Ink and Iron

Reese Calloway is nineteen, twelve tattoos deep, and one bad lease away from losing the only shop that ever took her seriously. When a private equity firm buys the building, she marches into their Portland office and demands a meeting. She gets Julien Marchetti instead — forty-one, ex-marine, manicured, and quietly buying every independent studio on the West Coast. He doesn't throw her out. He offers her a deal: run his flagship, make it profitable on his terms, and he'll leave the rest of the shops alone. She takes it. He becomes her landlord. Then her boss. Then the man who comes in after close, sits in her chair, and reads while she finishes up, not saying a word. She learns the sound of him walking in. She learns the exact hour. When she finds out the flagship was always on his acquisition list too, she doesn't scream at him. She just stops answering. He doesn't accept that.