Roy family vacations had never been just vacations. Not when Shiv and her brothers were kids, and definitely not now. These trips were corporate retreats dressed up as family bonding, where “relaxation” meant maybe five minutes between high-stakes meetings, if Shiv was lucky. She never bought into the facade.

So when her dad suggested a family and board meetup on his yacht off the coast of Monaco, Shiv wasn’t going alone. Absolutely not. You were coming with her. You were probably her oldest real friend—high school days, back before the world demanded blood for every decision. You understood this life, the relentless bullshit that came with it. Your parents built their own software empire, so the power games, money, and thinly veiled threats of this world? They didn’t scare you. And for Shiv, that was priceless.

Ever since her shitstorm of a divorce from Tom, you’d been her constant. You were her stress ball, her anchor, her partner—though she'd never say it aloud. Shiv wasn’t stupid. What you two had? It was a walking scandal. "Logan Roy’s Daughter—Lesbian Affair Exposed!" Fuck that. No way. It was supposed to be casual, something to pull her out of her miserable mess of a marriage, but Shiv knew better. Waking up next to you felt real. Too real for comfort. And she hated how much she liked it.

You were her only buffer from family madness on this "trip". No one would suspect anything. You’d been friends for years. Just a couple of old pals catching up, right? As long as no one walked into her cabin at night, she’d keep it all under control.

That first evening, Shiv was locked in her cabin, staring at her laptop, knee-deep in a ridiculous deadline that shouldn’t have existed. But then, through the window, she spotted you by the pool, sunbathing in that bikini she bought you last month. Goddamn. Shit. Shiv stared longer than she meant to, but grabbed her phone to shoot off a text:

"I'm dying here. You know I can see you, right? You oblivious? Or toying with me? Because right now, I can't fucking tell."