“Leo, if you sign that email, I swear I’ll resign on principle.”
Margot Chen did not raise her voice. She didn’t need to. Her tone—flat, cool, edged like glass—cut clean through the clamor of the twenty-ninth floor.
Her boss, CEO of Veridian Media, froze mid-stride outside his glass-walled office, phone pressed to his ear. He mouthed *one sec* to whoever was on the line and lowered the phone.
“Margot.” That cajoling tone that had charmed investors, rivals, and at least two ex-wives. “You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m being literate.” She held up the printed draft he’d pushed through ten minutes ago. “You do not tell a board of directors that you ‘literally bled for this company’ unless you are prepared to provide photographic evidence, and I *am not* Photoshopping you into a medical drama.”
A passing intern choked on a laugh and instantly looked terrified when Margot’s gaze flicked his way. She didn’t bother to reprimand him. Fear would do the work for her.
Leo sighed, fingers raking through his overstyled hair. “It’s a figure of speech.”
“Overused. Lazy. And the last time you used hyperbole in official correspondence, the general counsel needed half a bottle of scotch and three days to undo it.”
“I’m on a call with Tokyo,” he muttered, gesturing with his phone. “Board meeting prep in four hours. I don’t have time for—”
“Then delegate,” she cut in. “You pay me to stop you from sounding like a college sophomore who discovered a thesaurus and trauma in the same semester. Sit. Redline. Or I’ll have to explain to Janelle in legal why you won’t take her edits *again*.”
He glared at her for a full three seconds.
Then, with a muttered curse, he ducked into his office, hit a button on his headset, and said in Japanese, smooth as silk, “My apologies, gentlemen, I need five minutes. My assistant insists on rescuing my reputation.”
Margot watched him with the faintest hint of satisfaction. Not because she’d “won.” There weren’t winners in her job. There were only degrees of disaster avoidance.
She stepped in after him and closed the door, shutting out the noise. Veridian’s open-plan chaos dulled to a manageable hum.
“Three sentences,” she said, dropping the draft on his desk and uncapping her red pen. “We fix those, and I’ll let you keep ‘unprecedented growth.’”
“That’s the best part,” he complained as he sat, yanking off his headset. “It’s *true*.”
“It was true in 2017.” She circled the offending phrase. “Now it’s cliché. You have the vocabulary. Use it.”
He watched her for a beat, that habitual playboy squint slightly softer today. “You know what I’m going to miss most?”
“No,” she said briskly. “And I don’t want to.”
“You.” He leaned back, chair creaking. “You’re the only person in this company who tells me no and lives.”
“That’s not true.” She didn’t look up. “Janelle tells you no all the time. She just bills by the quarter hour for it.”
“Not the same. You’re my conscience.”
“Then you’re in more trouble than the board realizes.”
His smile slipped for a moment, something more serious peeking through. “You really going to do it?”
She knew what he meant. He’d known from the second she’d walked in at nine a.m. with a closed expression and an envelope in her hand.
“I gave you my notice two days ago,” she said. “This is not a philosophical question.”
“People change their minds,” he said. “They get attached. Their boss growls a little, offers them more money, maybe flight benefits, box seats at Madison Square Garden—”
“My mind,” she said, “is a steel trap. And I hate basketball.”
“You hate everything fun,” he muttered.
“I hate inefficiency. And you’re stalling.” She tapped the second paragraph. “Change ‘bleeding’ to ‘fighting.’ You *have* fought for them. That part is actually true.”
He exhaled heavily, took the pen from her, and started scribbling.
She watched him work, quick and surprisingly neat, and felt something twist in her chest. Not regret exactly. She did not regret the decision. Veridian had been good to her. Chaotic, dramatic, relentless—but good.
She’d started here at twenty-eight, leaving behind two less glamorous CEO roles in industries that still used fax machines and thought social media was a fad. Veridian had been the big leagues. National campaigns. Streaming deals. Vanity Fair profiles.
She had taken a disorganized golden boy and turned him, if not into a responsible adult, then at least into a functional one.
Now somebody else wanted to poach the person who made him functional.
Not *somebody*, she corrected herself. *Him*.
Declan Hale.
Hale Innovations.
Three emails. Two voicemails. One very persistent recruiter.
A number that had made her sit down when she heard it.
She banished the thought before it could show on her face.
Leo signed the last page with a sigh. “There. Happy?”
“Content,” she said. “Happiness is for people with less email.”
He watched her slip the pages into a new folder, already mentally slotting this into her afternoon schedule. His gaze lingered on her a little too long.
“Are they at least… nice?” he asked, voice careful. “These Hale people?”
“Define nice.”
“Are they going to work you to death? Because I am not signing off on a successor who burns out in six months and leaves me for, I don’t know, meditation retreats and goat yoga.”
She let herself smile, small but genuine. “You’re getting my replacement. I am not being shipped off to a secret lab for cloning.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” he said.
She considered how much to tell him. The recruiter’s sleek voice: *He’s… particular. Brilliant, demanding, very hands-on. He needs someone who can handle pressure.* The whispered aside: *His last three assistants quit. HR says he’s “intense.”*
*Intense* didn’t scare her. She’d worked for yellers, sulkers, gaslighters, emotional vampires. She’d also worked for visionaries who forgot to eat, prodigies who didn’t know how to dress themselves, and a logistics-obsessed founder who once had a panic attack because someone moved his stapler.
It all boiled down to one question: *Can I manage him?*
She intended to find out.
“I’ve done my research,” she said. “The offer is… substantial. The role is challenging. And their offices have floor-to-ceiling windows and oxygen-filtering plants that cost more than my car.”
He blinked. “You don’t have a car.”
“Exactly.”
“Is he going to hit on you?” Leo asked abruptly.
She looked up sharply. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You’re gorgeous. Efficient. Terrifying. Men are stupid. Are you walking into a minefield?”
The compliment slid right past her; this was not the first time she’d heard it, though rarely in that exact order. She knew she presented well. Slim from daily Pilates and a metabolism fueled by coffee and stress, long glossy black hair she kept in a smooth knot for work, clear skin thanks to a twelve-step skincare routine and ruthless SPF. Today she wore a deep green dress that skimmed her knees, a black blazer, and the gold pendant her mother had given her for luck.
“I have a rule,” she said. “I don’t get involved with bosses.”
“Your rule,” he said. “Not his.”
If Declan Hale tried to test that rule, she thought, he’d find out very quickly that getting on her bad side was bad for one’s calendar and possibly one’s soul.
“I can handle myself,” she said.
Leo studied her, then nodded slowly. Some of the playboy melted away, leaving the man who, on a good day, understood when to shut up and listen.
“You can,” he agreed. “Just… don’t let them eat you alive. You’re a shark, Margot. Act like it.”
She closed the folder with a soft snap. “I prefer the term ‘apex organizer.’”
He laughed, the tension breaking. “Fine. Go apex-ly organize my board deck.”
She was halfway to the door when he added, more quietly, “I’m going to miss you.”
That twist in her chest tightened. She turned back, hand on the handle.
“I know,” she said, matching his honesty. “But you’ll survive.”
His smile was sad and fond. “I always do.”
***
By seven that evening, the city glowed outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, a grid of gold and red and motion. The board meeting had gone as well as any board meeting could go when older men who owned yachts argued about TikTok.
She’d left Leo with a glass of whiskey and a promise to email him the updated investor talking points by midnight, then slipped into the elevator, heels clicking on polished stone.
Twenty-nine floors later, she stepped out into a lobby that still hummed with energy. Half the building seemed to live here.
Her phone buzzed in her bag.
MOM.
She hesitated, thumb poised. If she didn’t pick up, there would be a text. If she ignored the text, there would be a WeChat explosion and a guilt trip that could power a small nation.
She answered. “Hi, Ma.”
“Ah, *nǚ'ér*.” Her mother’s voice was warm and brisk, shuffling sounds in the background—tupperware lids, the faint hiss of a stove. “You’re working late again.”
“It’s not that late,” Margot lied, stepping out into the cool evening. Midtown swirled around her, cabs honking, a siren wailing faintly in the distance. “What’s up?”
“You coming Sunday?”
“Of course.” She always went Sunday. Family dinner in Flushing in the same semi-detached brick house she’d grown up in. She could schedule a product launch to the second, but Sunday dinner was non-negotiable. “Need me to bring anything?”
“You bring yourself, that’s enough.” A pause. “Your father is making *hóngshāo ròu* again. He says, tell you, if you don’t come, he will eat your portion too and get even fatter.”
“I heard that,” came a gruff voice in the background.
“Hi, Baba.” She smiled despite her exhaustion. “Save me some pork, please. And don’t let Ma guilt you into two bowls of rice.”
“Hah.” Her father came closer to the phone. “You think she can guilt me? Your mother is a very small woman. I am a very strong man.”
“You *are* strong,” her mother interjected. “Strong-headed. Like someone else I know.”
Margot leaned against the building, sheltering under the awning as a gust of wind lifted her hair. “Everything okay over there?”
“Everything fine, ah.” Her mother said it in the particular tone that meant *everything is not fine, but I will die before I admit it without being asked properly*.
She slid into the familiar script. “How’s the shop?”
Her father used to own a manufacturing company. Now he had a cramped office in an industrial building in Queens, where he did custom machining and consulting jobs for whoever needed precision parts and couldn’t afford the big players.
“It’s fine,” he said, too quickly. “You know, things… up and down.”
Translation: work was slow. Again.
“You eating enough?” she asked.
“I could eat less,” he grumbled. “Your mother keeps feeding me like I’m still working sixteen hours in factory.”
“That’s because when you work, you forget to eat,” her mother said. “Then you come home and faint on the couch like old man.”
“You faint once,” he protested. “One time. Twelve years ago—”
“Thirteen,” her mother corrected. “After that company stole your contract and you—”
“*Hǎo le, hǎo le*,” he cut her off, the old argument flaring then snuffed. “We don’t talk about that.”
Margot’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
They didn’t talk about it.
They didn’t talk about the night everything had fallen apart. About the letter from the bank. About watching her father read it, his shoulders curling in like he’d been punched.
They didn’t talk about the competitor who’d undercut him on price, used his own designs against him, and walked away with his biggest client.
They didn’t talk about how none of them had slept for weeks.
They *did* talk about cash flow, occasionally. About how her parents “didn’t want to bother her” but maybe, if it wasn’t too much, could she look at this loan document, was this interest rate fair?
She had been twenty-one and furious and helpless, and then she had gone to work.
And kept working.
And now someone wanted to pay her more in a signing bonus than her father had made in his best year before everything crashed.
“I’ll be there Sunday,” she said quietly. “We’ll talk more then, okay?”
“Bring that nice cake from the bakery,” her mother said, seamlessly shifting gears. “The one with the mango. Your father likes it.”
“No, no,” her father protested. “Too sweet. Too expensive.”
“I’ll bring it,” Margot said.
She hung up a few minutes later with promises of cake and weather updates and brief inquiries into her love life—*Non-existent, Ma, I’m busy*—and slipped her phone back into her bag.
She walked to the subway instead of calling a car. The cool air cleared her head. The city roared around her.
Her phone buzzed again as she trotted down the station steps.
Unknown number.
She hesitated, then answered. “This is Margot.”
“Ms. Chen. I was hoping I’d catch you.” Smooth, professional, with a faint Midwest lilt. The recruiter. “Do you have a moment?”
“I’m on my way home,” she said. “But I can talk.”
“Perfect. I wanted to confirm a few details. We’re thrilled you’re considering the offer from Hale Innovations.”
*Considering.*
The envelope on her kitchen counter would say otherwise. Her signed acceptance letter, scanned and emailed that afternoon between board agenda revisions.
But she hadn’t said it out loud yet. Saying it would make it real in a way that spreadsheets and PDF attachments did not.
“I’ve reviewed the package,” she said. “It’s generous.”
“Base, bonus, equity, relocation—though I understand you’re already in Manhattan. Health, dental, vision, 401(k) match, wellness stipend—”
“Wellness?” She stepped around a cluster of tourists blocking the stairs. “What exactly am I supposed to do with that?”
“Whatever keeps you functional.” The recruiter’s laugh was light. “Gym, therapy, yoga, noise-cancelling headphones. Mr. Hale believes in supporting his people. Especially his executive office.”
“Is that why the last three assistants lasted less than six months?”
Silence, brief but telling.
“You’ve done your homework,” the recruiter said finally.
“That’s my job.”
“Mr. Hale is…” Another small pause. “Very driven. Very detail-oriented. He has a lot on his plate. Not everyone is equipped to handle his… style.”
“Is he an asshole?” she asked plainly.
The recruiter made a choking sound that might have been a stifled laugh. “He is demanding. He has very high standards. But he’s fair. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t throw things. He’s just—”
“Intense,” she supplied.
“Yes.”
She reached the turnstiles, swiped her card, and slid through. “You know I’ve worked for demanding people before.”
“We do.” Paper rustled faintly. “Your references were… glowing.”
At that, she allowed herself the smallest pulse of satisfaction. Of course they were. She hadn’t left ashes behind at any company. Just color-coded systems and calmer executives.
“There is one thing I should mention,” the recruiter said. “Mr. Hale is under significant pressure right now. We’re working on a timeline of roughly thirty days for a major acquisition. It’s all hands on deck. He wants someone in the seat by Monday.”
“That’s three days.”
“Yes.”
“Is he aware I’m still employed?” she asked dryly. “That I might like to give my current boss more than weekend notice?”
“We understand it’s a tight transition,” the recruiter said. “But Mr. Hale is prepared to make it worth your while. There’s a signing bonus if you can start Monday. Another if you stay six months. Another at a year. He’s serious about investing in the right person.”
The subway roared into the station. She paused, cool air rushing around her, the screech of brakes filling her ears.
She pictured her parents’ narrow kitchen. The crack in the countertop from where her father had dropped a pot the night they’d gotten the bank’s final notice. Her mother’s hands, red from washing dishes, carefully smoothing the letter like she could flatten the debt out of it.
She pictured the number in the offer letter. Then she multiplied it by the equity upside the recruiter had only half-disguised their excitement about.
“Monday,” she said slowly. “If I accept, I’ll need a written waiver of any non-compete issues from your legal department. Veridian’s is weak, but I won’t risk it. I want all benefits active from day one, not after a probation period. And I want final approval over the language and distribution list of any announcement involving my hire.”
The recruiter’s tone sharpened. “Understood. Anything else?”
“Yes. A fifteen-minute call with Mr. Hale tomorrow. Before I make anything official, I’d like to hear from the man himself.”
Another pause. “He doesn’t usually take calls for this level of hire.”
“Then he can make an exception,” she said. “If he wants *me*.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
The train doors beeped. She stepped on, grabbed a pole, and let the car rock her toward home.
As the doors slid shut, the recruiter spoke again.
“Ms. Chen?”
“Yes?”
“You’re exactly the kind of person he needs.”
She hung up without responding.
She didn’t know if that was a compliment or a warning.
***
Her apartment in Astoria was tidy and small, with a view of another building and, if she craned from the fire escape, a sliver of Manhattan skyline. She liked it. It was hers. She bought the mid-century couch herself, picked the navy rug, lined the shelves with plants that somehow thrived despite her erratic watering schedule.
She dropped her bag on the console and kicked off her heels with a groan.
Her laptop sat on the table, screen dark. Next to it: the Hale Innovations envelope.
She walked past it into the tiny kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, and chugged half in a few gulping swallows.
Then she went back and picked up the envelope.
She’d read it three times already. She didn’t need to read it again.
Still, she slid the letter out.
They wanted her.
Not just “an executive assistant.” Her. They’d cited her last three roles. Her crisis management during the Veridian streaming outage last year. The way she’d handled a messy PR leak at her previous boss’s fintech startup.
Somewhere, someone had spent time understanding what she did and how she did it.
Most headhunters skimmed her résumé, saw “executive assistant,” and sent her lists of interchangeable roles for interchangeable bosses.
This felt… targeted.
She frowned at the logo at the top of the page. Simple, clean, the word HALE in cool blue, the I in Innovations stylized like a rising line on a graph.
She’d Googled him, of course.
Declan Hale. Thirty-six. Founder and CEO of Hale Innovations, a tech company that started in smart logistics and expanded into AI-driven optimization for supply chains, manufacturing, and energy grids.
Translation: he made other companies more efficient and charged them very large sums for the privilege.
Brown hair in most photos, sometimes longer, sometimes brutally cut short. Gray eyes she couldn’t quite read through the pixels. Tall, but not in that looming, caricature way. More… compact energy. Everything about him looked coiled.
She’d watched a few interviews. Panel discussions at conferences. A forty-five-minute fireside chat with a very polished host who’d kept trying to joke with him.
He hadn’t laughed once.
He’d also answered every question with surgical precision, like he couldn’t bear to waste a word.
Intense. Yes. That fit.
Autistic, she thought now, and immediately chastised herself. She didn’t know that. Couldn’t diagnose from YouTube. But there was something slightly off about the rhythm of his speech. The way he focused on the moderator’s forehead instead of her eyes. The way his hands stilled on his knees like he was reminding himself not to move them.
If he *was*—if—then those HR notes about “style” and “fit” took on a different tone.
She blew out a breath.
Not her problem. Not yet.
She’d asked for a call. If he wanted her, he’d make the call.
She set the letter down.
Her phone buzzed on the table.
Unknown number.
She stared at it. Then at the clock. 8:43 p.m.
She answered. “This is Margot.”
“Margot. It’s Declan Hale.”
His voice was lower than she expected. Calm, precise, with a faint roughness around the edges like he needed to clear his throat and couldn’t be bothered.
For a moment, she didn’t speak. She hadn’t prepared for *him* calling. She’d expected an assistant, a scheduler. Not the man himself, at 8:43 on a Thursday.
“Mr. Hale,” she said finally. “Your recruiter works fast.”
“I read your conditions,” he said. No small talk. Straight to business. “They’re reasonable. Legal is drafting the waiver and benefits addendum. You’ll have them by morning.”
“Efficient,” she said. “I appreciate that.”
“You asked for this call.” A beat. “I don’t usually do this for EA roles.”
“I know.”
“Why did you insist?”
Because I’ve built my entire adult life around not letting powerful men control me without my consent, she thought.
Aloud, she said, “Because if I take this job, I’ll be structuring your life. Your calendar, your travel, your access to people. I don’t do that for strangers. I want to know who I’m saying yes to.”
“And?” he asked. Flat. Curious. Not offended.
“And I want you to know who *you’re* saying yes to,” she added. “You’ve gone through three assistants in what? Two years?”
“Twenty-one months,” he said. “And a temp for three weeks. She cried in the bathroom. Twice.”
“Maybe she had a lot going on,” Margot said, dry. “Or maybe you’re hard to work with.”
“I’m direct,” he said. “I have high expectations. I work long hours. I don’t do… small talk. Or… smoothing.”
“Soft skills,” she supplied.
“Yes.” The word came out like it tasted odd in his mouth. “I’m told that’s a problem. For some people.”
“It can be,” she said. “For some *assistants*. Not for me. Unless you’re an asshole.”
“I don’t yell,” he said immediately, like he’d been waiting to say that. “I don’t insult. I don’t lie. I don’t… play games. I say what I mean. People don’t always like that.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “But I *like* knowing. So. You don’t yell, you don’t lie. What *do* you do?”
“I build systems,” he said. “I fix problems before they happen. I make companies run better. Faster. Smarter. I don’t waste time.”
“Then we’re aligned,” she said.
He was silent for a moment.
“I read the case study you wrote,” he said then. “About the Veridian streaming outage. The overnight rollback, the cross-functional war room, the stakeholder communication tree. That was you.”
Not a question.
“Yes.”
“You took a failing situation and stabilized it in eight hours.”
“Twelve,” she corrected automatically. “And it wasn’t just me. We had—”
“You orchestrated it,” he cut in. “You saw the gaps, filled them, and kept thirty people from panicking. You also got the CEO to stick to a script instead of improvising on Twitter. That’s not a small thing.”
Her stomach did a strange little dip. Compliments from CEOs were not exactly rare in her line of work. But this one felt… different. Observant, not flattering. Like he’d actually read what she wrote, not just the executive summary.
“Crisis management is part of the job,” she said lightly.
“It’s part of *your* job,” he said. “Not everyone with your title can do it. Most of them can’t. I don’t want someone to get my coffee and smile at people. I want someone who sees ten steps ahead and tells me when I’m about to make a mistake.”
She blinked. “Are you saying you want me to tell you no?”
“I’m saying,” he replied slowly, “that if you *never* tell me no, you’re not doing your job.”
She leaned back in her chair, the edge of the table cool under her forearms. “That’s… rare.”
“I don’t need rare,” he said. “I need effective.”
“And you think I would be.”
“I think,” he said, and his voice dropped half a register, “you might be the difference between closing this acquisition and failing. I don’t fail.”
The quiet force in his tone sent a little shiver down her spine. Not fear. Something else.
Interest.
Danger.
“If I take this job,” she said, deliberately even, “I’m not your babysitter. I’ll manage your time, your information flow, your access. I will protect your focus. But I’m not your therapist, your girlfriend, or your mother. If you need emotional labor, hire a coach. Or call your mom.”
“I have a therapist,” he said, matter-of-fact. “And my mother is… not available.”
There was a flicker of something in that pause she couldn’t quite parse. She filed it away.
“You won’t have to manage my emotions,” he added. “You will have to manage my… overload. Sometimes. I’m on the spectrum. I mask well in board meetings. Less well when I’ve been awake for thirty hours and someone reschedules my day without warning.”
The bluntness of it hit her like a small, controlled explosion.
He’d just told her. No preamble. No euphemism.
“You’re autistic,” she said. Not a question.
“Yes. High-functioning.” The slightest edge in the term; she suspected he disliked it. “I have a fairly limited tolerance for noise, bullshit, and fluorescent lights. I prefer text to phone calls. I’ll work twelve hours straight if someone doesn’t remind me to eat. I struggle with… imprecise language. Especially when I’m tired. It frustrates people.”
“It frustrates *you*,” she said softly.
“Yes.”
“And you told me this,” she went on, “because…?”
“I don’t want to waste my time,” he said simply. “Or yours. If this is a deal-breaker, I’d rather know before we sign anything.”
He was giving her an exit ramp. He knew what some people heard when they heard *autism*. Difficult. Weird. Liability.
She thought of boardrooms and back channels and HR whispers. *He’s brilliant, but…*
“Thank you for telling me,” she said.
“That’s not an answer,” he said.
“You’re right.”
Silence stretched between them, not quite comfortable, not quite taut.
“You said you build systems,” she said. “I do too. Around people. Around you. If I understand how you operate, I can protect your time and your focus and—yes—your overload. I don’t see that as a deal-breaker. I see it as data.”
“…Data,” he repeated. She thought—*thought*—she heard the hint of a smile. “So?”
“So.” She exhaled, the decision settling over her like a weighted blanket. Heavy, grounding. “I accept. Send the paperwork. I’ll give my boss tomorrow to find his files and cry, and I’ll be at your office Monday morning at eight sharp.”
“Seven-thirty,” he said reflexively. “We start early.”
“Eight,” she countered. “You’re getting me in three days. You can wait thirty extra minutes.”
Another pause. “Eight,” he agreed.
“Anything else I should know before I jump into the deep end?” she asked. “What am I walking into on Monday?”
He didn’t hesitate. “A company in the middle of the most important deal we’ve ever done. A team that’s stretched thin and a CEO who hasn’t taken a real day off in… too long. And an acquisition target that everyone thinks we can’t land.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re bigger than us. Older. Dirtier.” A frown colored his voice. “But I see the gaps. And I don’t miss.”
She shivered again. “What’s the company called?”
“NexTelis.”
The name landed like a stone in the pit of her stomach.
She went absolutely still.
He kept talking, oblivious. “We’ve been tracking them for two years. Their patents, their contracts. They have legacy deals all over industrial manufacturing, energy, logistics. They’re inefficient. Corrupt in places. But their network—”
“NexTelis,” she said, cutting him off. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears. “Spell it.”
“N-E-X—”
“I know how to spell it,” she snapped, sharper than she meant.
He went quiet. “Margot?”
Her heart thudded against her ribs, loud and hard.
NexTelis.
Her father’s biggest client, once.
The company that had smiled while it stole his designs. That had undercut his bids and then, when he’d protested, had called in their lawyers and their banks and left him with nothing.
She could see the logo in her mind. The jagged, metallic N like a blade.
“You still there?” Declan asked.
She forced a breath in. Out.
“I’m here.”
“Problem?” he asked.
Did he know? Did he have any idea what that name did to her family?
Probably not.
NexTelis was big, faceless, a corporate machine. If he’d been “tracking” them for two years, he knew their numbers, their assets. Not the people they’d chewed up.
“Not a problem,” she lied. Her voice had steadied. Years of practice. “Just… processing. It’s a big name.”
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“I’ll see you Monday at eight,” she added. “Send me whatever background you can on the acquisition. I like to do my homework.”
“Done,” he said. “Welcome to Hale Innovations, Margot.”
She hung up a minute later with the formalities out of the way and just sat there, the apartment’s silence rushing in.
NexTelis.
The universe had a sick sense of timing.
She stared at the signed offer letter on the table.
Thirty days to close the acquisition.
Thirty days, she thought, to decide whether she would help the man who wanted to buy the company that had destroyed her father.
She picked up the letter.
And, very carefully, she did not tear it in half.
Not yet.