Can't Or Won't

Can't Or Won't
"Why else would you ask about a door other than if you're trying to open it? They're not exactly common."
Fair. He bit his lip and turned to face the door. "And if I am?"
"Then you should know that I can't help you."
His gut plummeted. "Why?"
"I'm a security professional. What do you think will happen if people find out there's someone out there who can bypass my company's safeguards?"
He tilted his head at that. So the entire company's architecture rested on the old Elowen spell work? He supposed that made sense. Human magic had mostly died out ages ago or been corrupted as hunters rose in number and preyed on the supernatural conflict of the war for their own ends. Apparently, the Abrahams had been involved in it. They might still be for all he knew. Maybe they'd once been magical. 
His dad and Grayson's mother had been smart to hide her supernatural children under the name of a hunter line. 
"I could return authority to you. I'm not talking about opening every Elowen door, just this one."
"I can't."
"You can't, or you won't?" Nikolias checked the timer. He had already burned through twenty minutes getting her on the phone. "What do you want? I'm trying to save lives. You knew my dad, then you know what kind of man he raised me to be. All I need is ten seconds to get the door open."
A twist of pain and warning came from the back of his mind, stretching across the distance between them, following the current of magic that connected the call. 
"I can't."
His gut clenched at the pleased edge of her tone. Trap. Something in him screamed trap, to back out now, but another element pulled him forward, still reaching, clearing a darkness in his mind until he could hear her voice in his mind, not just through the phone. He glanced at the timer. Less than thirty minutes left. 
"And before you go on, if you were a true Abraham, really your father's son, then you'd understand why I can't."
His eyes burned with the rising sense of fury and frustration; beneath that was the screaming doubt. She thought Maximillian was a hunter's son; maybe he played the part, maybe that's how he bought so much of the company. 
"My father would make an oath to give it back as soon as the door was open and whatever it takes to have a chance to save whoever may be behind the door."
"It sounds like you don't even know if anyone's in danger."
But did she? Nikolias leaned on that suspicion, pushing through the haze, fumbling with the odd shape his empathy was taking. It was a bit like using his power when on the crisis hotline, but with more intention. He needed specifics, needed details rather than a vague feeling of what the danger could be. 
The captain of the enforcers hissed into the phone. "And I fucking outrank a doctor. I said, wake him up!"
Nikolias shot another glare to kill the phone. 
"I have no way of verifying how many, but I'm not willing to take the chance."
And yet, the captain seemed to be willing to not make a single move without knowing, or maybe he was just stalling. He glanced at the enforcer who had driven him, who watched the captain with narrowed, suspicious eyes. 
"You trusted my father so much to give him a stake in your company. Then, you should trust me enough as a young man who was raised by him."
"I don't know you. For all I know, you're your mother's child."
Are you human? Are you on our side?
"I had my qualms about you owning a piece of my company, given your mother's species. I had plans to buy you out since he was dead. The fact that you'd call me to request carte blanche override for the foundation of the brand's edge tells me I was right to be concerned."
Not human. Not one of us.
Nikolias leaned harder until the vague shape of a desk shimmered in his mind. 
"I respect your hesitance from a business standpoint." Nikolias set his jaw, nodding. "I don't know what there is that I can say to make you change your mind. What oath I can swear, what I can offer you..." The edge of her desk and the clean lines of her nails drumming on the table appeared in his mind. A shadowy figure sat across from her. "But I have a feeling your ethical dilemma isn't all that insurmountable, given that an oath to give it back within ten minutes of getting the door open is more than reasonable to offer and accept. So what is that you actually want?"
Or don't want? Did she just not want him to open the door at all?
Who was the person in the office with her?
She chuckled. "That sounds more like Max'... we can start with you selling the stocks of the company back. We're looking to do a full buyback. That'd take at least twenty minutes between the written agreement and the oath to return the authority back to me."
Another twinge of a half-lie. The darkness snapped open, flashing the office she occupied, then went closed again. The man sitting across from her was young, but older than Nikolias, maybe in his twenties with Eason's straight dark hair and Mr. Williams' nose. He was related to the Williams men somehow. Was that Eason's older brother or a cousin maybe? 
Beneath the armored vest, he wore a rough, plain shirt smudged with dirt. 
A smuggler? A poacher? A hunter for sure. The haze of malice shimmered around him. 
Judith shifted in her seat, but she wasn't nervous. Confidence poured out in waves as she twiddled with her pen and looked out the window into a familiar desert. She was in Nevada somewhere. 
"Okay," Nikolias said. "We'll start with the transfer. I'll get my uncle on the line."
The man smirked and stood to leave as Judith turned to her computer, scooting up. The screen was already open to the screen that would allow for the buyback. He placed her on mute and messaged Theodore. 
Nikolias: I'm going to call you. Do not answer. Pass it to someone who has knowledge but no authority over Dad's estate. 
Theodore replied with a thumbs up, a question mark, and the name of a member of his firm.
Nikolias added the call as a third line before rushing out the door, back through the house to the enforcer's car.  He tore open the trunk, dragging out his suitcase and the suitcase he'd bought for Tyler and dragged them both inside as the phone rang. Theodore's phone went to voicemail after several rings, then his office's answering machine routed him to another voicemail and another. 
Judith's irritation ratched up with every transfer. By the time he got connected to Esquire Thompson, a man with a faint British accent, she was practically seething in her seat. 
Good. Hopefully, she’d made a mistake.