Back then he’d been recovering from pretty intense surgery and was working from home, except on Thursdays when the cleaning lady came to his house and he came to the office. He’d been barely able to walk but insisted he didn’t want to be in the house with her. When I asked him why, he was brusque and cagey. I was livid, thinking he’d rather risk hurting his knee than talk to the woman who cleaned his house. By the third week, when he practically dragged himself from his place to the office ten floors below, I’d had enough.

I ranted to Natasha for a full five minutes about how fucked up it was, and then she told me. She explained that he did it because he didn’t want to make the cleaner uncomfortable. He’d been hiring staff from a back-to-work program run by a local domestic violence agency and he always made sure he left in case they felt unsafe alone with a man in the house. I’d practically crumbled from mortification in front of Natasha. I’d been so nice to him after that he’d yelled at me to quit talking to him like he was a time bomb.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t have liked that getting out. It’s personal.” His voice was quieter than it had been. And it occurred to me that for all his arrogance, Theo was not one to boast about the kindnesses he did.

“You used to do a lot of work with them, the agency,” I said after a while, and again he seemed to weigh his words for a long time before answering.

“I did.” The first year I worked for Theo his dad was still running things at Ganas, and though my boss was the second-in-command he’d had all kinds of side projects. He was passionate about more environmentally sound construction and he’d doing more builds for communities with housing insecurity. But once he’d taken over after his father’s retirement he’d let all that go to focus on running Ganas Corp like the patriarch expected.

“What does your dad think about you coming to do this?” I expected him to shut me down at any moment, but he kept surprising me.

“He wants the Valle Mar project to happen. I’m supposed to be there in a month for the deal closing.” The reminder that this would all be over in a month did not grant me the relief I hoped for.