Page 3 of Based on You

SIMON

I came down the staircase already dressed for work in a charcoal suit, my tie hanging loose around my collar. I'd been too lazy to wrestle a clean knot. I'd be holed up in my office all day anyway—with few meetings, if any, assuming I had the schedule right.

Marta, our housekeeper, stood by the stove when I walked into the kitchen.

"Good morning, Marta." I crossed to the dining table where my usual coffee mug waited.

"Good morning, Simon." She turned from the stove for a second. "Did you sleep well?"

I nodded and picked up my coffee, taking a slow sip. It hadn't always been my preference. But over the past few months, I'd drifted off sugar and milk for good. I used to hate the idea of black coffee, writing it off as a pretentious choice. I'd go to absurd lengths with my café orders just to prove a point to myself—and to earn a scowl from Elena across the table. She'd look at me over the rim of her cup, unimpressed, her eyebrows climbing toward her hairline while I grinned back.

It was the smallest, most unremarkable routine.

And I missed it.

These days the only thing I could stomach was the hard bite of caffeine.

"Where's Olivia?" I asked, though I knew the answer. By now, the question had worn itself down into a bleak morning ritual.

"She's in her room." Marta sighed and lifted a plated meal from the counter. "I'll bring her breakfast up shortly."

I only nodded.

Ever since Olivia moved in, she'd stayed barricaded in her bedroom, locked away from everyone. Nobody could blame the girl—a point her therapist had made plain and often. She'd lost both her parents in a single breath.

I dragged in a breath and watched Marta carry the tray down the corridor.

The empty table stared back at me. Like the thrill of sugar, the basic pull of food had gone.

Elena and I used to grab breakfast together before work, a habit we'd struck in college and never dropped. She had this way of watching every woman who passed our booth with open, easy admiration—nothing possessive or complicated in her eyes. She just found people fascinating and worth watching.

If anyone made a snide remark, she'd wave it off like water off a duck's back. She had her flaws and regrets like anyone, but she was good through and through. And I'd taken for granted that she'd be sitting there for the next breakfast, and the next, and the one after that.

Marta came back from the hallway with her hands empty and shot me a worried look. "No breakfast again? Can I at least serve you an early lunch before you leave?"

I shook my head. "I'll eat at the office."

Sighing, she took the loss and turned back to her cleaning.

I drained the last of my coffee and headed outside, where my driver, Manuel, was leaning against the SUV I used daily. The moment I stepped through the front door, he hurried out to meet me.

Manuel pulled the rear door open. "Good morning, Mr. Beckett."

I settled into the backseat with a nod, and we slid out of the driveway and merged into the morning traffic. I unlocked my tablet out of habit, though I couldn't bring myself to read the glowing screen. Instead I stared out the tinted window, watching the early sunlight throw a flat wash over the streets.

Half an hour later, we pulled up to the Beckett Media building.

This place was the only spot where my heart sat easy. Olivia and this publishing empire were the last two legacies Elena left me.

I remembered when all of it was nothing but an idea. I'd been hunched over my laptop, typing up some forgotten document, while Elena sprawled on the floor behind me with a paperback resting on her chest. I barely clocked her until she screamed.

She bolted upright, let the novel slide onto the carpet, and launched into a tirade—that the modern publishing world was a disaster. That it was an industry built by executives who didn't read. That the writers doing the actual creative bleeding got tossed the smallest scraps. She dissected the romance market, tore into literary fiction, hashed out print versus digital, mourned the treatment of debut authors, and roasted one specific publishing house.

Somewhere around the three-minute mark, I gave up on my typing and spun my chair around just to watch her. Finally running out of steam, she dropped back onto the floor and stared at the ceiling for a long time before rolling her head to meet my gaze.

"Let's start our own company," she'd proposed.

I almost laughed out loud. Launching a publishing house was the kind of grand dream that's easy to pitch and near impossible to pull off. But her jaw was set, and her stare never wavered—which killed my amusement on the spot.