Read Chapter 19: The Cufflink Returned

The flat smelled of bleach and cardboard by Thursday morning, which was saying something, because Tom’s gym bag had been marinating by the radiator for three days. Jazz had declared a “pivot purge” at seven a.m., dragging a bin bag from room to room with the manic energy of someone trying to outrun a panic attack. Alex’s terms had landed like a verdict, and the six-week clock was already ticking. Clean space, clean mind, she’d announced. Tom had grunted from behind his laptop and kept typing.

She was on her hands and knees by the time the sun properly rose, her fingers sweeping the dust frontier beneath the sofa. Old receipts. A biro. A dried-up felt-tip. Then her knuckles brushed something solid, metallic. She fished it out and turned it over.

The cufflink. Tom’s granddad’s cufflink. The one he’d lost three weeks ago, which he’d mentioned twice on Monday and once more yesterday with a furrow in his brow that made him look ten years older. Gold, worn at the edges, engraved with a monogram that had been rubbed almost smooth: T.R.

Jazz sat back on her heels. For a second, the smart thing was to toss it at his head with a triumphant *found it*. That was the dynamic. That was the currency they traded in. She could picture the grin, the eye roll, the grudging thanks. But Tom was hunched over his keyboard now, forehead creased, phone pressed to one ear, and she caught the tail end of his sentence.

“—understand you’re reviewing options, but I’d ask you to hold judgement until you see the demo. Yes. Tomorrow. I appreciate that.”

His voice had an edge she didn’t hear often. Not the competitive edge. The scared one. Marcus. The video call was scheduled for tomorrow morning, and they still didn’t have a clean answer about the false metrics, or the pivot, or the patent search that was still sitting unread in her inbox like a landmine she kept stepping around.

Jazz slid the cufflink into her pocket. It was warm against her thigh. She told herself it was leverage. Material for tonight’s teasing. She could dangle it over dinner, watch him squirm, make him do the washing-up for a week.

She went back to cleaning.

By midday, the flat looked borderline presentable, which was to say the dishes were in the sink rather than on every surface, and the sofa had been rotated forty-five degrees to create a “war room” configuration. Tom’s briefcase sat open by the door, a mess of printed decks and Post-its and a cracked tablet. Jazz was passing it on her way to make tea when the weight in her pocket bumped against her hip.

She paused. Tom had his back to her, sketching wireframes on a whiteboard with a marker that was running dry. He swore under his breath, capped it, uncapped it, swore again.

Jazz looked at the briefcase. Looked at his back. Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled the cufflink out and slid it into the side pocket of his briefcase, tucked beneath a sheaf of paper where he’d find it when he packed up.

She didn’t announce it. She didn’t even let herself smirk. She made her tea and sat down at her laptop and started drafting talking points for Marcus’s call that she knew they’d probably shred by 9 a.m. tomorrow.

The afternoon was a blur of caffeinated focus. They ran a whiteboard session on the supplier-chat MVP, stripping out everything that wasn’t a message thread, a notification, or an order status update. Jazz watched Tom delete an entire feature tree with the grim satisfaction of a surgeon and felt a pang of something she refused to name.

At six, he said he needed air, and went out to the corner shop for milk and protein bars. He was gone twenty minutes. When he came back, his face was different. Lighter.

He put the shopping down and looked at her, holding the cufflink between his thumb and forefinger.

“Where did you find this?”

Jazz shrugged, eyes on her screen. “Under the sofa. Was going to ransom it, but I figured you had enough on your plate.”

Tom stared at her for a long moment. Then he closed his fist around it and, with the same quiet gravity you might use for a found compass, slipped it back onto his wrist. He didn’t say thanks. He didn’t have to.

But at seven, a takeaway arrived that neither of them had ordered. Thai. His usual. Her usual, actually, because it turned out their usuals overlapped. He pushed the container toward her across the coffee table.

“Split it,” he said.

They ate in silence, but it was a different silence. The good one.

Marcus called at eight-fifteen, not nine, which threw them both. Video. Sharp. He was on a balcony somewhere with a glass of something amber, and his smile had the precision of a blade.

“I’ve been crunching the numbers you sent,” he said. “They’re very… creative.”

The room tightened. Tom’s jaw did something. Jazz put down her fork.

“You’re going to need to walk me through the cost structure,” Marcus continued. “Because right now, it looks like you’ve been keeping two sets of books, and the one you send me isn’t the one you’re living in.”

Tom opened his mouth. Jazz talked over him.

“We’re in the middle of a pivot,” she said. “We accepted a conditional investment that required a rebuild. The numbers you have are from the pre-pivot product. They were never meant to project forward. We’re happy to walk you through the new model.”

Marcus’s eyebrow rose a millimetre. “The new model you haven’t shown me yet.”

“You’ll have it in the morning,” Tom said. Solid. Not pleading.

Marcus swirled his glass. “I’m sure I will.” He paused. “I’ve also noticed you haven’t filed the updated IP paperwork. The provisional patent on the AI engine is due to lapse in eleven days. If you’re pivoting away from it, that’s fine. But if you’re saving it for later, you’ve got a very narrow window, and I’d hate to see someone else claim the space first.”

Jazz felt the email in her inbox like a physical weight. The IP classmate. The second filer. She hadn’t opened it. She’d been too scared of what it said. But Marcus’s words sharpened it into something unavoidable.

After the call ended, neither of them moved for a minute. Then Tom let out a breath and rubbed his face.

“Eleven days,” he said.

“I know.”

“The patent. The second filer. We need to know what that email says.”

Jazz looked at her phone. Then she looked at Tom’s cufflink, glinting under the lamp light.

“I’ll open it tomorrow,” she said. “After we survive Marcus again.”

Tom nodded slowly. He picked up their empty takeaway containers and dropped them in the bin, then paused at the doorway.

“For the record,” he said, “that was a good call this afternoon. The cufflink. Not saying anything.”

Jazz felt her cheeks warm. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He cracked a half-smile that softened into something real. “Good night, Jazz.”

She watched him go, his footsteps padding down the hall, the door of his room clicking shut. The flat was quiet. The cufflink sat in her memory. And in her inbox sat an email that could unravel everything.

She opened her laptop, clicked refresh, and stared at the unread message for a long moment before closing it again.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she’d face it.

Tomorrow, Marcus would call again.

Tonight, she let herself feel the weight of his half-smile and the terrifying thought that somewhere between wireframes and whiteboard markers, she had stopped wanting to beat Tom, and started wanting to see him win.