Regrets - Chapter One
Inheritance Without Instructions
Reader note: Regrets unfolds over roughly eighteen days.
Wednesday - Week 1
NICOLE
Nicole Templeton sat behind her father’s desk for the third time that week and still couldn’t decide if it felt like a throne or a trap.
Everything about her appearance was calculated: navy blouse, slate slacks, mauve mouth—serious enough to be obeyed, polished enough to pass. She wore the Templeton legacy the way she wore her looks: managed, never indulged.
She’d heard variations of beautiful her entire life. In this office, it meant nothing. Beauty created complications. Her features were the same as always—classical lines that could harden under the wrong lighting, a mouth people mistook for softness she didn’t have time to give. Even her gray-blue eyes required control; too much intensity invited questions. She lined them lightly. Redirect, don’t draw. Her hair stayed pinned back the way she liked it, and the gold chain at her collarbone rested lightly against her skin. She never explained it. Some things weren’t for public record.
The truth was more complicated.
Technically, she wasn’t even CEO. Interim. A title with an expiration date and her mother’s fingerprints all over it.
Elizabeth hadn’t wanted to run the company; she wanted to protect it. From the board. From outsiders. From chaos she couldn’t dictate. So she’d pushed Nicole into the chair, trusting grief and discipline to keep her daughter exactly where she needed her.
Nicole hadn’t been ready. But refusing the opportunity would’ve handed Rick Chambers the opening he’d been rehearsing for years. She wasn’t about to let her father’s legacy get carved up by men who mistook financial calculation for leadership.
So she stayed. She studied. She inhaled strategy documents like oxygen. And she kept the timeline running in her head. Nine months since Robert Templeton collapsed. Three since the engagement announcement. Fourteen days until the board decided whether she kept the job he never got to hand her.
But some days, when the silence pressed too tightly, she remembered a specific female voice—low, amused, always unshaken. Alexis could find always calm in chaos.
Her father’s voice hadn’t been that different. Strong and settling. The office still smelled like him: cedar oil, old leather, and the faintest trace of bergamot. Sharp, clean. Unfinished.
The framed patents lined the wall in perfect symmetry, undisturbed. She’d memorized the cracks in their glass after the funeral. Robert Templeton hadn’t passed her a torch. He’d died of a heart attack—sudden, final. No farewell. Just silence and a kingdom with no map.
Across from her, Jim Watmore stood like he always did, reliable, rumpled, and watching her like he still saw the little girl who used to dissect military procurement spreadsheets just to impress her father. CFO, strategist, tether to the past.
“I don’t know, Nic,” he said, voice pitched low. “Your dad always had two plans. One for the board. One for himself. If he documented the second, he didn’t do it here.”
Nicole didn’t blink. “Then where?”
Jim gave her that familiar half-shrug. “That’s what keeps me up at night.”
She wanted to pace but didn’t. She wouldn’t give anyone, not even Jim, the image of her as restless. Instead, she moved to the desk’s edge, her fingers grazing the grain of the wood her father had never let assistants clean. “People think I inherited this,” she said. “But I know where the fractures are. I was the one patching a lot of them.”
“Rick Chambers is counting on people forgetting that.”
Of course he was. Rick, with his laminated credentials and charisma polished to a shine. No instinct. No vision. Just ambition and a smile that tried too hard. She knew he’d locked four votes and had a proxy rumor working its way through finance—Stability Agenda: Interim Review. Her mother’s influence lived in that phrasing.
She turned toward the window. Tucson glittered beneath the late-afternoon sun—bronze and brittle, light bouncing off the Templeton building. From here, it looked like this might be something she could still keep.
“He’s posturing?” she asked.
“Calls. Coffees. Rumors. Says the company needs ‘seasoned hands’ in volatile times.”
“Translation: not me.”
“Translation: not disruptive.”
She exhaled through her nose. “Because I have ideas.”
Jim smiled. “Because you act on them. And because the board still sees you as Robert’s wildcard daughter. Smart, untested, and inconveniently female.”
Jim paused, tilted his head. “It helped. Temporarily. But everyone who matters knows it’s a stage play.”
He meant the engagement.
The board didn’t say it out loud, but she’d felt the shift—how suddenly she became palatable once paired off. Less volatile. Easier to trust.
Nicole gave a humorless laugh. “Conventional stability. Nothing says board-friendly like a monogrammed engagement party.”
“And Aaron Scott plays well in quarterly wrap-ups,” Jim said through gritted teeth.
“He plays well everywhere,” she stated plainly. “That’s his game.”
Jim’s brow tightened. “I haven’t been able to read him.”
“He prefers it that way,” she said, tone flat.
She crossed to the couch—her father’s late-night meeting spot—and sat. Jim followed.
“You think my mother was right to push it?” she asked.
“It bought time. Silenced questions.”
“Reinforced the illusion, ” she added, looking down at the bag on the floor by her feet.
Jim didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Nicole reached into the bag and pulled out a folder. “Project Ascension,” she said, handing it to him.
He flipped it open, slow and deliberate. His eyes narrowed. “This is from Q2 last year.”
“Buried under ops costs. No oversight. No attribution. But it’s real.”
Jim tapped the paper. “You found the second plan.”
She shook her head. “I found breadcrumbs. No map. No author.”
A pause. Then: “Have you looked at your dad’s legal trail? His outside filings?”
Nicole’s gaze sharpened. “You mean Hinch and Lowell?”
Jim nodded. “He never floated ideas internally—not the early ones. Always ran them through outside counsel. You know how he was about protecting strategy.”
She was quiet.
Jim softened his tone. “I know it’s... complicated. But if there’s anything more concrete, that’s where it’ll be.”
Nicole nodded once. Small. Tight.
A knock at the door cut the silence. Lorraine Cho, her father’s secretary, now hers, pushed it open.
“Your fiancé is downstairs,” she said, her tone perfectly dry. “Says he’s here to walk you out.”
Nicole didn’t move. “Let him up.”
Lorraine arched one penciled brow. “I can say you’re still in meetings.”
Nicole offered the faintest smile. “It’s fine. You’ve done enough today.” She disappeared like smoke.
Jim stood, reaching for his jacket. “That’s my cue.”
Nicole stood with him. “Thanks for staying.”
“You’ve earned more than they see, Nic.”
The door shut behind him with the softest click.
Nicole returned to the desk. Slipped the folder into her bag. Rested her palm on the surface, absorbing its weight. It didn’t comfort her.
She heard Aaron’s footsteps before he reached the door—deliberate, unhurried, loud in their confidence.
Aaron Scott stepped into the office like he already owned it or planned to. Trim and sleek, just over six feet, with glowing skin and dark brown hair styled like he expected to be photographed. His linen jacket hung open over a crisp black shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled just enough to suggest ease. The kind of ease that took effort. Icy blue eyes swept the room, charming in company but sharp beneath the surface. Just enough calculated charm to pretend he wasn’t posturing.
Nicole didn’t look up. She was gathering other reports, her hands moving in quiet sequence—stack, align, sort—one pile for actual work, the other for theater. Aaron didn’t know what she was doing, and she wasn’t about to let him know.
“You let me wait downstairs,” Aaron said.
“I was in a meeting,” she replied, still stacking.
“With Jim?”
“Yes.”
She finally lifted her gaze. He was already watching her.
Aaron was what people called worldly—the word used when they didn’t want to say crafted. His last name bought access, but not belonging. Half raised inside the Scott estate, half outside it—taken in at fifteen after the crash that killed his parents. Then gone five years later, to live with his mother’s family. He came back a year ago, with a degree, a law license, and a smile like a locked drawer.
Nicole had never asked what was behind it. She’d learned that men like Aaron always called their ambition something noble.
“You could’ve told Lorraine to send me up,” he said.
“She did,” Nicole replied, keeping her voice level. “When it was time.”
He crossed the room with the easy confidence of someone used to being welcome everywhere. There had been a time when that ease had impressed her — not attracted her, exactly, but impressed her. Now it just looked like muscle memory.
“You’re running yourself into the ground, Nic. Let me help you steer for a while. You’re brilliant, but brilliance burns out fast.”
He said it gently, voice pitched like concern. It might have fooled someone else.
Nicole capped her pen. The words slid over her, familiar and empty. Always the same cadence—offer help, then hold the leash.
“Aaron,” she said quietly. “What do you actually want?”
His expression flickered—half-second pause, like she’d broken rhythm. Then the smile returned, smooth as glass. “Just for you to let me help.”
“That’s what worries me.”
He laughed softly, as if she’d made a joke. “Four months engaged. Five public appearances. People notice when you disappear. Let them see us; it quiets the noise. Gives you room to work.”
She didn’t respond. The lie was efficient: his version of we.
“Visuals matter, Nic. If people see us together, they stop asking whether you can handle this alone. I’m here for you—same as I was at the beginning.”
The salesman’s sincerity again—care laminated to control.
Nicole pushed the final folder into her briefcase and zipped it shut. “Friday night.”
“What?”
“Dinner. Public. Casual but clean.”
“I was thinking tonight.”
“I wasn’t.” She met his eyes, voice flat. “I already have plans.”
He tilted his head, all mock hurt and practiced charm. “You make me sound like an obligation.”
She looked at him then—steady, expressionless. If he thought he could read her, he’d never tried hard enough. “You want to be seen with me, fine,” she said. “But it’s on my terms. Not when it takes time from the reason I’m still in this office.”
“This office isn’t guaranteed, Nic.”
“Nothing is.”
He stepped in closer, voice low, softened like he was sharing a secret. “Then maybe it’s time I helped make it more secure.”
And there it was—the pitch, polished and patient, like he’d practiced it in a mirror. Wrapped in concern, sharpened with ambition.
“Templeton needs to evolve,” he continued. “You’re stretched thin. I can help—legal, operational, strategic. I want to take some of this off your shoulders. Make it easier for you to do the parts only you can do.”
She caught the switch mid-sentence, the warmth bending toward the close, the soft sell before the hook. It was never about her. It was about the picture he needed to keep looking legitimate.
“Start with authority,” he said lightly. “Make me temporary counsel-of-record. Limited sign-off—vendor contracts, outside counsel coordination. I move what’s stuck; you focus on strategy.”
“I’m not asking for help,” she said.
“But you need it.”
She rose, slow and deliberate, fatigue turning every movement into something measured. “You want in because you’re building something else. And Templeton gives it cover. You think standing next to me makes it respectable.”
His smile faltered, then reshaped itself. “That’s unfair, Nic.” The tone was gentle, almost wounded—almost. “You make it sound like everything I’ve done is for me.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked, voice quiet, not cruel, just tired of the same discussion.
He exhaled, laugh soft, self-deprecating. “You always think the worst of me.”
“Only when I’m right.”
The silence stretched. He shifted, the charm sliding back into place like a well-tailored suit. “You and your mother…both impossible to please.”
That one landed harder than he knew. “You and my mother,” she said, “make a very efficient partnership.”
He gave a faint smile, half defense, half pride. “She understands the pressure you’re under.”
“She understands optics,” Nicole corrected.
He looked like he wanted to protest, then thought better of it. The fake hurt came back anyway, smaller this time—something meant to remind her of how they used to talk.
She didn’t take the bait. “Friday,” she said. “We’ll be seen. We’ll smile. You’ll get your picture.”
“You’re not in control of this.” His voice softened again, more coaxing than sharp.
“Maybe not,” she said, meeting his eyes. “But neither are you.”
He straightened his jacket, the motion slow and deliberate, reclaiming poise like a man resetting for an audience. “Westmoor Club. Saturday. 7:30.”
Nicole arched a brow. “Two nights in a row? Bold move, even for Team Aaron.”
He smiled—smaller this time, searching for levity. “It was your mother’s suggestion.”
Of course it was.
Nicole nodded once, the gesture polite, exhausted. “Then I’ll be ready.”
He paused at the door, brushing his hand along the frame like he might say something meaningful, but all that came out was, “Wear something formal. Jewel tone, maybe. Something that says certainty.”
“I’ll wear what I need to,” she said.
His smile held, practiced and perfect. “That’s all I’m asking.”
The door clicked behind him, quiet and final.
Nicole stayed standing, the air gone still around her. The fatigue wasn’t just physical—it was structural. The kind that came from holding too many lies upright at once.
Chapter Two drops next Tuesday.
I can feel the pressure of the situation Nicole is in. I’m ready for Aaron to trip over his polished loafers and faceplant.
Damn! What energy. That crackled along quick. This is the fist board room drama I’ve read on Substack and you write it like you’ve lived it