A month of Sullivan-watching had turned me into Sherlock Holmes with a spreadsheet addiction, zero chill and fraying boundaries. Because apparently, memorizing my rivals’ coffee orders now passed for strategic intel.
The data I'd accumulated read like a stalker's manifesto disguised as corporate research.
Stephen Sullivan drank his coffee black with two sugars, stirred exactly three times counterclockwise, and loosened his tie at 2:47 PM with the precision of a Swiss watch.
He laughed at his own jokes with the confidence of someone who'd never experienced secondhand embarrassment. Smiled like America's golden retriever, but occasionally flashed teeth that reminded you that dogs descended from wolves.
Titus Sullivan required Earl Grey at precisely 175 degrees, no additives, like some kind of mathematical equation in human form.
He tapped his pen in groups of four when calculating, never smiled before noon, and stared at people like he was solving complex algorithms where X equaled your deepest insecurities and Y equaled your inevitable failure.
Raphael Sullivan consumed double espressos like penance for unspoken sins, checked his phone at exactly :15 and :45 past every hour, and commanded rooms through sheer gravitational pull.
The man had turned authority into an art form, making everyone else look like amateur finger painters at the Louvre.
Instead, I'd played myself.
Every observation became fuel for late-night fantasies that left me frustrated and exhausted. Professional distance had become a joke I told myself while mentally undressing them during PowerPoint presentations.
Which is how I fucked up spectacularly.
"As you can see on floor twelve," I said, clicking through the Meridian Tower presentation, "the executive suites will feature—"
"Wait," Mr. Nakamura from Nakamura Group interrupted, frowning at his copy. "This says floor twenty-two has the executive suites. Floor twelve is marked for general office space."
My blood turned to ice water. I flipped to my notes.
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
"I… That's… Let me just—" I scrambled through papers while five sets of eyes watched me drown in my own incompetence. "There seems to be a discrepancy—"
"A discrepancy?" Raphael's voice could've frozen hell. "Ms. Freeman, are you telling us you've presented incorrect specifications for a two-billion-dollar project?"
The conference room felt like a funeral home. Mine, specifically.
"I can explain—"
"No need," Mr. Nakamura said, standing. "Perhaps when Sullivan Stone has sorted out its internal communications, we can revisit this discussion."
The next ten minutes blurred into handshakes and apologies while I stood there like a statue made of shame and professional suicide.
When the door finally closed behind Nakamura Group, the silence that followed felt louder than any scream.
"My office," Raphael said. "All of you. Now."
The death march to his corner office felt endless.
Titus remained silent, shooting me glances I couldn't decode. Probably calculating the statistical probability of my spontaneous combustion.
Raphael didn't sit. He stood behind his desk like a judge about to pass a sentence, and I wondered if professional death came with last words.
"This is exactly what I was afraid of when we agreed to this partnership. If you can't handle basic floor numbers—floor numbers, Dakota—how can we trust you with actual complexity?"
"It was just one mistake—"
"One mistake that almost cost us Nakamura Group. Fix this by Friday or we reconsider your involvement entirely."
The words hit like a professional death sentence.
My stomach dropped somewhere around my heels. Reconsider my involvement meant failing. Meant proving my father right.
Meant everything I'd worked for crumbling because I'd been too busy fantasizing about my business partners to do my actual job.
"She gets it, Raph," Stephen sprawled in his chair with that dangerous ease that made my skin prickle. "Though maybe she needs proper motivation. Weekend work without pay? Or better yet, she could apologize to every team member individually. Really grovel, make sure she understands her place in the hierarchy."
The room went arctic. Even Raphael looked like someone had slapped him.
His laugh sparkled with broken glass. "Kidding! Jesus, everyone's so serious. Can't anyone take a joke anymore?"
But I'd glimpsed something beneath that sunshine exterior, a flash of enjoyment at the idea of watching me squirm.
The golden retriever mask had slipped, revealing something with sharper teeth and less wholesome intentions.
"Enough of that." Titus's quiet intervention cut through the tension like a scalpel through bullshit.
Everyone turned because Titus Sullivan defending anyone was like discovering your calculator had developed empathy.
"She made a mistake. We all make them. Remember the Henderson account, Stephen?"
Stephen's smile tightened into something less friendly. "That was different—"
"Was it?" Titus turned those analytical eyes on his brother with the precision of someone who kept receipts. "Dakota, I'll review the specifications with you. Come find me when you're ready."
* * *
The next day arrived with me attacking those specifications like they contained the cure for professional humiliation.
Every number triple-checked, every floor plan verified until my eyes burned and my spine curved into a question mark.
When Titus materialized at 7 PM with Thai food and fresh perspective, I nearly cried from exhaustion masquerading as gratitude.
"You switched them during the third revision," he pulled up the file history with surgical precision. "Here, when you were probably running on coffee and determination instead of sleep."
"Tired isn't an excuse," I stabbed at a pad thai with unnecessary violence.
"No, but it's the reason. There's a significant difference between incompetence and human error." He caught another mistake I'd missed, fixing it without the judgment I'd been drowning in. "You're not incompetent, Dakota. Just distracted by things you're pretending not to notice."
Heat flooded my face with the subtlety of a California wildfire. "I'm completely focused on this project and nothing else."
"Of course. That's why you've memorized our coffee orders and noticed when Stephen adjusts his tie." His tone suggested he found my denial more amusing than convincing.
We worked in silence that felt different from his usual arctic efficiency, something almost like understanding passing between us.
Like maybe behind all that computational coldness, Titus Sullivan actually understood what it felt like to constantly calculate every move in this corporate chess game where the pieces kept changing rules.
Day three brought another morning of avoiding eye contact with anyone named Sullivan.
I’d perfected the art of pretending spreadsheets held ancient wisdom as Stephen approached, radiating his usual sunshine optimism that made everything feel worse.
“Hey, Dakota,” he said gently. “Look, I know you’re spiraling over the Nakamura thing, but we’ve all been there. I once sent the Castro proposal to Castillo. Raphael covered for me.”
I stared harder at my screen. “That’s different. You didn’t almost lose us a major client.”
“Actually, I did. But you? You caught one of Titus’s errors—basically a unicorn event.”
From across the room, Titus chimed in, voice like ice.
“If we’re done cheerleading, some of us have real work to do.”
I shrank further into my blazer. Three days of Stephen’s relentless warmth and Titus’s arctic disapproval had me second-guessing everything.
“Ignore him,” Stephen murmured, leaning closer. “He’s just salty that you proved he’s human.”
“I’m right here,” Titus said flatly.
“I know, buddy. That’s why it’s funnier.”
I still couldn’t smile. “I’m working from Freeman Industries for a while,” I muttered, already packing.
“Dakota—”
“I need space. To recalibrate.”
The elevator doors closed on Stephen’s worried face.
But sitting in my father's office now, surrounded by his achievements and the ghost of the son he'd never had, I realized I'd simply traded three flavors of fresh hell for the familiar burn of paternal disappointment.
At least here, the judgment came from someone who'd been let down by my existence since birth.
At least here, I wasn’t losing my mind over three older, devastatingly gorgeous and complicated men… And I still couldn’t tell whether I wanted to hate them or ride each of them.