Hansen, this is Genevive from HR. I just wanted to remind you to file your billable hours for last month by noon today. The form can be found—”
He dropped the handset back into the cradle. Billable hours. Something Princess had always handled for him, so he’d never bothered learning how. Last month he’d bribed Jen to do it for him. This month he was on his own.
Lloyd scrubbed his hands over his face. This was his life. Back to square one, or perhaps even further behind. He was painfully alone and no one was coming to save him. He'd done his damnedest to make sure of that.
His appetite was low. He couldn't remember the last time he'd finished a meal. Half-eaten entrees went stale on his desk. Sleep only came in fragments, two or three hours at a time before his mind dragged him back to consciousness. The Ferragamo belt he’d fastened on the same notch for fifteen years was suddenly too loose. He didn’t allow himself to process the implications of these developments.
Instead, he threw himself into his one remaining constant: exercise. He dove into a punishing training schedule that exhausted him enough to take the edge off his grim obsessive thoughts. It wasn’t working very well, but he kept trying.
A soft knock sounded on Lloyd's door, followed by footsteps that proceeded into the room without waiting for permission, an act that tipped him off to the identity of his visitor. Bishop stopped in front of the desk, file in hand. He didn’t sit down, just studied Lloyd for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“You know,” he said at last, “I thought you’d at least come talk to me.”
Lloyd straightened. “About what?”
“Don’t. Don’t play dumb, you can’t pull it off,” Bishop’s voice carried the bite of someone holding back the heat of their temper. “You know what.”
“I’m not discussing that.”
Bishop’s expression shifted from anger to fatigue. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened.
“You think burying it will make things easier? Princess is gone, and you’re walking around looking like a zombie.”
Lloyd didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t answer.
The silence stretched between them until Bishop exhaled sharply. Whatever hope he’d had of cracking Lloyd’s shell seemed to drain away. He dropped the file on the desk. It landed with a slap.
“Fine. We’ll do it your way.” His tone shifted, turning clipped and professional. “Our new client is a shipping conglomerate. They suspect one of their routes is being used for smuggling. The police took a look and moved on, so the company has asked us to dig.”
Lloyd opened the file. It was thin. There were invoices, customs slips, and a few grainy photos. In the back was an executive summary that he skimmed.
“Good. I needed something to break up the monotony.”
Bishop frowned. “This isn’t a one-man job.”
“I’ll manage.” Lloyd spread the file contents across his desk. “You’ll remember I used to do everything solo. I don’t need Zach or Landon or Jake—or anyone else—to handle a case.”
“And Princess?” Bishop asked.
Lloyd didn’t flinch. “Especially not her.”
Something flickered over the old man’s expression. Anger, maybe, or grief? Lloyd couldn’t tell.
“If you think you're stronger alone..." Bishop leaned on the back of a chair and sighed. “Writers who refuse editors think they can catch their own mistakes. But you can't see your blind spots, Lloyd. That's why they're called blind spots. And the problems you don’t see are the ones that cost you everything.”
Lloyd arched an eyebrow. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Bishop turned and left.
For the first time in weeks, Lloyd felt the faintest burn of interest. It wasn't much, just a flicker of curiosity at a puzzle that needed solving, but it was something. He opened the file and started reading, properly this time, not just skimming.
He sifted through the documents and gathered the basics. Six months ago, a U.S.-based shipping company that had long relied on paper manifests digitized its system. Soon after, a logistics analyst noticed a pattern: at the Port of Baltimore, cargo containers from two specific suppliers were consistently having extended intake delays. Not long, maybe fifteen to twenty minutes longer than the rest. All the shipments were logged as “industrial machinery components.”
The receiving company had investigated and found small but persistent discrepancies in the declared weights. Again, not much. Just fractions of a kilo, always lighter than the originals listed from overseas. The customs officers chalked it up to measurement variance. D.C Metro police had given it a brief look and buried it at the bottom of their backlog.
Lloyd reviewed the summary and requested hard copies of the shipping and customs paperwork. The company sent over twenty-six boxes of files that turned his office into chaos. By midnight, the hum of work had faded to silence. Lloyd was surrounded by manifests, desk littered with coffee cups and paper tape from his calculator. He’d sorted the shipments into two piles: origin documents from Port-au-Prince and intake records from Baltimore.
He color-coded as he went, using red for anomalies, blue for questions, black for commentary. Patterns began to emerge. The Haitian manifests described “machined steel joints,” “bearing housings,” and “pump casings.” All items that should have weighed identically at both ends of the journey, but they didn’t. The Baltimore records were consistently lighter, sometimes by as little as a pound, sometimes by three or four.
It wasn’t shrinkage. It was subtraction. He could appreciate how easy it would be to dismiss such minor numbers. People often didn’t notice something had gone missing until they were forced to account for it.
He studied the timestamps. Gates C and D kept showing up during the longest scan-to-intake gaps and the same two freight handlers were on shift each time. Rubbing his aching temples, he flipped through the shipment photos and found nothing of interest, just stacks of dull, gray castings wrapped in oil paper. Machined parts were supposed to be completely uniform so the weight variances were curious. The smuggling was painfully obvious, especially given the two freight handlers and the repeated pattern of timing and location. Which meant whatever the smugglers were doing to hide their cargo, they were convinced it was bullet proof.
A shadow crossed the room and he looked up to see Jen in the doorway.
“It’s past midnight,” she said.
“I peak after midnight.”
“Right. What’s this disaster?”
“Shipping manifests and customs filings.”
Her eyes skimmed the heaps of files. “Gripping.”
“More than you’d think.”
He held up a manifest, the Haitian carbon copy side by side with Baltimore’s scan. “See this? Same shipment, same container ID, but the weights don’t match. The Baltimore intake comes up a few pounds lighter every time.”
Jen leaned in, scanning the papers. “Machinery parts lose weight now?”
“They don’t. Not on their own, anyway.”
Her gaze flicked over his color-coded notes. “Ah, someone’s giving them Ozempic.”
Lloyd snorted. “If only the explanation was so benign.”
“You know, most people would ignore a few pounds.”
“Most people don’t spend their Friday nights comparing ten months worth of shipping manifest data.”
“They don’t know the fun they’re missing out on,” Jen said. “So, what’s the theory? Dock workers stealing scrap metal?”
“Possibly. But this pattern, with the amounts being so small, makes smuggling a better fit.”
Jen raised an eyebrow. “And you’d know that how?”
“A couple of hours with a calculator and too much caffeine.”
“I thought you didn’t drink coffee.”
Lloyd shrugged. “Usually I don’t.”
“Well, you’ve got a pattern, time, and suspects. Can’t you dump this on the police?”
“We know where and when, but not what’s inside or who’s pulling it out. Until then, this is just an interesting spreadsheet.”
“What do my tax dollars actually pay for again?”
“I have no idea. If you figure that one out, let me know.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Port of Baltimore customs office smelled like burnt coffee and vinegar. Lloyd adjusted the laminated OSHA consultant badge he’d clipped to the breast pocket of his jacket. He’d printed it out on Jen’s color printer after she left last night.
The woman behind the desk didn’t look up from her computer when he stopped in front of her. A nameplate read “Darlene - Administrative Coordinator.” She wore cat-eye glasses and a streak of hot pink in her white hair.
“Can I help you?” she asked, not breaking eye contact with her computer monitor.
"Lloyd Harrington, OSHA. I'm here to review your shift documentation. Routine safety audit."
Darlene looked up, unimpressed. "Nobody told me OSHA was coming."
“Announcing ourselves defeats the purpose.”
She quit typing and folded her arms. “Uh-huh. So you show up at 4:15 AM on a Tuesday, right before shift change. Nice. Didn’t know OSHA officers got up this early.”
“I sent an email to Daniel Reeves last week, asking for a copy of the schedule. It’s gone unanswered, so here I am.”
“To who?”
“Dan Reeves,” Lloyd repeated.
"Dan's been on medical leave for three weeks. Back surgery.”
Lloyd shrugged. “Look. I’m here to verify your shift coverage. It’ll take thirty minutes, max. I need a copy of your personnel schedules to confirm you’re maintaining adequate staffing ratios.”
“Who’s your supervisor?”
“Greg Stillwater.”
Darlene grunted but didn’t reach for the schedule. She was turning out to be a surprisingly scrappy guard dog.
"I can come back with a formal inspection notice, but that would trigger a full facility review. Those take about six weeks, involve multiple departments, and generate a lot of paperwork. Or you could let me glance at your shift schedules for all the main gates, and I'll be gone before shift change even starts."
Darlene fixed him with an unblinking stare. “You’re threatening me with paperwork? I’ve been doing paperwork since before you were born.”
“Then you’re aware this battle isn’t worth your time.”
"Fine." She pushed back from her desk. "Wait here."
Darlene returned with a thick binder and dropped it on the counter. "Shift schedules for the last six months. You touch anything else, I'm calling your boss."
Lloyd opened the binder. The schedules were typed, but heavily edited. Names crossed out, new ones penciled in, final corrections marked in red pen. He scanned for the dates he'd flagged in the manifests, cross-referencing the timestamps from memory. Gate C showed the most red ink. Lloyd had expected to see two different names rotating through the suspicious shifts, but the same substitute appeared over and over again: Marcus Chen.
“Finished?” Darlene asked.
"Just a moment.” Lloyd took out his phone and snapped a photo of the most recent shift change, with the scribbled correction of Marcus taking another worker’s shift. Darlene's hand slapped down on the binder before he could take another.
"No photos."
"OSHA regulations allow documentation of—"
"I don't care what OSHA allows. No photos of the files. You want copies? Fill out a request and wait like everyone else."
Lloyd met her eyes. She wasn't backing down. He could push it, but there was no point. He’d gotten what he needed.
"Fine." He closed the binder and slid it back across the counter. "I appreciate your cooperation, Ms. Kowalski."
"Sure you do." She snatched the binder like he might abscond with it if she didn’t protect it.
He couldn’t resist toying with her. “I'll also need to inspect the break room. Make sure you've got adequate seating, proper lighting, that sort of thing."
She pointed down the hall. "Third door on the left. You've got five minutes. Touch anything that's not a chair or a lightbulb and I'll call security."
"Understood."
Lloyd found the break room, a re-purposed office that was close to the docks. Darlene had returned to her computer, but she was watching him in the reflection of her monitor.
He stepped into the cramped room, allowing the door to fall half-shut. The one window looked out over the loading dock and as fortune would have it, offered a clear line of sight to Gates C and D. He withdrew what looked like a USB power bank from his pocket and positioned it on the windowsill before checking the tiny hidden camera was streaming live footage to his phone. When he turned, Darlene was in the doorway, arms crossed.
"The break room is sufficient," Lloyd said, moving to pass her.
"Hold on." Darlene strode to the window and picked up the power bank. "You forgot this."
Lloyd glanced at it, then back at her. "That's not mine."
"It wasn't here this morning."
"One of the workers must have left it."
“Nobody but me comes in here. The workers take their breaks outside where they can smoke. I'll run it over to the lost and found."
"Someone will come back for it. You know how people are about their chargers."
"That's exactly why it should go to the lost and found."
“Whoever left it will realize it’s missing when they pack up to leave,” Lloyd said.
Darlene hesitated. He hoped she was considering the possibility that one of the nightshift workers used the room when she wasn’t around.
"Just leave it. If it's still there by the end of the week, take it in.”
She scowled at him for a moment, suspicion palpable. Lloyd held her gaze, expression neutral, looking every inch the bored government inspector.
Finally, Darlene put the power bank back. "If it's still here tonight, it’s going to the lost and found.”
Lloyd followed her into the hall. "You'll receive a full copy of our report in ten to twenty business days."
"I can't wait," she said flatly, herding him toward the front entrance.
In the parking lot, Lloyd settled in his car, pushed the driver’s seat back as far as it would go, and opened the app on his phone to pull up the camera feed. He had eyes and ears on Gate C and D, and he'd narrowed the suspect list down to one man: Marcus Chen. Plus, when his spy camera had served its purpose, Darlene would dispose of it for him, giving him one less loose end to tie up.
Who said he needed a team? He'd blow this case wide open in two days and Bishop would get off his back about needing a team.
The next four days blurred together. He watched the parking lot, listened to hours of meaningless audio, and wondered how he’d ended up on a surveillance detail at this stage of his career. Zach had people for this. Lloyd told himself he’d find people of his own, though the idea felt less like a plan and more like wishful thinking.
His camera was still streaming footage, so Darlene must have forgotten about her plans to get rid of it, but there was nothing useful to report from the surveillance. Chen showed up for his shifts, did his job, and left. No meetings. No suspicious calls. No suspicious movements. Lloyd had watched hours of surveillance footage and learned nothing new. The morning of the fifth day was no different.
As usual, Lloyd showed up before dawn, listened to the night’s audio feed, kept one eye on the video, and waited for the 5 AM shift change. Marcus Chen would be getting off work in half an hour. Lloyd watched the red Subaru he knew belonged to his suspect, parked three rows away from the employee entrance. The lot was nearly empty, but a few semi-trucks idled near the loading docks, their exhaust visible in the morning air. Lloyd’s handheld radio was in the cup-holder, tuned to a re-run of a baseball game he didn’t care about, but the chatter was a mild enough distraction to keep him alert.
Movement on the video feed caught his attention. Chen emerged from a shipping container and headed towards the customs building. He was a tall, thin man walking at an unhurried pace carrying a lunch cooler. Lloyd watched him as far as the video surveillance would allow, then shifted his attention to the doors facing the parking lot. Before they opened, a black Honda Accord with dark windows pulled into the parking lot and stopped directly behind the red Subaru. Lloyd sat up straighter, turning off the radio.
A short man emerged from the passenger seat of the Honda. He was built like a human tank and wore a navy suit.
Across the parking lot, the employee entrance of the customs building swung open and Chen emerged. He spotted the man waiting by his car when he was about halfway across the parking lot. Lloyd grumbled, rustling through the bag of tech he’d tossed in his backseat, not expecting to need them. He hadn’t thought a meeting would occur right out in the open, away from the listening device he’d planted.
He came up with the parabolic microphone and was still assembling it when Chen reached the newcomer. Lloyd cracked his window halfway in hopes of catching some of their conversation, but they were too far away. He fumbled, trying to connect the wires to the compact satellite dish. By the time he got it assembled and slipped the headphones on, the pair had been talking for at least thirty seconds. Lloyd paused, static crackling in his ears as he adjusted the volume of the microphone until their voices registered. The sound quality was like hearing through a tin can, but it would have to do.
“...don’t like… out here,” Chen was saying. The conversation was in Mandarin.
The other man’s response was indecipherable, gargled by the vibrations of a semi-truck passing behind them.
Lloyd twisted the dial, trying to filter out background noise.
“...tonight,” the stranger said. His accent was native, fluid where Chen’s was flat, with the uneven tones of someone who had learned Mandarin but never mastered it.
There was another exchange, which Lloyd used to adjust the microphone. He strained to follow the conversation and caught only fragments as the sound quality fluctuated.
“All inside. Very safe.”
This was it. They were talking about the shipment.
“How do we retrieve it?” the stranger asked.
Chen's voice dropped to a lower pitch. Static threatened to drown out their voices. Lloyd made rapid-fire adjustments, struggling to keep the conversation in focus.
"Tonight. After the shift, we drill it out.”
Drill it out? Were they opening pallets? Shipping containers? Maybe by “drilling” they meant removing a false wall?
The two men exchanged a few more words Lloyd couldn't catch before the stranger climbed back into the Accord and drove off. Chen stood alone for a moment, then slowly scanned the parking lot before getting in his Subaru.
Lloyd lowered the parabolic microphone and pulled off the headphones. He had evidence of Chen coordinating with someone outside the facility. A discussion of a shipment and details about how they would retrieve it. The evidence wasn’t airtight but it was more than he’d expected. If he could get his hands on an actual shipment he’d have something the police couldn’t ignore.
He replayed the recording on his phone, listening carefully to the stilted conversation. Hearing it a second time helped. His Mandarin had never been totally fluent, but he understood the gist of the conversation. They’d packaged the drugs inside of something and a drill was required to get it out. Lloyd watched Chen’s red Subaru pull out of the lot and sighed, rubbing his eyes.
The question of what they were drilling would have to wait until tomorrow. He’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours straight, but committing to an early morning stake out had paid handsome dividends. Tomorrow he’d figure out what the hell they were talking about.
Tomorrow turned into the next day, and then the day after. Lloyd tried to catch more conversations with Chen and the man in the suit, but there was no sign of the smuggler returning. By his estimations, it would be another week before a new shipment arrived. He’d used the time to clone both of Chen’s phones and take more recordings, but the extra data hadn’t provided any new leads. Lloyd had memorized the entire recording from listening to it so many times.
“Drill it out.”
Drill what, out of where? He had translated every word individually, written out the whole translation of the conversation, and cross-referenced each phrase, yet he still couldn't make sense of the context.
A knock at his office door broke his attention.
Bishop stepped into the room, carrying a plain brown banker’s box.
“Delivery for you,” Bishop said. “Where do you want it?”
Lloyd took out his headphones. “By the window, if you would.”
Bishop carried the box over and dropped it on the wide ledge of the window with a grunt, then brushed off his hands. He didn’t leave. Instead, he turned and studied Lloyd.
“How’s the smuggling case coming along?”
“I’m making progress.”
“Progress? That's vague."
“I’ve identified a primary suspect. Marcus Chen, a freight handler at the Port of Baltimore. There’s been a pattern of suspicious behavior.”
Lloyd outlined the shift changes, and Chen’s attempts to obscure how many late night shifts he’d been picking up, then handed Bishop a translated printout of the conversation he’d recorded.
“We’re close, but the next delivery would let us catch them in the act.”
“But you still aren’t sure what “drilling” is in reference to?”
“I'm assuming they mean cutting through shipping container walls or breaking into sealed pallets."
Bishop frowned. "When’s the last time you spoke Mandarin?”
“It’s been more than ten years.”
“How well do you speak the language?”
Lloyd clenched his jaw. “I know enough to get by."
"But you're not fluent."
"They're coordinating the theft of a shipment. The specifics don't change that."
Bishop crossed his arms. "I want you to consult a linguistics expert."
"That's not necessary."
"Lloyd—"
"I speak Mandarin. I don't need an expert to tell me what I already know."
Bishop's expression hardened. "This isn't about what you know. It's about what you might be missing."
"I'm not missing anything."
"Really?" Bishop gestured toward the computer. "Because from where I'm standing, you've been sitting in this office for three days replaying the same two-minute conversation over and over. Going on stake outs, spending time in the field, doing a bunch of tech stuff you’d usually have outsourced to Mr. Jensen. If you understood this recording as well as you claim, you'd have moved on days ago."
Lloyd ground his molars, but said nothing.
“You’re trying to prove you can handle everything on your own, like you used to. Because you think you don’t need other people, that you’re better off without a team, working alone.”
“This has nothing to do with—”
“Don’t interrupt me,” Bishop cut him off. "I gave you this case because I thought it would give you something to focus on. Instead, you're using it as some kind of test to prove you're better off flying solo, but you're not."
Lloyd met the older man’s weary gaze but didn't respond.
Bishop sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Look. I'm not asking you to build a new team. Just go talk to a linguistics expert and make sure you get to the bottom of whatever’s bothering you about this recording. Asking for help isn’t a weakness, Lloyd. It’s competence.”
The silence hung between them. Lloyd’s face was set in a flat, emotionless mask. Bishop’s eyes roamed, searching for signs that his message had sunk in.
“Dr. Shao Zhong. He’s a professor of Chinese studies at Johns Hopkins who specializes in translation. I’ll send over his contact info.”
"I can handle—"
"This isn't a debate. You consult the expert, or you hand the case over to someone who will. Your choice."
A muscle ticked in Lloyd’s jaw.
Bishop’s nostrils flared. “You know what your problem is, Hansen? You think relationships are a liability and that needing people makes you weak. Or maybe it’s that being around you makes them weak. I can’t quite figure out which one scares you more. But if anyone gets too close, you’d rather burn that bridge than risk being vulnerable.”
When Lloyd didn’t respond, the older man turned to the door, then paused. “The truth, which I doubt you’ll ever accept, is that you’re weak because you shut everyone out. And someday that’s going to be the death of you.”
He left without waiting for a response. When he was gone, Lloyd sat alone, staring blankly at the computer screen, hating that Bishop was right and hating that he couldn’t slip into the pleasant haze of denial and pretend otherwise.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr. Shao Zhong’s office was symmetrical. In fact, it may have been the most symmetrical space Lloyd had ever seen. There were two identical guest chairs, perfectly aligned in front of the desk. Behind the desk was a credenza flanked by two massive bookcases. There were two photos on the credenza, framed 8x10 portraits of what at first glance appeared to be the same white Samoyed dog, posed at mirror angles.
Lloyd had been sitting there for almost ten minutes, waiting for Dr. Shao’s lecture to wrap up, before he realized that the photos were of different dogs. One wore a blue collar, the other green. He stood up and went around the desk, inspecting the pictures to be sure, wondering what kind of mental disorder made someone adhere to such symmetry that they’d get two exact copies of the same dog.
"Baiyun and Xuebai," a voice said from behind Lloyd.
He turned to find a man dressed in the standard uniform of a college professor: khakis, a tweed blazer and rimless glasses.
“Cloud and Snow,” Lloyd translated, placing the photo back into its proper position. “You have two identical dogs.”
“Why have one when you can have two?” Dr. Shao gestured to one of the guest chairs, inviting Lloyd to sit. “They’re identical in every way except temperament. Baiyun is scared of his shadow. Xuebai would charge into a lion’s den.”
“Clayton tells me you have a translation puzzle,” the professor said after Lloyd had settled.
“I have a recording of two men speaking Mandarin. The audio quality isn’t great and there’s missing pieces, but the general idea is pretty clear. I’m here because Bishop wants to make sure nothing’s been missed.”
“Ah, of course. How is your Mandarian, Mr. Hansen?”
"Functional."
"Functional." Dr. Shao repeated the word like it was something curious. "That is what students say when they can order dumplings but cannot discuss philosophy. How long since you studied?"
"About twenty years."
"And you were never fluent?"
Lloyd fought to prevent himself from grinding his teeth. What was it with everyone questioning his language skills lately? “I can understand what they’re saying.”
"Understanding and comprehending are not always the same thing." Dr. Shao leaned back, steepling his fingers. "Let me hear the recording."
Lloyd set up his phone and played the audio. The static and tinny voices flowed from the speaker, Chen’s rough, heavily accented Mandarin and the stranger’s smooth tones.
Dr. Shao listened with his eyes closed and his brow furrowed.
“Tell me what you heard,” he said when the tape finished.
“The first speaker asks if the cargo is inside. Chen confirms it's all inside and very safe. The other man asks when they'll retrieve it. Chen says they’ll drill it out tonight.”
"Drill it out."
"Yes. I'm assuming they mean cutting through shipping container walls or breaking into sealed cargo."
Dr. Shao tilted his head. "You have made an assumption about what the phrase, “inside” means. Yes?"
“That’s what Chen says.”
"Inside of what?"
Lloyd pursed his lips, fighting to keep his tone neutral. "Inside the shipping container."
"That is one interpretation." Dr. Shao stood and gestured to a massive chart on the wall covered in Chinese characters and branching lines showing grammatical relationships. "Mandarin is a language of context, Mr. Hansen. Every word exists in relation to what surrounds it. The pronoun ‘it' appears three times in this conversation. You have assumed all three refer to the same object."
"The shipment."
"Perhaps." Dr. Shao tapped the chart. "Or perhaps the first use refers to the shipment, and the second refers to something within the shipment. Context determines reference. In English, your pronouns are more rigid. 'He' is male, 'she' is female, 'it' is neuter. But in Mandarin?" He spread his hands. "It can mean many things. The key is tracking the specific meaning.”
Lloyd frowned. "They're talking about the same shipment."
"Are they?" Dr. Shao played the recording again, pausing at specific moments. "Listen here. 'Is your cargo inside?' But inside what? The container? The facility? Was the cargo moved to a third site? Are they talking about something else?" He fast-forwarded. "Now here: “drill it out.” What would they be drilling?"
"Locks. Metal. Concrete. Sealed cargo containers. The list could go on forever.”
"The natural phrasing of the idea would be to drill into something. We drill into things, not out of them. Unless whatever you’re retrieving is inside of something that would require a drill to open that object and get the contents out.”
Lloyd stared at him.
"The verb choice is very specific," Dr. Shao continued, warming to his subject with the enthusiasm of a professor with a captive student. "This word they’ve chosen, it means to bore, to drill, to pierce. And the other verb, which is said by the native speaker, means to extract, to bring out. Together? They’re talking about removing something from inside something else by drilling. Not cutting open a container. Drilling into an object."
"The machinery parts," Lloyd said, the realization dawning slowly.
"What machinery parts?"
“The shipments I’m investigating are industrial machinery components. They’re heavy, solid metal. But with the weight fluctuations between the port of origin and the destination…”
Dr. Shao smiled. "Ah. Now you are thinking."
"They're casting hollow parts, filling them with whatever they’re smuggling, and sealing it up for transport. Probably drugs. Encasing it in metal would hide it from drug dogs. Everything looks legitimate, but they can’t quite keep the weights equal, so there’s always a few pounds of variance.”
“So they’re drilling out the smuggled contents after replacing the altered machine parts with authentic ones,” Dr. Shao surmised.
Lloyd tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, almost amused by how simple the explanation had turned out to be. “That’s why they’re so confident. The parts were an almost perfect transport mechanism."
"Very good." Dr. Shao returned to his desk, looking pleased. "Now, let us discuss pronouns. Because this is what you missed, yes? The nested reference. Inside did not mean inside the container. It meant inside the machinery parts. And “it” did not refer only to the shipment. “It” referred to what was hidden within the shipment."
Lloyd nodded, his mind still focused on how he was going to prove all of this to a narcotics detective, as Dr. Shao settled into lecture mode.
"In Mandarin, we must always track our references with great care. A pronoun is not just a word. It is a pointer, an arrow directing you to its antecedent. But unlike English, where the antecedent is usually close and obvious, in Mandarin it can be separated by many clauses, or implied by context rather than explicitly stated. You must pay attention to every marker, every contextual clue."
He took a legal pad and began sketching a diagram, drawing boxes within boxes and a stream of arrows connecting a set of pronouns to a larger set of references.
"Think of it like this: each pronoun is a thread. As you read or listen, you must hold all these threads in your mind, tracing each back to what it references. Lose track of one thread, and you lose meaning. Confuse which thread connects to which reference, and you misunderstand everything."
The professor ripped off the diagram. Lloyd took it, mainly to be polite, since the man had been helpful.
“Nice. Tracking the pronoun references…you do good work, doc.”
“Precisely. The shift in context changes everything. References can nest inside other references. If you’re not careful, if you assume all instances of the same pronoun refer back to the same object, you’ll miss the truth when it’s hiding in plain sight.”
Lloyd folded the diagram and slid it into his briefcase, already thinking about traffic on the way back to D.C. and whether he could get this on the desk of a detective before the end of the day.
"Thank you for your time, Dr. Shao. This was very helpful."
"Of course it was. Clayton said you were stubborn but intelligent. I am glad he was correct on both counts." He stood, extending his hand. "If you have more translation puzzles, you know where to find me. I am always happy to teach."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The news called it the largest drug bust in Maryland for the last three decades. Lloyd watched the glossy, glowing segment that credited the port police for the victory and felt nothing. There was no smug satisfaction in having outplayed the smugglers. He didn’t even have the urge to casually stroll past Andy Barber’s office talking loudly about the amounts recovered in the bust.
A familiar ache settled in his chest, deep and dull. Once again he felt like he was standing at the edge of a cliff with no idea where to step to get away from the danger. The distraction of solving the case had temporarily masked the pain, like slapping a fresh coat of paint on rotting floorboards. His brief second of pleasure had faded as soon as it arrived.
The mystery was solved. His office was still empty and the silence closed in exactly as it had before.
Lloyd was at his desk, flipping through files when Jen appeared.
She leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. “I saw the news. They said your Port of Baltimore case was the largest drug bust in Maryland since the 90s.”
He glanced up. Registered her presence, tilted his head in acknowledgment and returned his attention to the files in front of him. "Yeah."
“No victory lap? No smug comments? Who are you, and what have you done with the real Lloyd Hansen?”
"Mm."
Jen waited expectantly. When he didn't offer anything more, her brows lowered. The silence stretched between them and neither moved to smooth over the awkward edge of tension.
"Okay," Jen stepped into his office and reached back, closing the door behind her. "Spill. What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing's wrong with me."
"You just broke up a major narcotics ring and you couldn't care less." She moved closer to his desk, stopping directly in front of him, planting her hands on her hips.
"You look like you haven't had a decent meal in weeks. Your face is gaunt and your shirts look too big, which is worrying because they used to look too small.”
Lloyd glanced down. His shirt was the same size he always wore. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You look like you're wasting away. Are you sick? When’s the last time you ate a full meal? How much weight have you lost? Thirty pounds? Forty?”
Lloyd blinked, then leaned back in his chair, putting distance between them. “I eat just fine, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Alright. When’s the last time you lifted weights? Because you sure as hell aren’t maintaining your old physique.”
"I'm training for a marathon."
Jen's expression didn't change. "A marathon."
"Yeah."
"Since when do you run marathons?"
"Since now."
She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly not buying it.
"This isn’t normal weight loss. You look like you're wasting away." Jen's voice sharpened with something that might have been genuine concern if it wasn't delivered with her characteristic bluntness. "Lloyd, you look sick. Are you sick?"
"No."
When she spoke again her voice had lost some of its edge. "Did you break up with Princess because you found out you had something? Cancer, maybe?”
The question landed like a punch to the gut. Lloyd stiffened.
“If you’re trying to push everyone away because—”
"I'm not sick," Lloyd said. "There's nothing wrong with me. I'm just training for a marathon. That's it."
Jen studied him for a long moment. Her lips compressed into a flat line. Without Princess as a buffer between them, the room sizzled with tension.
"Princess asked me to check on you. She wants to know you’re okay."
Something twisted in Lloyd’s chest. Of course she had. Even after everything he'd done, she still cared, because that was who she was.
"Tell her I'm fine," he said.
"Are you?"
"Yes."
Jen shook her head. “When did you turn into such a terrible liar?” She moved toward the door then paused, glancing back. "For what it's worth, I think breaking up with her was the stupidest thing you've ever done. But it looks like you’re punishing yourself enough without anyone else piling on. Eat something. And if you’re really training for a marathon, start lifting again. You need the extra bulk. Skinny isn’t a good look for you.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Lloyd stared at the spot where she’d been. He looked down at his hands. They looked the same as always. He touched his face, felt the sharper angles of his jaw, the way his cheekbones stood out more prominently. He had no idea when the changes had occurred. Maybe because he hadn’t been looking in the mirror much as of late.
The box of files Bishop had brought up from the front desk sat on the window ledge. They contained the personnel records of the hospital that Detective Roth had unearthed from police archives. Apparently Roth was also unsatisfied with Nguyen’s arrest, perhaps as much as Lloyd himself was.
He carried the box over to his desk and flipped through it, annoyed that the case was still on his mind. With Nguyen clammed up and Laine Cruz unable to give any specific details to either prove or disprove that Nguyen had been her kidnapper, circumstantial evidence was doing a damned good job of turning the prosecution's paper thin case into a slam dunk. It was a full-circle moment and Lloyd didn't like it any better than he had six months before, when he’d taken the case. He slammed the lid back on the file box. The sound echoed off the walls, then faded away.
Lloyd decided he was done for the day.
He was halfway to the parking garage when his phone rang. Landon's name flashed on the screen. He let it go to voicemail, but Landon was persistent. The phone kept ringing.
Lloyd answered. "What."
"Wow. Hello to you too." Landon sounded unbothered by Lloyd's bursque greeting. "I'm calling to confirm you're still RSVP'd to the wedding. Without a plus one."
That pulled him up short. He barely remembered responding to the invitation. Then it occurred to him that he hadn't sent in an RSVP note.
"I never said I was coming."
"You never said you weren't."
"I'm not."
There was a pause. "Lloyd—"
"Congratulations. I hope everything's wonderful, but I'm not coming to your wedding. I'll send a gift, okay?"
"You're not coming because of Princess.”
Lloyd didn't answer.
"Look, I know things ended badly. I know it's going to be awkward. But she accepted Zach's offer—"
"What offer?"
There was a pause. "He didn't tell you?"
"Landon, whatever you have to say, spit it out before I track you down and strangle it out of you."
"Princess is working for us now. She's partnered with Marco Lattimer."
The words slammed into him. Heat erupted in Lloyd's chest, something bubbling and molten and caustic that spread through his ribcage and rolled over his skin in a wave. That sick, feverish heat where everything felt too close, too warm. His face flushed. His collar was too tight. His ribs were too tight, he couldn’t get a full breath.
Marco Lattimer. Princess. Working together.
Lloyd opened his mouth and nothing came out. The parking garage tilted slightly.
"Lloyd?" Landon's voice sounded distant. "Are you still there?"
"You don't want me there," Lloyd said. His voice came out calm, level, remote. How he managed that, he had no idea.
"Look, you broke up with her."
"I didn't tell her to quit the firm!" The words came out sharper than he intended, louder.
Landon laughed, but there was no humor in it. "What, you thought she'd stick around and everything would go back to normal? That you'd just pass each other in the hallways and pretend nothing happened?"
Lloyd stood in the dim fluorescent lighting of the parking garage, one hand braced against the cement wall. The urge to throw his phone, to break something, to make the world as wrecked as he felt, surged.
“Okay then." Landon's voice had shifted, softened. "That's... I didn't realize you actually thought she'd stay."
The silence stretched.
"Just come to the wedding," Landon said after a long minute of silence. "Get this awkward post-breakup stage over with so everyone can move on."
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"You can't keep blowing everyone off, Lloyd. Get over yourself and come to the wedding."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't I?" Landon's tone hardened. "Because from where I'm sitting, this worked out exactly how you wanted it to. You broke up with Princess, torched every close relationship you'd built, and now you get to hole up in your office and lick your pathetic self-inflicted wounds. Fuck that. Be a man and face the music. Get in a fistfight with Zach after the reception or something and sort it out. Apologize to Princess. And while you're at it, apologize to Jake."
"To Jake? What the hell did I do to Jake?!"
"Blocked his number, for starters." Landon exhaled sharply. "You know, I feel like I'm talking to the old Lloyd. I thought you'd changed. I thought Princess had taught you something."
"She did."
"Then prove it. Show up. Be uncomfortable. Let it suck for a few hours but don’t hide."
Lloyd leaned against the concrete wall, exhaustion settling over him. The fever-rage had faded, leaving him cold and hollow. "I don't want to make things worse for her."
"You won't. She knows you might come. She's prepared for it. And honestly? I think part of her hopes you will."
"You don't know that."
"Maybe not. But I know her well enough to think she’ll want some kind of closure.”
Another pause.
“I'm not asking you to fix things with her. I'm asking you to show up. Don't take the easy way out and disappear.”
Lloyd closed his eyes. The smart thing to do was refuse. Stay away. Avoid the mess.
"When is it?" Lloyd asked.
"Saturday. Ten o'clock. I'll text you the address."
"I'm not making any promises."
"You never do."
The call ended. Lloyd stood there, phone in hand, wondering what the hell he'd just agreed to.
Is it mean that I don’t even care that he’s struggling right now?
He hurt Princess so unnecessarily - she trusted him- and he bulldozed her life 😡
He better figure out a way to fix it and do it soon. I’m not happy with him.
A grumpy Lloyd doing stake outs and holed up in his office to avoid the truth that he can no longer do all of this on his own?
He can no longer work without a team and I have a feeling that soon he will realize he no longer wants to try to “life” on his own either.
At least I hope that’s the case….
This is still Princess’ story but I wouldn’t mind if he figured out how to make things right with her.
Ugh…. I don’t even want him to go to the wedding- Lloyd is right in this case- he just needs to stay away. Let her be- let her figure out how to heal without him showing up and confusing her all over again.
Why is Landon and everyone else pushing this so hard? Like sure, they can probably see that things are different with Princess in his life…. But really, I think she’s better off without him.
Unless this man changed his ways significantly- I want nothing to do with him. He’s not good enough for her- at least not current Lloyd Hansen- and he sure as sh*t doesn’t deserve her 😡
Ooooh, and he also owes my fictional boyfriend an apology 😡
Summary: Still reeling from the breakup, Lloyd throws himself into a new case to prove he can fight his battles alone. When the investigation forces him to accept help from an unexpected source, he’s confronted with the cost of shutting people out.
Word Count: 7,765
Warnings: Some bad language, angst, depression, drug smuggling, criminal activity, and disordered eating
Masterlist
Author’s Note: I used every second of 2025 to finish up this chapter and came in just under the wire. Happy New Year everyone!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Chapter 33: Subtraction
The arrival of April turned Bishop & Howard into a madhouse.
It started on the first floor, where tax lawyers scrambled to meet deadlines, their offices littered with W-2s and extension forms. One floor up, divorce attorneys fielded angry calls about spring-break custody disputes. The nonprofit team above them raced to close their fiscal year before the cutoff as grant money hung in the balance. Lloyd's floor buzzed with criminal litigators buried under packed court calendars. Trial prep consumed conference rooms around the clock. Upstairs, corporate hammered out a deluge of first-quarter filings: 10-Ks, proxy statements, and urgent SEC documents. On the top floor, the patent department fought to settle final details before the wave of summer product launches, racing against competitors and the glacial pace of the patent office.
Phones trilled. Printers rumbled. Stressed out colleagues clashed in the halls. The firm was running at full steam. Everyone was in motion. Everyone was drowning in work.
Except Lloyd.
His desk was bare. The silence pressed in, claustrophobic, as he listened to the storm of effort around him while his corner office stayed as silent as a cathedral on Monday. He braced for someone to come and drag him upstairs to corporate, back to the field he’d trained in and hadn’t touched for thirteen years. As much as he dreaded it, he suspected even that wasn’t coming.
When he first joined the firm, he’d been the office pariah. No one wanted to share an elevator with the ex-spy turned international criminal. He didn’t get approached in the halls and when he entered a room conversation stopped. People shifted out of his path if they saw him coming their way. He’d liked it that way. The distance had eroded over time. He couldn’t pin down exactly when the change occurred, but it was after Princess joined his staff. She’d sanded down his sharpest edges and made him easier to be around. In turn, people relaxed.
It wasn’t that he was warm or friendly. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Just…non-threatening. Less scary.
People rode the elevator with him.
In the wake of Princess’ abrupt departure he was the office pariah again, but in a more personal way. Before, people kept their distance because they were afraid of him. Now they felt entitled to their opinions. Conversations around him went quiet not out of fear, but because he’d been the topic at hand. The reactions proved this was a new era. Five years ago he’d been a lone wolf. In trying to resume the mantle, he discovered solitude didn’t fit the way it used to.
Princess had changed him and everyone else at the firm. Without her curled into the corner of the sofa working on her laptop, his office felt smaller. He told himself it was just the room playing tricks on him, but even in his own mind the lie couldn’t hold back the truth.
Lloyd continued to arrive at seven sharp. This morning, his desk was stacked with briefs from the criminal attorneys, cases he’d promised to review and hadn’t. They were too busy to press him and likely assumed he was swamped when he didn’t respond. They were wrong.
He tossed his briefcase onto the sofa and sank into his chair. The red message light on the phone blinked. For one hopeful moment, he thought it might be Zach, or Landon. He pressed the button.
“Mr. Hansen, this is Genevive from HR. I just wanted to remind you to file your billable hours for last month by noon today. The form can be found—”
He dropped the handset back into the cradle. Billable hours. Something Princess had always handled for him, so he’d never bothered learning how. Last month he’d bribed Jen to do it for him. This month he was on his own.
Lloyd scrubbed his hands over his face. This was his life. Back to square one, or perhaps even further behind. He was painfully alone and no one was coming to save him. He'd done his damnedest to make sure of that.
His appetite was low. He couldn't remember the last time he'd finished a meal. Half-eaten entrees went stale on his desk. Sleep only came in fragments, two or three hours at a time before his mind dragged him back to consciousness. The Ferragamo belt he’d fastened on the same notch for fifteen years was suddenly too loose. He didn’t allow himself to process the implications of these developments.
Instead, he threw himself into his one remaining constant: exercise. He dove into a punishing training schedule that exhausted him enough to take the edge off his grim obsessive thoughts. It wasn’t working very well, but he kept trying.
A soft knock sounded on Lloyd's door, followed by footsteps that proceeded into the room without waiting for permission, an act that tipped him off to the identity of his visitor. Bishop stopped in front of the desk, file in hand. He didn’t sit down, just studied Lloyd for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“You know,” he said at last, “I thought you’d at least come talk to me.”
Lloyd straightened. “About what?”
“Don’t. Don’t play dumb, you can’t pull it off,” Bishop’s voice carried the bite of someone holding back the heat of their temper. “You know what.”
“I’m not discussing that.”
Bishop’s expression shifted from anger to fatigue. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened.
“You think burying it will make things easier? Princess is gone, and you’re walking around looking like a zombie.”
Lloyd didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t answer.
The silence stretched between them until Bishop exhaled sharply. Whatever hope he’d had of cracking Lloyd’s shell seemed to drain away. He dropped the file on the desk. It landed with a slap.
“Fine. We’ll do it your way.” His tone shifted, turning clipped and professional. “Our new client is a shipping conglomerate. They suspect one of their routes is being used for smuggling. The police took a look and moved on, so the company has asked us to dig.”
Lloyd opened the file. It was thin. There were invoices, customs slips, and a few grainy photos. In the back was an executive summary that he skimmed.
“Good. I needed something to break up the monotony.”
Bishop frowned. “This isn’t a one-man job.”
“I’ll manage.” Lloyd spread the file contents across his desk. “You’ll remember I used to do everything solo. I don’t need Zach or Landon or Jake—or anyone else—to handle a case.”
“And Princess?” Bishop asked.
Lloyd didn’t flinch. “Especially not her.”
Something flickered over the old man’s expression. Anger, maybe, or grief? Lloyd couldn’t tell.
“If you think you're stronger alone..." Bishop leaned on the back of a chair and sighed. “Writers who refuse editors think they can catch their own mistakes. But you can't see your blind spots, Lloyd. That's why they're called blind spots. And the problems you don’t see are the ones that cost you everything.”
Lloyd arched an eyebrow. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Bishop turned and left.
For the first time in weeks, Lloyd felt the faintest burn of interest. It wasn't much, just a flicker of curiosity at a puzzle that needed solving, but it was something. He opened the file and started reading, properly this time, not just skimming.
He sifted through the documents and gathered the basics. Six months ago, a U.S.-based shipping company that had long relied on paper manifests digitized its system. Soon after, a logistics analyst noticed a pattern: at the Port of Baltimore, cargo containers from two specific suppliers were consistently having extended intake delays. Not long, maybe fifteen to twenty minutes longer than the rest. All the shipments were logged as “industrial machinery components.”
The receiving company had investigated and found small but persistent discrepancies in the declared weights. Again, not much. Just fractions of a kilo, always lighter than the originals listed from overseas. The customs officers chalked it up to measurement variance. D.C Metro police had given it a brief look and buried it at the bottom of their backlog.
Lloyd reviewed the summary and requested hard copies of the shipping and customs paperwork. The company sent over twenty-six boxes of files that turned his office into chaos. By midnight, the hum of work had faded to silence. Lloyd was surrounded by manifests, desk littered with coffee cups and paper tape from his calculator. He’d sorted the shipments into two piles: origin documents from Port-au-Prince and intake records from Baltimore.
He color-coded as he went, using red for anomalies, blue for questions, black for commentary. Patterns began to emerge. The Haitian manifests described “machined steel joints,” “bearing housings,” and “pump casings.” All items that should have weighed identically at both ends of the journey, but they didn’t. The Baltimore records were consistently lighter, sometimes by as little as a pound, sometimes by three or four.
It wasn’t shrinkage. It was subtraction. He could appreciate how easy it would be to dismiss such minor numbers. People often didn’t notice something had gone missing until they were forced to account for it.
He studied the timestamps. Gates C and D kept showing up during the longest scan-to-intake gaps and the same two freight handlers were on shift each time. Rubbing his aching temples, he flipped through the shipment photos and found nothing of interest, just stacks of dull, gray castings wrapped in oil paper. Machined parts were supposed to be completely uniform so the weight variances were curious. The smuggling was painfully obvious, especially given the two freight handlers and the repeated pattern of timing and location. Which meant whatever the smugglers were doing to hide their cargo, they were convinced it was bullet proof.
A shadow crossed the room and he looked up to see Jen in the doorway.
“It’s past midnight,” she said.
“I peak after midnight.”
“Right. What’s this disaster?”
“Shipping manifests and customs filings.”
Her eyes skimmed the heaps of files. “Gripping.”
“More than you’d think.”
He held up a manifest, the Haitian carbon copy side by side with Baltimore’s scan. “See this? Same shipment, same container ID, but the weights don’t match. The Baltimore intake comes up a few pounds lighter every time.”
Jen leaned in, scanning the papers. “Machinery parts lose weight now?”
“They don’t. Not on their own, anyway.”
Her gaze flicked over his color-coded notes. “Ah, someone’s giving them Ozempic.”
Lloyd snorted. “If only the explanation was so benign.”
“You know, most people would ignore a few pounds.”
“Most people don’t spend their Friday nights comparing ten months worth of shipping manifest data.”
“They don’t know the fun they’re missing out on,” Jen said. “So, what’s the theory? Dock workers stealing scrap metal?”
“Possibly. But this pattern, with the amounts being so small, makes smuggling a better fit.”
Jen raised an eyebrow. “And you’d know that how?”
“A couple of hours with a calculator and too much caffeine.”
“I thought you didn’t drink coffee.”
Lloyd shrugged. “Usually I don’t.”
“Well, you’ve got a pattern, time, and suspects. Can’t you dump this on the police?”
“We know where and when, but not what’s inside or who’s pulling it out. Until then, this is just an interesting spreadsheet.”
“What do my tax dollars actually pay for again?”
“I have no idea. If you figure that one out, let me know.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Port of Baltimore customs office smelled like burnt coffee and vinegar. Lloyd adjusted the laminated OSHA consultant badge he’d clipped to the breast pocket of his jacket. He’d printed it out on Jen’s color printer after she left last night.
The woman behind the desk didn’t look up from her computer when he stopped in front of her. A nameplate read “Darlene - Administrative Coordinator.” She wore cat-eye glasses and a streak of hot pink in her white hair.
“Can I help you?” she asked, not breaking eye contact with her computer monitor.
"Lloyd Harrington, OSHA. I'm here to review your shift documentation. Routine safety audit."
Darlene looked up, unimpressed. "Nobody told me OSHA was coming."
“Announcing ourselves defeats the purpose.”
She quit typing and folded her arms. “Uh-huh. So you show up at 4:15 AM on a Tuesday, right before shift change. Nice. Didn’t know OSHA officers got up this early.”
“I sent an email to Daniel Reeves last week, asking for a copy of the schedule. It’s gone unanswered, so here I am.”
“To who?”
“Dan Reeves,” Lloyd repeated.
"Dan's been on medical leave for three weeks. Back surgery.”
Lloyd shrugged. “Look. I’m here to verify your shift coverage. It’ll take thirty minutes, max. I need a copy of your personnel schedules to confirm you’re maintaining adequate staffing ratios.”
“Who’s your supervisor?”
“Greg Stillwater.”
Darlene grunted but didn’t reach for the schedule. She was turning out to be a surprisingly scrappy guard dog.
"I can come back with a formal inspection notice, but that would trigger a full facility review. Those take about six weeks, involve multiple departments, and generate a lot of paperwork. Or you could let me glance at your shift schedules for all the main gates, and I'll be gone before shift change even starts."
Darlene fixed him with an unblinking stare. “You’re threatening me with paperwork? I’ve been doing paperwork since before you were born.”
“Then you’re aware this battle isn’t worth your time.”
"Fine." She pushed back from her desk. "Wait here."
Darlene returned with a thick binder and dropped it on the counter. "Shift schedules for the last six months. You touch anything else, I'm calling your boss."
Lloyd opened the binder. The schedules were typed, but heavily edited. Names crossed out, new ones penciled in, final corrections marked in red pen. He scanned for the dates he'd flagged in the manifests, cross-referencing the timestamps from memory. Gate C showed the most red ink. Lloyd had expected to see two different names rotating through the suspicious shifts, but the same substitute appeared over and over again: Marcus Chen.
“Finished?” Darlene asked.
"Just a moment.” Lloyd took out his phone and snapped a photo of the most recent shift change, with the scribbled correction of Marcus taking another worker’s shift. Darlene's hand slapped down on the binder before he could take another.
"No photos."
"OSHA regulations allow documentation of—"
"I don't care what OSHA allows. No photos of the files. You want copies? Fill out a request and wait like everyone else."
Lloyd met her eyes. She wasn't backing down. He could push it, but there was no point. He’d gotten what he needed.
"Fine." He closed the binder and slid it back across the counter. "I appreciate your cooperation, Ms. Kowalski."
"Sure you do." She snatched the binder like he might abscond with it if she didn’t protect it.
He couldn’t resist toying with her. “I'll also need to inspect the break room. Make sure you've got adequate seating, proper lighting, that sort of thing."
She pointed down the hall. "Third door on the left. You've got five minutes. Touch anything that's not a chair or a lightbulb and I'll call security."
"Understood."
Lloyd found the break room, a re-purposed office that was close to the docks. Darlene had returned to her computer, but she was watching him in the reflection of her monitor.
He stepped into the cramped room, allowing the door to fall half-shut. The one window looked out over the loading dock and as fortune would have it, offered a clear line of sight to Gates C and D. He withdrew what looked like a USB power bank from his pocket and positioned it on the windowsill before checking the tiny hidden camera was streaming live footage to his phone. When he turned, Darlene was in the doorway, arms crossed.
"The break room is sufficient," Lloyd said, moving to pass her.
"Hold on." Darlene strode to the window and picked up the power bank. "You forgot this."
Lloyd glanced at it, then back at her. "That's not mine."
"It wasn't here this morning."
"One of the workers must have left it."
“Nobody but me comes in here. The workers take their breaks outside where they can smoke. I'll run it over to the lost and found."
"Someone will come back for it. You know how people are about their chargers."
"That's exactly why it should go to the lost and found."
“Whoever left it will realize it’s missing when they pack up to leave,” Lloyd said.
Darlene hesitated. He hoped she was considering the possibility that one of the nightshift workers used the room when she wasn’t around.
"Just leave it. If it's still there by the end of the week, take it in.”
She scowled at him for a moment, suspicion palpable. Lloyd held her gaze, expression neutral, looking every inch the bored government inspector.
Finally, Darlene put the power bank back. "If it's still here tonight, it’s going to the lost and found.”
Lloyd followed her into the hall. "You'll receive a full copy of our report in ten to twenty business days."
"I can't wait," she said flatly, herding him toward the front entrance.
In the parking lot, Lloyd settled in his car, pushed the driver’s seat back as far as it would go, and opened the app on his phone to pull up the camera feed. He had eyes and ears on Gate C and D, and he'd narrowed the suspect list down to one man: Marcus Chen. Plus, when his spy camera had served its purpose, Darlene would dispose of it for him, giving him one less loose end to tie up.
Who said he needed a team? He'd blow this case wide open in two days and Bishop would get off his back about needing a team.
The next four days blurred together. He watched the parking lot, listened to hours of meaningless audio, and wondered how he’d ended up on a surveillance detail at this stage of his career. Zach had people for this. Lloyd told himself he’d find people of his own, though the idea felt less like a plan and more like wishful thinking.
His camera was still streaming footage, so Darlene must have forgotten about her plans to get rid of it, but there was nothing useful to report from the surveillance. Chen showed up for his shifts, did his job, and left. No meetings. No suspicious calls. No suspicious movements. Lloyd had watched hours of surveillance footage and learned nothing new. The morning of the fifth day was no different.
As usual, Lloyd showed up before dawn, listened to the night’s audio feed, kept one eye on the video, and waited for the 5 AM shift change. Marcus Chen would be getting off work in half an hour. Lloyd watched the red Subaru he knew belonged to his suspect, parked three rows away from the employee entrance. The lot was nearly empty, but a few semi-trucks idled near the loading docks, their exhaust visible in the morning air. Lloyd’s handheld radio was in the cup-holder, tuned to a re-run of a baseball game he didn’t care about, but the chatter was a mild enough distraction to keep him alert.
Movement on the video feed caught his attention. Chen emerged from a shipping container and headed towards the customs building. He was a tall, thin man walking at an unhurried pace carrying a lunch cooler. Lloyd watched him as far as the video surveillance would allow, then shifted his attention to the doors facing the parking lot. Before they opened, a black Honda Accord with dark windows pulled into the parking lot and stopped directly behind the red Subaru. Lloyd sat up straighter, turning off the radio.
A short man emerged from the passenger seat of the Honda. He was built like a human tank and wore a navy suit.
Across the parking lot, the employee entrance of the customs building swung open and Chen emerged. He spotted the man waiting by his car when he was about halfway across the parking lot. Lloyd grumbled, rustling through the bag of tech he’d tossed in his backseat, not expecting to need them. He hadn’t thought a meeting would occur right out in the open, away from the listening device he’d planted.
He came up with the parabolic microphone and was still assembling it when Chen reached the newcomer. Lloyd cracked his window halfway in hopes of catching some of their conversation, but they were too far away. He fumbled, trying to connect the wires to the compact satellite dish. By the time he got it assembled and slipped the headphones on, the pair had been talking for at least thirty seconds. Lloyd paused, static crackling in his ears as he adjusted the volume of the microphone until their voices registered. The sound quality was like hearing through a tin can, but it would have to do.
“...don’t like… out here,” Chen was saying. The conversation was in Mandarin.
The other man’s response was indecipherable, gargled by the vibrations of a semi-truck passing behind them.
Lloyd twisted the dial, trying to filter out background noise.
“...tonight,” the stranger said. His accent was native, fluid where Chen’s was flat, with the uneven tones of someone who had learned Mandarin but never mastered it.
There was another exchange, which Lloyd used to adjust the microphone. He strained to follow the conversation and caught only fragments as the sound quality fluctuated.
“All inside. Very safe.”
This was it. They were talking about the shipment.
“How do we retrieve it?” the stranger asked.
Chen's voice dropped to a lower pitch. Static threatened to drown out their voices. Lloyd made rapid-fire adjustments, struggling to keep the conversation in focus.
"Tonight. After the shift, we drill it out.”
Drill it out? Were they opening pallets? Shipping containers? Maybe by “drilling” they meant removing a false wall?
The two men exchanged a few more words Lloyd couldn't catch before the stranger climbed back into the Accord and drove off. Chen stood alone for a moment, then slowly scanned the parking lot before getting in his Subaru.
Lloyd lowered the parabolic microphone and pulled off the headphones. He had evidence of Chen coordinating with someone outside the facility. A discussion of a shipment and details about how they would retrieve it. The evidence wasn’t airtight but it was more than he’d expected. If he could get his hands on an actual shipment he’d have something the police couldn’t ignore.
He replayed the recording on his phone, listening carefully to the stilted conversation. Hearing it a second time helped. His Mandarin had never been totally fluent, but he understood the gist of the conversation. They’d packaged the drugs inside of something and a drill was required to get it out. Lloyd watched Chen’s red Subaru pull out of the lot and sighed, rubbing his eyes.
The question of what they were drilling would have to wait until tomorrow. He’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours straight, but committing to an early morning stake out had paid handsome dividends. Tomorrow he’d figure out what the hell they were talking about.
Tomorrow turned into the next day, and then the day after. Lloyd tried to catch more conversations with Chen and the man in the suit, but there was no sign of the smuggler returning. By his estimations, it would be another week before a new shipment arrived. He’d used the time to clone both of Chen’s phones and take more recordings, but the extra data hadn’t provided any new leads. Lloyd had memorized the entire recording from listening to it so many times.
“Drill it out.”
Drill what, out of where? He had translated every word individually, written out the whole translation of the conversation, and cross-referenced each phrase, yet he still couldn't make sense of the context.
A knock at his office door broke his attention.
Bishop stepped into the room, carrying a plain brown banker’s box.
“Delivery for you,” Bishop said. “Where do you want it?”
Lloyd took out his headphones. “By the window, if you would.”
Bishop carried the box over and dropped it on the wide ledge of the window with a grunt, then brushed off his hands. He didn’t leave. Instead, he turned and studied Lloyd.
“How’s the smuggling case coming along?”
“I’m making progress.”
“Progress? That's vague."
“I’ve identified a primary suspect. Marcus Chen, a freight handler at the Port of Baltimore. There’s been a pattern of suspicious behavior.”
Lloyd outlined the shift changes, and Chen’s attempts to obscure how many late night shifts he’d been picking up, then handed Bishop a translated printout of the conversation he’d recorded.
“We’re close, but the next delivery would let us catch them in the act.”
“But you still aren’t sure what “drilling” is in reference to?”
“I'm assuming they mean cutting through shipping container walls or breaking into sealed pallets."
Bishop frowned. "When’s the last time you spoke Mandarin?”
“It’s been more than ten years.”
“How well do you speak the language?”
Lloyd clenched his jaw. “I know enough to get by."
"But you're not fluent."
"They're coordinating the theft of a shipment. The specifics don't change that."
Bishop crossed his arms. "I want you to consult a linguistics expert."
"That's not necessary."
"Lloyd—"
"I speak Mandarin. I don't need an expert to tell me what I already know."
Bishop's expression hardened. "This isn't about what you know. It's about what you might be missing."
"I'm not missing anything."
"Really?" Bishop gestured toward the computer. "Because from where I'm standing, you've been sitting in this office for three days replaying the same two-minute conversation over and over. Going on stake outs, spending time in the field, doing a bunch of tech stuff you’d usually have outsourced to Mr. Jensen. If you understood this recording as well as you claim, you'd have moved on days ago."
Lloyd ground his molars, but said nothing.
“You’re trying to prove you can handle everything on your own, like you used to. Because you think you don’t need other people, that you’re better off without a team, working alone.”
“This has nothing to do with—”
“Don’t interrupt me,” Bishop cut him off. "I gave you this case because I thought it would give you something to focus on. Instead, you're using it as some kind of test to prove you're better off flying solo, but you're not."
Lloyd met the older man’s weary gaze but didn't respond.
Bishop sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Look. I'm not asking you to build a new team. Just go talk to a linguistics expert and make sure you get to the bottom of whatever’s bothering you about this recording. Asking for help isn’t a weakness, Lloyd. It’s competence.”
The silence hung between them. Lloyd’s face was set in a flat, emotionless mask. Bishop’s eyes roamed, searching for signs that his message had sunk in.
“Dr. Shao Zhong. He’s a professor of Chinese studies at Johns Hopkins who specializes in translation. I’ll send over his contact info.”
"I can handle—"
"This isn't a debate. You consult the expert, or you hand the case over to someone who will. Your choice."
A muscle ticked in Lloyd’s jaw.
Bishop’s nostrils flared. “You know what your problem is, Hansen? You think relationships are a liability and that needing people makes you weak. Or maybe it’s that being around you makes them weak. I can’t quite figure out which one scares you more. But if anyone gets too close, you’d rather burn that bridge than risk being vulnerable.”
When Lloyd didn’t respond, the older man turned to the door, then paused. “The truth, which I doubt you’ll ever accept, is that you’re weak because you shut everyone out. And someday that’s going to be the death of you.”
He left without waiting for a response. When he was gone, Lloyd sat alone, staring blankly at the computer screen, hating that Bishop was right and hating that he couldn’t slip into the pleasant haze of denial and pretend otherwise.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr. Shao Zhong’s office was symmetrical. In fact, it may have been the most symmetrical space Lloyd had ever seen. There were two identical guest chairs, perfectly aligned in front of the desk. Behind the desk was a credenza flanked by two massive bookcases. There were two photos on the credenza, framed 8x10 portraits of what at first glance appeared to be the same white Samoyed dog, posed at mirror angles.
Lloyd had been sitting there for almost ten minutes, waiting for Dr. Shao’s lecture to wrap up, before he realized that the photos were of different dogs. One wore a blue collar, the other green. He stood up and went around the desk, inspecting the pictures to be sure, wondering what kind of mental disorder made someone adhere to such symmetry that they’d get two exact copies of the same dog.
"Baiyun and Xuebai," a voice said from behind Lloyd.
He turned to find a man dressed in the standard uniform of a college professor: khakis, a tweed blazer and rimless glasses.
“Cloud and Snow,” Lloyd translated, placing the photo back into its proper position. “You have two identical dogs.”
“Why have one when you can have two?” Dr. Shao gestured to one of the guest chairs, inviting Lloyd to sit. “They’re identical in every way except temperament. Baiyun is scared of his shadow. Xuebai would charge into a lion’s den.”
“Clayton tells me you have a translation puzzle,” the professor said after Lloyd had settled.
“I have a recording of two men speaking Mandarin. The audio quality isn’t great and there’s missing pieces, but the general idea is pretty clear. I’m here because Bishop wants to make sure nothing’s been missed.”
“Ah, of course. How is your Mandarian, Mr. Hansen?”
"Functional."
"Functional." Dr. Shao repeated the word like it was something curious. "That is what students say when they can order dumplings but cannot discuss philosophy. How long since you studied?"
"About twenty years."
"And you were never fluent?"
Lloyd fought to prevent himself from grinding his teeth. What was it with everyone questioning his language skills lately? “I can understand what they’re saying.”
"Understanding and comprehending are not always the same thing." Dr. Shao leaned back, steepling his fingers. "Let me hear the recording."
Lloyd set up his phone and played the audio. The static and tinny voices flowed from the speaker, Chen’s rough, heavily accented Mandarin and the stranger’s smooth tones.
Dr. Shao listened with his eyes closed and his brow furrowed.
“Tell me what you heard,” he said when the tape finished.
“The first speaker asks if the cargo is inside. Chen confirms it's all inside and very safe. The other man asks when they'll retrieve it. Chen says they’ll drill it out tonight.”
"Drill it out."
"Yes. I'm assuming they mean cutting through shipping container walls or breaking into sealed cargo."
Dr. Shao tilted his head. "You have made an assumption about what the phrase, “inside” means. Yes?"
“That’s what Chen says.”
"Inside of what?"
Lloyd pursed his lips, fighting to keep his tone neutral. "Inside the shipping container."
"That is one interpretation." Dr. Shao stood and gestured to a massive chart on the wall covered in Chinese characters and branching lines showing grammatical relationships. "Mandarin is a language of context, Mr. Hansen. Every word exists in relation to what surrounds it. The pronoun ‘it' appears three times in this conversation. You have assumed all three refer to the same object."
"The shipment."
"Perhaps." Dr. Shao tapped the chart. "Or perhaps the first use refers to the shipment, and the second refers to something within the shipment. Context determines reference. In English, your pronouns are more rigid. 'He' is male, 'she' is female, 'it' is neuter. But in Mandarin?" He spread his hands. "It can mean many things. The key is tracking the specific meaning.”
Lloyd frowned. "They're talking about the same shipment."
"Are they?" Dr. Shao played the recording again, pausing at specific moments. "Listen here. 'Is your cargo inside?' But inside what? The container? The facility? Was the cargo moved to a third site? Are they talking about something else?" He fast-forwarded. "Now here: “drill it out.” What would they be drilling?"
"Locks. Metal. Concrete. Sealed cargo containers. The list could go on forever.”
"The natural phrasing of the idea would be to drill into something. We drill into things, not out of them. Unless whatever you’re retrieving is inside of something that would require a drill to open that object and get the contents out.”
Lloyd stared at him.
"The verb choice is very specific," Dr. Shao continued, warming to his subject with the enthusiasm of a professor with a captive student. "This word they’ve chosen, it means to bore, to drill, to pierce. And the other verb, which is said by the native speaker, means to extract, to bring out. Together? They’re talking about removing something from inside something else by drilling. Not cutting open a container. Drilling into an object."
"The machinery parts," Lloyd said, the realization dawning slowly.
"What machinery parts?"
“The shipments I’m investigating are industrial machinery components. They’re heavy, solid metal. But with the weight fluctuations between the port of origin and the destination…”
Dr. Shao smiled. "Ah. Now you are thinking."
"They're casting hollow parts, filling them with whatever they’re smuggling, and sealing it up for transport. Probably drugs. Encasing it in metal would hide it from drug dogs. Everything looks legitimate, but they can’t quite keep the weights equal, so there’s always a few pounds of variance.”
“So they’re drilling out the smuggled contents after replacing the altered machine parts with authentic ones,” Dr. Shao surmised.
Lloyd tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, almost amused by how simple the explanation had turned out to be. “That’s why they’re so confident. The parts were an almost perfect transport mechanism."
"Very good." Dr. Shao returned to his desk, looking pleased. "Now, let us discuss pronouns. Because this is what you missed, yes? The nested reference. Inside did not mean inside the container. It meant inside the machinery parts. And “it” did not refer only to the shipment. “It” referred to what was hidden within the shipment."
Lloyd nodded, his mind still focused on how he was going to prove all of this to a narcotics detective, as Dr. Shao settled into lecture mode.
"In Mandarin, we must always track our references with great care. A pronoun is not just a word. It is a pointer, an arrow directing you to its antecedent. But unlike English, where the antecedent is usually close and obvious, in Mandarin it can be separated by many clauses, or implied by context rather than explicitly stated. You must pay attention to every marker, every contextual clue."
He took a legal pad and began sketching a diagram, drawing boxes within boxes and a stream of arrows connecting a set of pronouns to a larger set of references.
"Think of it like this: each pronoun is a thread. As you read or listen, you must hold all these threads in your mind, tracing each back to what it references. Lose track of one thread, and you lose meaning. Confuse which thread connects to which reference, and you misunderstand everything."
The professor ripped off the diagram. Lloyd took it, mainly to be polite, since the man had been helpful.
“Nice. Tracking the pronoun references…you do good work, doc.”
“Precisely. The shift in context changes everything. References can nest inside other references. If you’re not careful, if you assume all instances of the same pronoun refer back to the same object, you’ll miss the truth when it’s hiding in plain sight.”
Lloyd folded the diagram and slid it into his briefcase, already thinking about traffic on the way back to D.C. and whether he could get this on the desk of a detective before the end of the day.
"Thank you for your time, Dr. Shao. This was very helpful."
"Of course it was. Clayton said you were stubborn but intelligent. I am glad he was correct on both counts." He stood, extending his hand. "If you have more translation puzzles, you know where to find me. I am always happy to teach."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The news called it the largest drug bust in Maryland for the last three decades. Lloyd watched the glossy, glowing segment that credited the port police for the victory and felt nothing. There was no smug satisfaction in having outplayed the smugglers. He didn’t even have the urge to casually stroll past Andy Barber’s office talking loudly about the amounts recovered in the bust.
A familiar ache settled in his chest, deep and dull. Once again he felt like he was standing at the edge of a cliff with no idea where to step to get away from the danger. The distraction of solving the case had temporarily masked the pain, like slapping a fresh coat of paint on rotting floorboards. His brief second of pleasure had faded as soon as it arrived.
The mystery was solved. His office was still empty and the silence closed in exactly as it had before.
Lloyd was at his desk, flipping through files when Jen appeared.
She leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. “I saw the news. They said your Port of Baltimore case was the largest drug bust in Maryland since the 90s.”
He glanced up. Registered her presence, tilted his head in acknowledgment and returned his attention to the files in front of him. "Yeah."
“No victory lap? No smug comments? Who are you, and what have you done with the real Lloyd Hansen?”
"Mm."
Jen waited expectantly. When he didn't offer anything more, her brows lowered. The silence stretched between them and neither moved to smooth over the awkward edge of tension.
"Okay," Jen stepped into his office and reached back, closing the door behind her. "Spill. What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing's wrong with me."
"You just broke up a major narcotics ring and you couldn't care less." She moved closer to his desk, stopping directly in front of him, planting her hands on her hips.
"You look like you haven't had a decent meal in weeks. Your face is gaunt and your shirts look too big, which is worrying because they used to look too small.”
Lloyd glanced down. His shirt was the same size he always wore. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You look like you're wasting away. Are you sick? When’s the last time you ate a full meal? How much weight have you lost? Thirty pounds? Forty?”
Lloyd blinked, then leaned back in his chair, putting distance between them. “I eat just fine, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Alright. When’s the last time you lifted weights? Because you sure as hell aren’t maintaining your old physique.”
"I'm training for a marathon."
Jen's expression didn't change. "A marathon."
"Yeah."
"Since when do you run marathons?"
"Since now."
She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly not buying it.
"This isn’t normal weight loss. You look like you're wasting away." Jen's voice sharpened with something that might have been genuine concern if it wasn't delivered with her characteristic bluntness. "Lloyd, you look sick. Are you sick?"
"No."
When she spoke again her voice had lost some of its edge. "Did you break up with Princess because you found out you had something? Cancer, maybe?”
The question landed like a punch to the gut. Lloyd stiffened.
“If you’re trying to push everyone away because—”
"I'm not sick," Lloyd said. "There's nothing wrong with me. I'm just training for a marathon. That's it."
Jen studied him for a long moment. Her lips compressed into a flat line. Without Princess as a buffer between them, the room sizzled with tension.
"Princess asked me to check on you. She wants to know you’re okay."
Something twisted in Lloyd’s chest. Of course she had. Even after everything he'd done, she still cared, because that was who she was.
"Tell her I'm fine," he said.
"Are you?"
"Yes."
Jen shook her head. “When did you turn into such a terrible liar?” She moved toward the door then paused, glancing back. "For what it's worth, I think breaking up with her was the stupidest thing you've ever done. But it looks like you’re punishing yourself enough without anyone else piling on. Eat something. And if you’re really training for a marathon, start lifting again. You need the extra bulk. Skinny isn’t a good look for you.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Lloyd stared at the spot where she’d been. He looked down at his hands. They looked the same as always. He touched his face, felt the sharper angles of his jaw, the way his cheekbones stood out more prominently. He had no idea when the changes had occurred. Maybe because he hadn’t been looking in the mirror much as of late.
The box of files Bishop had brought up from the front desk sat on the window ledge. They contained the personnel records of the hospital that Detective Roth had unearthed from police archives. Apparently Roth was also unsatisfied with Nguyen’s arrest, perhaps as much as Lloyd himself was.
He carried the box over to his desk and flipped through it, annoyed that the case was still on his mind. With Nguyen clammed up and Laine Cruz unable to give any specific details to either prove or disprove that Nguyen had been her kidnapper, circumstantial evidence was doing a damned good job of turning the prosecution's paper thin case into a slam dunk. It was a full-circle moment and Lloyd didn't like it any better than he had six months before, when he’d taken the case. He slammed the lid back on the file box. The sound echoed off the walls, then faded away.
Lloyd decided he was done for the day.
He was halfway to the parking garage when his phone rang. Landon's name flashed on the screen. He let it go to voicemail, but Landon was persistent. The phone kept ringing.
Lloyd answered. "What."
"Wow. Hello to you too." Landon sounded unbothered by Lloyd's bursque greeting. "I'm calling to confirm you're still RSVP'd to the wedding. Without a plus one."
That pulled him up short. He barely remembered responding to the invitation. Then it occurred to him that he hadn't sent in an RSVP note.
"I never said I was coming."
"You never said you weren't."
"I'm not."
There was a pause. "Lloyd—"
"Congratulations. I hope everything's wonderful, but I'm not coming to your wedding. I'll send a gift, okay?"
"You're not coming because of Princess.”
Lloyd didn't answer.
"Look, I know things ended badly. I know it's going to be awkward. But she accepted Zach's offer—"
"What offer?"
There was a pause. "He didn't tell you?"
"Landon, whatever you have to say, spit it out before I track you down and strangle it out of you."
"Princess is working for us now. She's partnered with Marco Lattimer."
The words slammed into him. Heat erupted in Lloyd's chest, something bubbling and molten and caustic that spread through his ribcage and rolled over his skin in a wave. That sick, feverish heat where everything felt too close, too warm. His face flushed. His collar was too tight. His ribs were too tight, he couldn’t get a full breath.
Marco Lattimer. Princess. Working together.
Lloyd opened his mouth and nothing came out. The parking garage tilted slightly.
"Lloyd?" Landon's voice sounded distant. "Are you still there?"
"You don't want me there," Lloyd said. His voice came out calm, level, remote. How he managed that, he had no idea.
"Look, you broke up with her."
"I didn't tell her to quit the firm!" The words came out sharper than he intended, louder.
Landon laughed, but there was no humor in it. "What, you thought she'd stick around and everything would go back to normal? That you'd just pass each other in the hallways and pretend nothing happened?"
Lloyd stood in the dim fluorescent lighting of the parking garage, one hand braced against the cement wall. The urge to throw his phone, to break something, to make the world as wrecked as he felt, surged.
“Okay then." Landon's voice had shifted, softened. "That's... I didn't realize you actually thought she'd stay."
The silence stretched.
"Just come to the wedding," Landon said after a long minute of silence. "Get this awkward post-breakup stage over with so everyone can move on."
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"You can't keep blowing everyone off, Lloyd. Get over yourself and come to the wedding."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't I?" Landon's tone hardened. "Because from where I'm sitting, this worked out exactly how you wanted it to. You broke up with Princess, torched every close relationship you'd built, and now you get to hole up in your office and lick your pathetic self-inflicted wounds. Fuck that. Be a man and face the music. Get in a fistfight with Zach after the reception or something and sort it out. Apologize to Princess. And while you're at it, apologize to Jake."
"To Jake? What the hell did I do to Jake?!"
"Blocked his number, for starters." Landon exhaled sharply. "You know, I feel like I'm talking to the old Lloyd. I thought you'd changed. I thought Princess had taught you something."
"She did."
"Then prove it. Show up. Be uncomfortable. Let it suck for a few hours but don’t hide."
Lloyd leaned against the concrete wall, exhaustion settling over him. The fever-rage had faded, leaving him cold and hollow. "I don't want to make things worse for her."
"You won't. She knows you might come. She's prepared for it. And honestly? I think part of her hopes you will."
"You don't know that."
"Maybe not. But I know her well enough to think she’ll want some kind of closure.”
Another pause.
“I'm not asking you to fix things with her. I'm asking you to show up. Don't take the easy way out and disappear.”
Lloyd closed his eyes. The smart thing to do was refuse. Stay away. Avoid the mess.
"When is it?" Lloyd asked.
"Saturday. Ten o'clock. I'll text you the address."
"I'm not making any promises."
"You never do."
The call ended. Lloyd stood there, phone in hand, wondering what the hell he'd just agreed to.
Is it mean that I don’t even care that he’s struggling right now?
He hurt Princess so unnecessarily - she trusted him- and he bulldozed her life 😡
He better figure out a way to fix it and do it soon. I’m not happy with him.
A grumpy Lloyd doing stake outs and holed up in his office to avoid the truth that he can no longer do all of this on his own?
He can no longer work without a team and I have a feeling that soon he will realize he no longer wants to try to “life” on his own either.
At least I hope that’s the case….
This is still Princess’ story but I wouldn’t mind if he figured out how to make things right with her.
Ugh…. I don’t even want him to go to the wedding- Lloyd is right in this case- he just needs to stay away. Let her be- let her figure out how to heal without him showing up and confusing her all over again.
Why is Landon and everyone else pushing this so hard? Like sure, they can probably see that things are different with Princess in his life…. But really, I think she’s better off without him.
Unless this man changed his ways significantly- I want nothing to do with him. He’s not good enough for her- at least not current Lloyd Hansen- and he sure as sh*t doesn’t deserve her 😡
Ooooh, and he also owes my fictional boyfriend an apology 😡
Summary: Princess struggles to rebuild her life after quitting her job and breaking ties with Lloyd. Zach offers her a new opportunity, but her reluctance to re-enter Lloyd’s orbit holds her back, but then an unexpected meeting offers her a glimpse of what could be.
Word Count: 3,294
Masterlist
Warnings: This chapter contains themes of emotional distress and a scene with a nightmare/flashback.
Chapter 32: On Hold
Friday, April 25th - 03:20 AM
You jolted awake, the memory crashing over you. Breath caught in your throat as you flailed against damp, twisted sheets.
Two months had passed since your breakup with Lloyd, but your body still couldn’t tell the difference between past and present. Again and again, it replayed that night, tricking your nervous system into reacting as if it were happening all over again. It wasn’t a nightmare—that would suggest it was imagined. It was a flashback. A vivid, unrelenting replay of the night Lloyd ended everything. At least three times a week, sometimes more, your brain used the soft vulnerability of sleep to ambush you with every ugly detail of that final dinner, in sharp technicolor. Maybe the dreams were supposed to act like exposure therapy. The problem was, your reaction never dulled. Each time, the devastation felt as sharp and new as the first. You sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed your fingertips into your eyes, as if you could scrub away the memory.
The basement of your parent’s house was too large, too open, for comfort. It was twice the size of your old apartment back in D.C. On the nights when you had flashbacks that coziness was desperately missed.
After quitting Bishop & Howard, you’d gone to your parents, had an embarrassing emotional melt down in front of them, which earned you an official invitation to move back in. You shoved everything in boxes, put the apartment on the market, and ended up with three offers on the place by 5 o’clock. Then you ran back to Virginia, past the outskirts of suburban D.C., to the safety of your childhood home where you’d taken up residence in their recently finished basement. On the upside, the bathroom was super nice with a dual showerhead and heated flooring. On the downside, the expansive room made you feel lonely, your thoughts bouncing off the walls and echoing back at you, as though there was too much space and nowhere to hide.
Lloyd had dismantled your relationship, but dismantling the rest of your life had been your own doing. He ended things so swiftly, unexpectedly, that it still felt as if the earth had been pulled out from under your feet, like gravity had been turned off. You’d come to accept that to some extent, Lloyd had been your gravity. He’d been at the center of your orbit. First as your best friend and then as your partner. Now you were spinning out of orbit, untethered and heading… who knew where. You certainly didn’t. You didn’t have a plan, or even a concept of a plan. All you wanted was to get away from everything that you knew.
Everything had been dismantled—most of it by your own hand. Now you were left living in the wreckage of it all.
You wished you’d fought him on it that day, but even as you thought it, there was no real hope behind the idea. Lloyd had always held his convictions with a resolve you couldn’t begin to match. But still, you hadn’t done anything to stop him and that was almost like a moral injury that lingered, a perpetual thorn in your side that continued to bleed. It was one thing for Lloyd to dismiss your efforts to fight, but another thing to contend with—that there had been no effort to fight at all put up by you. You’d let the relationship slip away without fighting for it.
Leaning forward, you wrapped your arms around your knees, curling into a ball. You laced your fingers together tightly and squeezed until your knuckles ached. Your heart raced like someone was chasing you. Fragments of thoughts and flashes of memories spun through your head, a relentless blur you couldn’t shut off. You should be coping better than this after two months, shouldn’t you? But you weren’t.
The dream—the memory—came back, night after night, slicing open the wound over and over. Lloyd had taken something from you. Something more than love or friendship, something essential and you couldn’t figure out what it was, and therefore couldn’t dream of replacing it. You were afraid you’d never stop missing him. He’d ripped you in half and it felt like you were destined to continue on, only half of a person, forever.
Your eyes burned, but no tears came. With your heart racing, sleep felt impossible. Besides, your head was a minefield when you closed your eyes. Lloyd had made his choice and you’d let him make it. Why hadn’t you done more? Why hadn’t you fought harder, made him see that this relationship was worth saving? That question haunted you, sometimes a few times a day, sometimes hundreds.
Maybe he thought ending things was what you needed. It was the only explanation you could come up with, based on the cryptic things he’d said that night. But it had felt so sudden, so inexplicable. He hadn’t explained. He hadn’t let you plead your case. He’d ended things on his own terms, of his own volition.
In his own broken way, maybe that was Lloyd’s idea of self-sacrifice. He’d claim he wasn’t capable of such a thing, but you knew better. If he believed he couldn’t be what you needed, he would have ended the relationship—if only to set you free.
Or maybe he’d simply gotten bored. He wasn’t the relationship type. You’d both agreed it was a fling at the start, so maybe he was just seeing it through to its natural conclusion. Maybe you were the crazy one, losing your mind over it.
With a deep breath, you unfolded yourself and lay back down, turning to face the alarm clock. 3:30 a.m. In an hour, you’d need to get up for work. You knew you should try to sleep, though you didn’t have high hopes. Lately, once your mind got tangled up in these thoughts, there was precious little you could do to quiet it.
Still, you buried your head in the pillow, willing yourself to stop thinking.
For once, sleep came
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Friday, April 25th - 02:17 PM
Your father’s construction company had excellent benefits. That was why you had a job, at least for the time being. His regular bookkeeper, Chelsea, was out on maternity leave, and you were filling in. Full-time for now, then part-time once she returned in mid-May.
Bookkeeping was insufferable, but it was a job. Your father was an easy boss. He didn’t micromanage, or hoover, just let you get on with things. Most of the time he was out of the office, visiting job sites and keeping an eye on his crews. The bookkeeping work was straightforward and the secretarial part of your duties was practically mindless. You’d found a rhythm and by the second week, realized you could do this job in half the time allotted. Instead of mentioning that to your Dad, you stuck around for the full eight hours, pretending to be busier than you were.
Every day, you sat at the wobbly desk in the trailer office, shuffling through invoices and timesheets, wondering what you were doing with your life. There was nothing wrong with being a bookkeeper, but if you could finish the work on a part-time schedule, Chelsea would probably be even faster. Once she returned, there wouldn’t be enough work to keep you on, and you couldn’t justify staying and taking advantage of your father’s generosity.
You rubbed your temple, glaring at the computer screen where numbers were already sorted into neat columns. Maybe it was time to look for another job. Something real, something in your skill set, something that actually mattered. The thought of jumping back into the paralegal world—or shifting to a lobbyist group, since they always seemed to be hiring—settled in your stomach like a lead weight. D.C. was a small legal circle. You’d run into people who knew what had happened with Lloyd. You might even run into Lloyd himself. The thought made you shudder.
The sound of heavy boots echoed on the metal steps of the trailer. You groaned. You knew who it was before the three-rap knock.
“It’s open,” you called.
Your visitor stepped in, shoving dark lensed Ray-Bans up onto his forehead. Sunlight slanted through the door, brightening his sandy hair to gold for a moment.
“Hey, Zach. How’s it going?”
Your eyes fixed on the tray of coffees in his hand. It contained two iced lattes and one Frappuccino.
“You pick up an extra by accident?”
“No. It’s for your Dad.”
“How do you know what kind of Frappuccino my Dad prefers?”
“His Instagram’s public. I cyberstalk it sometimes. It’s been my most reliable source of info on you of late—since I barely see you anymore.”
“Aside from your weekly visits to my workplace?”
Zach set the iced latte on your desk. “I’m considering renovating my offices. I need a quote.”
“We’re booked through November.”
He took off his sunglasses and hooked them onto his shirt collar before dropping into the chair across from you with a mock-sigh. “Shame.”
You leaned back in your chair, ignoring its squeal of protest. “Zach, I’m at work. I’m busy.”
“Are you? Because the last edit on that spreadsheet was at 10:27 A.M.”
“Fine, I’m not busy. I’m bored out of my mind. What do you want?”
His grin widened. “To see you doing something more productive than balancing books you finished yesterday.”
So he’d noticed the date, not just the time stamp. Your cheeks warmed. He wasn’t wrong, but the jab got under your skin. “Don’t you have your own company to run?”
“I do. That’s actually why I’m here.”
You crossed your arms. “Don’t make this about your savior complex. Lloyd and I didn’t work out. I trashed my career at B&H all by myself. You don’t need to rescue me.”
“I’m not trying to rescue you. Okay, maybe part of me feels oddly guilty that I didn’t at least try to warn you off of him, or ask you to think twice about getting involved with someone as complicated as Lloyd. But that’s not the only reason I’m here.”
You raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve hired a new investigator. He starts in May.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I think the two of you would work well together. If you come on board—even if it was temporarily—it’d make his orientation easier.”
“Landon handles all your training.”
“He’s getting married in May. You should know, you’re invited to the wedding.”
“Right.”
You’d been trying to forget about the upcoming nuptials. Seeing Lloyd there wasn’t something you wanted to ponder for too long.
Zach hooked an ankle over his knee, studying you with an intensity that made you feel like a bug under a microscope.
“You’re bored.”
“And?”
“I can fix that.”
Fixing your boredom would put you back in Lloyd’s orbit, which was a price you weren’t sure you were willing to pay.
“I’m good. Thanks for thinking of me though. I’m flattered.”
“Come on. The job starts in May. Your dad’s regular girl will be back by then, and you’d be free to start with us. Perfect timing.”
“Why me? There are a dozen people who’d jump at the chance to work with you.”
“I don’t like those people. Besides, you’ve already worked with my new hire, and he’s a little high-strung. Not everyone can handle him.”
You frowned. “Who is it?”
“Marco Lattimer.”
“Huh.” You didn’t want to be intrigued, but you were. You stared at Zach, torn between wanting to roll your eyes and feeling the pull of half-burried ambition.
“You’re good at investigations. We need someone who can handle some of Jake’s simpler computer work.”
The yearning sharpened. You tried to shove it down, but failed. Zach smirked.
“I know you. I like you. We work well together. I don’t have to figure out how to fit two new personalities into the firm because I already know you. And I trust you to work with Marco, even though he’s kind of a judgy son of a bitch.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“He’s a boy scout,” Zach said.
“So is Landon.”
“Yeah, but he’s not as high and mighty about it.”
“Are you asking me to take this job so you don’t have to deal with Marco?”
Zach snorted. “I can handle Marco. I just prefer him in small doses. Also, I think you need something to pull you out of this funk.”
“I don’t want to work with Lloyd anymore. Not for a while.”
“Perfect. I’m not about to put him and Marco in the same room.”
“Really? They’re that bad?”
“I have no idea. They haven’t seen each other in ten years.”
You glanced down at your desk—the neatly stacked timesheets, the untouched calculator.
“I’ll think about it.”
Zach stood, smoothing his shirt. “Alright. I’ll be back on Monday. I expect an answer then.”
You watched him leave, the door clicking softly behind him. A thick suffocating silence settled over the room. You dropped your head onto the desk and groaned.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Saturday, April 26th - 01:20 PM
You sat in the parking lot a block from Café M, debating whether you were up for coffee or if your social battery was tapped out. Jen had enticed you into a Saturday morning Pilates class but had to leave right after to pick up her son from baseball camp. That suited you fine because it meant you got to see Jen, hang out, all while avoiding uncomfortable questions, or updates about Lloyd and the rest of your old coworkers at B&H. According to Jen, Andy was pissed you’d quit and was needling Lloyd about it at every opportunity. You hated thinking about the trail of drama you’d left in your wake.
Jen was worried. The subtle glances she shot you before and after class spoke volumes, though she hadn’t said anything. You were grateful for her restraint; it was the polar opposite of Zach’s ham-handed approach to managing your life. At least with Jen, the concern was quieter, less invasive. Going to Pilates with her felt like proof you were doing okay, that you weren’t sinking too far into the spiral of doom, and losing all of your social connections.
Since you’d already driven into the city, heading straight home felt wrong. Stopping at your favorite café gave you a chance to clear your head before returning to your parents’ house. The thought of the long drive felt suffocating. You ducked into the café, ordered your usual iced vanilla latte with a shot of espresso and claimed a small corner table by the window.
Your mind wandered as you stirred the drink, tracing circles in the condensation pooling on the table. The buzz of voices and hiss of the espresso machine filled the small room but none of it drowned out the memories. You thought of the afternoons when you’d worked on Lloyd’s cases at the corner booth and the couple of times when you’d met him here on Sunday afternoons. Why had you decided to come here? You should’ve gone straight home.
“Figured I’d find you here, dah-lin’,” a voice behind you drawled.
You recognized the stretched vowels, the near-absent ‘r’—not clipped like a Boston accent, but softened and slow. That Tidewater lilt turned everything smooth and a little formal, like it was dialogue in a black-and-white movie.
"Marco. How’d you find me?"
“I wouldn’t be much of a private investigator if I couldn’t track down one law-abiding citizen on a Saturday afternoon, now would I?”
He stood in front of your table, coffee in hand, a black Henley stretched across his broad shoulders, and a sly smile curving his lips. Casual clothes looked good on him.
“Why did you hunt me down?”
He pulled out the chair opposite you without asking, settling in like you were old friends meeting up instead of him ambushing you out of the blue.
“Zach said you’ve been dragging your feet accepting his employment offer,” he said.
Heat crept up your neck. “So you decided to stalk me?”
“I prefer the term ‘reconnaissance.’ It sounds friendlier. I wanted to find out what was holding you back.” He leaned in, forearms on the table, his voice dropping so only you could hear. “I heard you’re playing bookkeeper and bored out of your mind. What’s the problem?”
You wrapped your hands around the cold glass of your iced coffee, eyes lowering. “I’m still weighing my options. I don’t know if it’s the right move at the moment.”
Marco laughed, his disbelief clear. “Liar. You’re avoiding Lloyd. Can’t blame you for that—I get the same urge. Still can’t stand him, no matter what affinity Zach feels towards him. But don’t let his mistakes dictate your future.”
You raised an eyebrow, realizing Zach had shared with him more than you’d thought. Marco’s bluntness was like a slap, but his expression was fond, almost amused.
“I’m not scared of seeing Lloyd,” you said, though even you didn’t believe it.
Marco sipped his coffee and said nothing.
The silence tightened around you. He studied you the way Zach had yesterday, like you were a bug under a microscope and he was trying to figure out what species you belonged to. His head tilted. “Landon’s wedding’s next weekend, right?”
“Uh… yes. Why?”
“Are you going?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
Your pulse kicked up. You opened your mouth, but he cut you off.
“Don’t look so scandalized. I’m asking because it’d be more fun with a date. Besides, Landon and I go way back. It wouldn’t hurt to show him I can clean up and be civilized.”
Your cheeks flushed. “That’s presumptuous of you, Marco.”
He leaned back, draping one arm over the back of his chair. “Come on, Princess. It’s a win-win. I get a date, you get a buffer against Lloyd.”
The idea twisted your stomach. It was ridiculous, and yet the thought of showing up alone, knowing you’d have to face him again…Perhaps Marco was onto something.
“I’ll think about it,” you said.
He grinned, rising smoothly and sliding a napkin across the table. You glanced down at the scrawl of blue ink. His phone number. “Do that. And think about the job, too. I’m not waiting forever.”
You watched him leave, climb on a jet black Harley-Davidson motorcycle and disappear into traffic.
Irritation and intrigue wrestled for dominance. Marco was just as domineering and annoying as Lloyd, but he went about it with less abrasiveness. Maybe everyone was right. Maybe it was time to stop spinning your wheels. Time to stop hibernating and branch out. Accepting Marco’s invitation would certainly make Landon’s wedding easier. You picked up the napkin, typed the number in and saved a new contact.
On the drive home, you thought about his offer. About the possibility of accepting the job with Zach’s firm.
An hour later you pulled into the driveway and parked behind your mom’s faded Subaru, then called Zach from your car’s bluetooth.
“What’s up? Make it quick. I’m on the seventeenth hole.”
You laughed. “Alright. I don’t want to work with Lloyd, if it can be avoided. I know there might be a time when it can’t be prevented but for now…I’d rather not see him. Also, I’d like to work with Marco. I’ll accept your job offer if we can be partners.”
“Perfect. I’ll have my lawyer send you a written offer Monday. We’ll talk details later.”
He hung up without a goodbye.
You opened Marco’s contact and tapped out a message.
I accepted Zach’s offer. We’re finalizing Monday. Also, my dress for the wedding is pale green. Don’t wear a tie that clashes. Pick me up at nine. I trust you can find my address...stalker.
Ugh! I know I keep saying this…. But poor Princess….
She just got her whole world rocked…. First with the injury and then when Lloyd ended things and then her leaving her job.
I mean, I get it. She didn’t feel like she could be there and heal at the same time. But man- to just feel like she’s floundering and everything’s just been blown to sh*t.
It’s just so painful 💔
And the heartache of your subconscious like not fully excepting or coming to terms with it being over so you dream about them? And in her case dreaming about the break up over and over again. She’s gotta just feel so raw and so spent like ALL the time. How would you even function?
And then to be getting down on herself because she didn’t feel like she fought hard enough for them? That makes me so sad for her. All she ever did was fight for that stupid man.
If he doesn’t know that by now he’s a bigger dumbass than I thought he was 🙄
I just want her to heal and feel better and someday find happiness again.
OK… I trust Princess to know what she can handle and I do think it’s nice of Zach to think of her…. But it feels like this might be too soon.
There’s no way she can avoid Lloyd if she goes back into the same line of work. It’s not going to happen. So I guess let’s hope she’s strong enough when she inevitably sees him again *sigh* 🤷♀️
OK… I know we’re over Lloyd… or at least trying to be… but I’d be lying if I said I don’t want him to eat his heart out at this wedding when he sees Princess with another guy 😈
Summary: Princess slowly recovers from her brain injury. Nguyen refuses requests for an interview, leaving many lingering questions hanging over the case. Lloyd makes a rash decision.
Word Count: 3,175
Masterlist
Warnings: Depiction of healthcare settings and brain injury recovery.
Chapter 31
Sunlight filtered in through the casement window of the rehab center and warmed the back of your neck. You sat on the edge of a chair and focused on the buttons of your sweater. First, tilt the button to the side…slip it through the hole… your fingers trembled as you fastened the top button of the cardigan.
“Very good,” the nursing assistant said.
You hated her bright, cheerful tone. It was more suited to training a puppy than addressing an adult. The worst part of it was that the assistant appeared to be even younger than you. For some reason, that rubbed salt in the wound.
“How about you try the next button?” she coaxed.
It was on the tip of your tongue to refuse and say you liked it better with only the top button fastened, but you knew that statement would wind its way back to your occupational therapist before breakfast was served. So, with unsteady fingers, you began to work on the second button.
Dressing on your own was a victory in itself. A month ago you’d graduated from a hospital gown to your own pajamas. This month you’d reached the greatest pinnacle of success possible in a place like long-term rehab: wearing real clothes. It was a huge improvement over being tethered to beeping machines in a sterile white room at the far end of the hall, which was where you’d started your rehab journey before being slowly downgraded through the different levels of care at the center.
The weeks you’d spent in the ICU were hazy, and your memories of that place were colored with an intense feeling of frustration.
Those feelings came back in full force when the nursing assistant spoke. “Good job!”
Your eyes flicked toward her, and your lip curled up in one corner. It was rude, but controlling your emotions—and facial expressions—was still a work in progress. While in the ICU, you’d learned there was a term for that condition: emotional lability. Basically, it meant that your feelings were intense and volatile. Emotional regulation was a natural state for you, something you’d learned so young it was almost an innate ability. Not having that skill post brain injury was a new experience—an unpleasant one.
The nursing assistant went to the bathroom and collected your makeup bag while she rattled off your morning schedule and filled you in on who was coming to visit you today. Lloyd would be here in the afternoon, and so would your mother and Vivian.
You took the makeup kit and carefully unzipped the bag, mindful of your movements. It took focus to keep your hand steady, applying the correct amount of pressure. Everything was slow these days, and it was hard not to slap the makeup bag off your lap and scream. Or maybe cry. You’d spent quite a bit of time alternating between both reactions, but at least now you could button a sweater. Hopefully, the results would compound, and you’d finally get your independence back.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“You’re saying we can take her home?”
Lloyd cut through the long-winded social worker’s analysis, stating what he’d understood.
The social worker clasped her clipboard to her chest. “Provided there are no stairs to navigate and she has someone available to assist her during the day. She’s made significant progress, but there are still areas where she’ll need support—particularly with fine motor tasks and spatial awareness. It’s not ideal for her to be alone for extended periods.”
Lloyd glanced at your mother. Her lips were pressed into a thin line. Vivian, her hand resting on her pregnant belly, which was just starting to show, shifted uncomfortably. The tension in the room was palpable as the practicalities of Princess’ care weighed on everyone’s mind.
“There’s a bedroom at my house on the main floor,” Lloyd said. “There would be no need for her to deal with stairs.”
Your mother frowned. “I don’t want to impose. You’ve already done so much.”
“It’s not an imposition. It’s what makes sense. She’ll have the space and the supervision she needs.”
Vivian hesitated, glancing between them before she finally spoke. “Mom, there’s steps leading up to my house. Your guest room is in the basement. Neither of us could take care of her. Not safely.”
The doctor nodded. “Given her current limitations, Mr. Hansen’s home is better suited for her recovery. She’ll have outpatient therapy here at the rehab center three times a week, but I do think she’ll make more progress in a less regulated environment where she can relax and practice the therapy skills at her own pace.”
“She would,” your mother was quick to agree.
It was true that you’d reached the end of your patience with the structured routines of rehab. The daily therapy sessions made you cranky, not because you didn’t want to make progress, but because you resented constantly being told what to do and it was hindering your improvement.
“Then it’s settled. She’ll come home with me.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Getting you discharged took three days. There were requirements to fulfill, like having a hospital bed installed in the guest room and arranging for in-home therapy equipment to be delivered. Lloyd handled it all with efficiency. By the time the paperwork was signed and your belongings packed, you felt more like a package whose delivery required a team of logistics experts rather than a human being.
The ride to Lloyd’s house was quiet. You spent it in silence, hoping that you’d start to feel like you were reclaiming your independence at some point along the journey. When you stepped into the guest room and came face to face with the hospital bed that had replaced the luxurious queen bed that used to dominate the space, you wanted to sit down and cry. This didn’t feel like a stop on the way back to normal. It felt like the rest of your life would be spent fighting for every zipper to unzip and every button to fasten.
“Princess?” Lloyd spoke from behind you as you stood in the doorway to the guest room.
“Did you put the bed in storage?”
“It’s downstairs in the basement. The hospital bed is just temporary, I promise.”
He wrapped his arms around you and the solid mass of his chest pressed against your back. “You know, graduating from rehab calls for a celebration.”
You snorted derisively, unable to stop yourself.
Lloyd released his hold on your waist and turned you around by the shoulders to face him. You lowered your gaze, but he took your chin and tilted your head up.
“What’s wrong?”
“I…” you broke off and closed your eyes. “I’m sorry. Thank you for doing this. I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he pressed.
Your eyes filled with tears, and you shook your head, unable to speak past the lump in your throat.
“Come here.”
You sank into Lloyd, sagging against him, and soon the front of his shirt was soaked with tears.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said again when you’d cried yourself out.
This time you forced yourself to put the emotions into words, even though it was harder to express yourself that way now. Everything was harder now.
“I was thinking that celebrating couldn’t involve me eating because I can’t use most silverware right now. I imagined myself trying to cut a bite of food, and then I felt… upset. We can’t go out for martinis because I can’t drink on my medication. If we went somewhere I’d just get tired and fall asleep, regardless of the fact that I’ve had three naps today. I’m just feeling… hopeless. I’m sorry.”
Lloyd’s lips brushed your ear. “You are not hopeless. In fact, you’re the furthest thing from it.”
You bit your lip and choked down another sob.
“Luckily, my celebration doesn’t involve eating or drinking or going out. In fact…”
The rustling of tissue paper had you lifting your head from his chest. He’d reached around you to pick up a gift bag from the dresser beside the door. It was bright red and stuffed on the top with silver paper.
“Open it.”
You tore out the paper and dug into the bag to find a velvet box. It was large, surprisingly so. Definitely bigger than any jewelry box you’d received for your birthday or a holiday. Instead of trying to open it yourself, you handed it to Lloyd.
He lifted the lid of the case and revealed a pearl choker nestled in the middle of the silk-lined box.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Want to try it on?”
In answer, you turned around so he could access your neck.
The cool weight of the pearls settled against your skin as Lloyd fastened the clasp. You reached up instinctively, your fingers brushing over the smooth surface of the choker. It felt elegant and timeless. For a fleeting moment, you could almost forget the hospital bed dominating the room or the tremor in your hand as you felt the jewels.
“Perfect,” Lloyd murmured. He slid off the bed and stood to face you, inspecting the necklace. “It suits you.”
You looked in the mirror above the dresser to see your reflection. The pearls caught the light from the window, gleaming against your skin, and for the first time in ages, you felt like you recognized the person in the mirror. It wasn’t exactly the same person as before, but you weren’t as different as you’d thought you’d become.
“Thank you,” you said.
Lloyd smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. You wondered at the expression and then your own smile faltered at the realization that perhaps he was seeing the same thing you were—the lack of similarity between who you were before, and now.
“I thought you deserved something beautiful after everything that’s happened.”
You swallowed hard, your fingers still tracing the pearls. “It’s perfect. I love it.”
“That’s all I care about,” Lloyd murmured.
There was something on his face you couldn’t figure out, but you could sense there was more to this gift than just what he’d said. Unfortunately, your brain was too tired, and a headache was forming in your left temple. You promised yourself that you’d puzzle it out later, but right now your body was too tired, your brain too fragile to process anything. His words hung in the air between you, their weight heavier than the necklace.
“You need a nap, don’t you?” Lloyd asked.
“Mmmhh.” You rubbed your left temple, sighing. “I’m sorry. I’m not very much fun right now.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll celebrate once you’re fully recovered. I promise. Now go to bed. I’ll tuck you in.”
“Tuck me into my hospital bed,” you grumbled.
“Suck it up,” Lloyd said, smirking when you pouted.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Weeks turned into months. The hospital bed in Lloyd’s guest room became a distant memory as grueling physical therapy sessions eventually turned into real progress. At first, the exercises were agonizing, breaking you down before you could rebuild. Small victories marked the way—cutting food without fumbling, fastening buttons without trembling, ascending stairs without clinging to the railing like it was a life preserver. Each milestone was hard-won, but by the time you were cleared to return to work, you’d reclaimed most of your independence.
In January, stepping into your office for the first time since the accident felt like slipping into a favorite coat that had been left hanging in the closet too long. The fit was the same, the fabric still warm with familiarity, but there was a stiffness to it now, a faint scent of dust that made it feel a little less like home. The hum of voices from down the hall, the rustle of papers, and the faint smell of coffee grounded you. Flowers waited on your desk, accompanied by a card signed by the paralegals. For the first time in months, you allowed yourself to hope for a normal day.
Lloyd had seemed genuinely pleased to see you thriving, but the shadow you’d glimpsed in his eyes the day he gave you the pearl choker lingered in your mind, like a storm cloud on the horizon. In the four months since Shun Nguyen’s arrest, Lloyd had been busy with new cases and relentlessly pursuing an elusive interview with Nguyen, who was now a full-time resident at the Keen Mountain Correctional Facility. Despite Lloyd’s weekly requests, Nguyen refused to break his silence.
Meanwhile, you’d been preoccupied with therapy and the slow crawl back to normalcy. Lloyd’s caseload meant he’d been working long hours, during which your mother or sister had stayed at the house. The gaps in your time together had felt like mere coincidences rather than anything more significant, but tonight’s dinner was meant to change that. You were back at work and that meant you wouldn’t just have your normal routine back, you’d also have Lloyd again, too.
The French restaurant near Logan Circle was dimly lit, its ambiance all soft candlelight and muted conversations. The semi-private booth Lloyd reserved offered a semblance of intimacy, but the space between you felt heavier than usual. He picked at his coq au vin, while you tried to fill the silence with stories about your first day back at work, therapy, and plans for the weekend. His responses were polite but distant, each word carefully measured.
“I’m proud of you,” Lloyd said abruptly, cutting into your rambling story.
You blinked, caught off guard. “For what?”
“For everything,” he said, setting his fork down. His gaze locked with yours, and for a moment, the shadow you’d seen before was unmistakable. “For how hard you’ve worked to get back here. For everything you’ve overcome.”
Your heart swelled, but before you could respond, he sighed, the sound heavy with regret.
“I wanted to wait to do this,” he began, his voice low. “I wanted to do it differently, but if I keep putting it off, it’ll never happen. And I can’t keep avoiding it.”
A chill ran down your spine. “Avoiding what?”
Lloyd’s mouth tightened as he looked away. His voice, when it came, was calm but unyielding. “We’ve been holding onto something that’s run its course. There were a lot of extenuating circumstances, and after what happened to you in September… you needed support. But this relationship was never meant to last this long or become so… involved. It’s not right.”
“Not right?” you asked, disbelieving. “You mean it doesn’t feel right to you.”
His face betrayed nothing. “It’s not about how it feels. It’s about what’s best for you, for both of us. We can’t keep pretending those are the same thing.”
Tears stung the corners of your eyes, but you refused to let them fall. “What are you saying? If you’re breaking up with me, just say it. Don’t dance around it.”
Lloyd was maddeningly composed. “I care about you, but this relationship isn’t working for me. And it’s not working for you, even if you can’t see that yet. I can’t give you what you need—what you deserve. And I don’t want to keep holding you back.”
“This relationship is over. That’s what you’re saying,” you said. “You invited me to dinner to tell me this?”
“No, I didn’t—”
“Shut up,” you hissed, your voice low to avoid drawing attention. “Don’t tell me you care about me and then say you can’t give me what I need. That’s bullshit, Lloyd. I don’t understand where this is coming from.”
“We need to be realistic about what our future looks like.”
You scowled. “It sounds like you’ve already decided what it looks like.”
“Think about it. Right now I’m forty-one and our physical relationship is good, but what happens in ten years, when I’m fifty-one? In twenty years?” Lloyd shook his head. “You might be attracted to me now, but when I’m sixty and my age starts to show, that’s another story. It’s going to happen sooner than you think, so ending this now is for the best.”
“What about when I’m in my forties? Will you be attracted to me?”
“Forty is way different than sixty. Trust me, I’m in a lot better shape now than what I’ll be when I’m sixty. My expiration date is a lot earlier than yours, for looks, energy, and time.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“I’m sorry,” Lloyd said, his voice firm. “This is my decision and I need you to respect it. Please.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The ride back to your apartment passed in a blur. That night, you lay in bed, the scene at dinner replaying on an endless loop in your mind. By the time the sun broke through the blinds, you’d given up on sleep. You showered, dressed meticulously, and spent an hour perfecting your makeup to ensure no trace of the night’s turmoil showed on your face.
At the office, the cheerful bouquet on your desk felt like a cruel joke. The hollow ache in your chest burned with an intensity you couldn’t ignore. You felt like an open wound, raw and exposed. Unable to bear it any longer, you climbed the stairs to the top floor. Outside the patent department, you checked your watch. Ten minutes to seven.
The door swung open behind you. Bishop stepped in, brushing snow from his lapel. His brows lifted at the sight of you standing outside his office.
“Princess? How are you? How’s your second day back? You’re here early. Is something wrong?”
You drew a deep breath. “I would like to resign,” you said. “Effective immediately.”
Bishop froze, his expression shifting from surprise to concern. “Princess, I hope this isn’t about Lloyd. Let’s talk about this—come into my office.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” Your words came out clipped, final, but you couldn’t stop the sting of tears gathering in the corners of your eyes. “I just… I can’t do this anymore.”
He sighed, motioning for you to sit down in one of the chairs in front of his secretary’s desk. “Look, I get it. Things have been… difficult. But you’re one of the best researchers I’ve got. What if we found a way to make things easier for you here? A different role—less overlap with Lloyd’s team? How about working for Andy? He’d give his left arm to have you on his staff.”
The offer was tempting, but every fiber of your being rejected the idea of staying at Bishop & Howard. “I appreciate that,” you said, “but this isn’t about Lloyd. It’s about me. I need to go.”
His frown deepened, but he nodded. “If that’s your final decision, I won’t stand in your way. Just know you’ll always have a place here.”
You rose to your feet and extended your hand. Bishop clasped it firmly, his grip tinged with the same reluctance that lined his face. No matter how much it hurt, this was the right decision. You knew Lloyd too well to hope that he’d change his mind and if you didn’t walk away, you’d never heal.
Poor Princess… that rehab has to be so mentally and physically taxing. I’m glad she’s getting to leave even if she’s not so sure about staying at Lloyd’s place.
But why a pearl necklace? And why now? She’s smart… she knows there’s gotta be more to this gift. It seems out of character for Lloyd. 🤔
Lloyd is a dumbass…. What a lame excuse. He has an expiration date and he’s not going to look as good 20ish years from now? What a BS excuse- he owes Princess a hell of a lot more than that lame brush off.
I’d be so ticked off if I were her 😡
OK…. But yes, Queen! I’m so glad she’s leaving. I know she’s hurting right now- but I think this was a smart move on her part.
If Lloyd is firm in his decision then she just needs to get the hell away from him in order to heal.
I don’t even care about Lloyd anymore. This is Princess’ story and I just want her to heal… please 🙏
I asked people on Twitter who they wished to see as a knight between Bucky, Sherlock, Dr Strange and Dean Winchester and once again, the winner is Bucky!
