**3 days.**
The number on the board felt like a dare.
Everything was coiled.
NexTelis’s board had tentatively agreed. Regulators had nodded, grudgingly. Hale’s board had given their blessing, some more enthusiastically than others.
All that was left was… everything.
Final contract language. Integration plans. Internal announcements. Press. Employees whose lives would shift in ways none of the models could fully predict.
Margot barely slept.
When she did, she dreamed of lists.
Plant lists. Debt lists. Names scrolling by, never-ending.
Declan wasn’t faring much better.
He’d come in Wednesday with a coffee stain on his cuff and a weird jumble of notes on a napkin—rare for him.
“Thought of it in the car,” he’d muttered. “Had to get it out.”
She’d taken the napkin, deciphered his scrawl, turned it into a viable contingency plan for supplier comms.
He’d looked at her like she’d done magic.
“Thank you,” he’d said. “Again.”
Now, Friday morning, she walked into his office with a stack of printouts.
“Today,” she said, blunt. “We have: FTC call at nine, NexTelis signing at eleven, internal all-hands at two, press at four. You have thirty minutes to breathe between any of that. Use it wisely.”
He looked up from his screen, eyes bloodshot but sharp.
“Define wisely,” he said.
“Not reading Twitter,” she said. “Not rewriting the integration deck. Not inventing a new optimization algorithm. Ten minutes of silence. Ten minutes of food. Ten minutes of me telling you you’re not allowed to spontaneously combust.”
He snorted. “Bossy.”
“Yes,” she said. “You like it.”
He didn’t deny it.
She handed him the FTC briefing. “They’re mostly checking we’re not monopolizing. They’ll ask about how we’ll treat small suppliers. Use the language from your op-ed. Not the angry internal rant.”
His mouth twitched. “The rant was better.”
“Yes,” she said. “And also likely to get quoted out of context in a lawsuit.”
“Fine,” he said.
She slid the NexTelis agenda on top. “Signing ceremony. Minimal pomp. We convinced PR to skip the confetti cannons.”
He groaned. “They joked, right? Please tell me they joked.”
She didn’t answer.
His eyes widened. “They didn’t.”
“I killed it,” she said. “You’re welcome.”
He sagged in relief. “Good. I don’t want to celebrate with… streamers. This isn’t a… wedding.”
Her stomach flipped at the word.
He seemed to realize it at the same time, flinching slightly.
“Bad metaphor,” he muttered.
“The worst,” she said, forcing her voice steady.
She tapped the internal all-hands doc. “This is the big one,” she said. “You’re going to stand on that stage and tell three thousand people their world is changing. Again.”
He swallowed.
“Yes,” he said. “No pressure.”
“Lots of pressure,” she corrected. “That’s okay. You do well under it.”
“Until I crack,” he said.
“Then I glue,” she said.
He looked at her, something like gratitude and fear tangled in his gaze.
“Color?” she asked softly.
“Orange,” he said. “You?”
“Also orange,” she said. “We’re very on-brand.”
“Plaid by noon,” he predicted.
“Not if I can help it,” she said.
He leaned back, stretching his neck.
“When this is done,” he said, “I’m sleeping for a week.”
“You’ll last a day,” she said. “Then you’ll be redesigning something in your dreams.”
He smiled faintly.
“When this is done,” he said, more carefully, “we talk.”
Her heart thumped.
“About?” she asked, playing dumb.
He gave her a look.
“You know what,” he said.
Heat rose up her throat.
“Focus on not imploding your company first,” she said. “Then we can implode… other things.”
He inhaled sharply.
“Margot,” he said, warning and plea wrapped together.
She cleared her throat. “FTC,” she said briskly. “Five minutes.”
He nodded, mask sliding back into place.
She watched it, a mix of admiration and something like mourning tight in her chest.
***
The FTC call went as expected.
Stuffy men and women in suits on screens, asking pointed questions about anti-competitive behavior, market share, and supplier dependency.
Declan answered with numbers and, where numbers were insufficient, with that new, carefully honed story.
“When my grandfather’s store closed,” he said at one point, “it wasn’t because customers stopped needing what he sold. It was because the system made it impossible for him to compete. We’re not here to build another system that rewards that kind of extraction. We’re here to dismantle it where we can. That includes treating small suppliers as partners, not disposable leverage.”
One commissioner frowned. “That sounds… aspirational.”
“It’s pragmatic,” he said. “Resilience is good business. If you crush everyone under you, you end up standing on rubble. Hard to build anything there.”
Margot, watching from the side, suppressed a proud, inappropriate smile.
He was good at this.
Too good, maybe.
They ended with a tepid blessing and a promise of “continued monitoring.”
Which in regulator-speak was basically, *We’ll let you do this and yell at you if you fuck it up.*
“Not bad,” Eliza said afterward, flipping through her notes. “No one threatened to sue us. Out loud.”
“Success,” Margot said.
Declan just exhaled, long and slow.
“One down,” he said. “Two thousand to go.”
***
The signing ceremony with NexTelis was… anticlimactic.
A conference room. Two long tables. Stacks of paper. Expensive pens.
NexTelis’s CEO, a silver-haired man named Connolly, smiled too widely as cameras flashed.
“Exciting day,” he gushed. “A new chapter.”
Declan’s smile was tight. “Yes,” he said. “A necessary one.”
They shook hands. Clicks clicked. A few pre-approved jokes were made.
Margot stood at the back, next to Priya, who’d been invited as a “key partner” for supplier transition.
“Look at them,” Priya murmured. “All those men who’ve never missed a mortgage payment, celebrating while people like your father have heart attacks.”
Margot’s jaw tightened. “You’re in a good mood today.”
Priya smirked. “This is my good mood. I bought three more shitty loans this morning. I thrive on other people’s fear.”
“You’re terrifying,” Margot said.
“Thank you,” Priya said.
When it was done, when hands were shaken and documents signed, when NexTelis’s Board Chair said, “Welcome to the family,” and Declan almost visibly swallowed bile, the group dispersed.
He caught Margot’s eye across the room.
*Now*, his look said.
She nodded.
All-hands.
The real ceremony.
***
The auditorium buzzed.
Employees packed the seats. Hale people, NexTelis people, a few from partner companies. Faces upturned. Eyes bright. Nervous.
Margot stood in the wings, headset on, watching the stage.
A simple podium. The Hale logo. Two screens.
No confetti cannon.
Thank God.
Marissa stood near her, checking notes.
“You get the jitters too?” she asked.
“Always,” Margot said. “If he passes out, I take the mic.”
“I’d pay to see that,” Marissa said.
“You’d get it for free,” Margot said. “With added swearing.”
Declan paced behind them, laptop in hand. Dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, no tie. The open collar looked… obscene. Intimate.
“You can’t take the laptop on stage,” Margot said. “You’ll hide behind it.”
“I need my notes,” he said.
“You have your notes,” she said, tapping his temple lightly. “Right there. You over-prepared. Trust your brain.”
He scowled. “Bossy.”
“Complaining or complimenting?” she asked.
“Both,” he said.
She stepped closer, sensing his rising static.
“Color,” she murmured.
“Orange,” he said. “Almost plaid.”
She inhaled.
“Okay,” she said. “Breathe. In for four, hold for four, out for six.”
He glared. Obeyed.
Again.
Again.
The noise in the auditorium dimmed as someone announced, “Please take your seats. We’re starting in two minutes.”
He looked at the stage entrance like it was a dragon’s mouth.
“You’ve done this before,” she said.
“Not like this,” he said.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Where I actually care what they feel,” he said. “Before, I could just… perform. Now there are… too many variables.”
“Less performance,” she said. “More you. It’s scarier. It’s better.”
He smirked. “You’re very sure of that.”
“Yes,” she said. “Mostly because I’ve seen your ‘CEO voice’ and it makes me want to punch you.”
He laughed, despite himself. “Fair.”
He looked at her, eyes suddenly, nakedly scared.
“I don’t want them to hate me,” he said quietly.
Her heart twisted.
“Some will,” she said. “No matter what. That’s not on you. Your job isn’t to make them love you. It’s to tell them the truth in a way they can hear. You can do that.”
He swallowed.
“You’ll be there,” he said. Not a question.
“Yes,” she said. “Stage right. If you start to ramble, I’ll threaten to cut your mic.”
His mouth twitched.
“Ready?” Marissa called.
He looked at the stage.
“No,” he said.
She squeezed his forearm. “Do it anyway.”
He nodded once.
And walked out.
The lights hit him.
The crowd hushed.
He stepped to the podium, set his laptop down—not open—and looked out.
For a heartbeat, Margot thought he might freeze.
Then she saw something shift.
He found Jess’s face. Near the front, on the left. He’d insisted she be invited.
He found Nina. Raj. Eliza.
He found, somehow, the camera that fed to every remote worker’s screen.
He took a breath.
“Hi,” he said.
His voice was calm. Non-booming. Human.
“I’m Declan,” he went on. “You know that. Or you Googled it. Either way, this is weird.”
A ripple of laughter.
Good.
“Most of you hate all-hands,” he said. “So do I. They’re usually an excuse for executives to say ‘synergy’ a lot while pretending things are fine. This is not that.”
Silence, sharp.
“I’m not going to stand up here and tell you everything is great,” he said. “It’s not. We just bought a company with a history of crushing small players and burning trust. Some of you lived that. Some of your families did. Some of you are terrified I’m about to do the same thing, with nicer PowerPoints.”
A murmur.
He held up a hand.
“You’re right to be scared,” he said. “We are going to change a lot. We are going to close things. We are going to sell things. We are going to ask people to move. To retrain. To work in different ways with different tools. That will hurt. There’s no way to make it not hurt.”
He let that sit.
Margot felt the room hold its breath.
“What I can promise you,” he said, voice steady, “is that we will not do it in the dark. We will not pretend you’re ‘a family’ while treating you like numbers. We will not tell you ‘you’re fine’ on Monday and show up with cardboard boxes on Friday. That’s the bar. It’s low. We’re going to clear it anyway.”
A few people laughed, rough.
He smiled, brief.
“I grew up watching my grandfather’s store die quietly because bigger players made decisions about his life in rooms he was never invited into,” he said. “He found out those decisions the same way you’ve heard about too many changes in your careers: through rumors, and then a letter, and then a locked door.”
He paused.
“I hated that,” he said simply. “I still do. I built Hale because I thought we could do better. I’m buying NexTelis because I think we can fix some of what they broke. I’m not naïve enough to think we can fix all of it. Or any of it easily. But I’d rather try from the inside than watch from the outside while someone worse makes those calls.”
He leaned on the podium, closer.
“Some of you are thinking, ‘That’s a nice story, Declan. Still doesn’t pay my mortgage if you shut down my plant.’ You’re right. Stories don’t put food on the table. Jobs do. Money does. We are not in the business of charity. We are in the business of making things work better, faster, smarter. That includes how we treat you.”
He ticked off points on his fingers.
“Here’s what we’re going to do, concretely,” he said. “One: clear timelines. You will know, as early as we can legally and ethically tell you, what’s happening where you work. Two: real severance and retraining support for anyone whose role goes away. Not out of the goodness of our hearts. Because you’re valuable. Even when your job in its current form isn’t.”
A murmur of surprise.
“Three,” he said. “Opportunities. Some of you will have paths here you never had at NexTelis. Some of you will help us build parts of this company we haven’t even imagined yet. You’re not cogs. You’re… messy, brilliant, infuriating humans. I need you.”
His gaze flicked, just for a second, to stage right.
To her.
She felt it like a touch.
“And four,” he said, eyes back on the crowd, “accountability. From me. From my team. From all of us. We are going to fuck up. I’m going to fuck up. When we do, I want to know. Not through rumor. Not through anonymous forums. To my face. Or to the faces of the people you see on this stage with me today.”
He gestured.
Eliza stepped up. Raj. Nina. A few division heads.
“And her,” he added, nodding toward her, making her stomach drop.
“Margot,” he said. “My EA. Which, in this context, stands for Executive Ass-Kicker. She controls my calendar. My access. And a depressing amount of my life. If you have something I need to hear, and you can’t get to me, go to her. She will tell me. Even when I don’t want to hear it.”
Laughter. Applause, even.
Heat flooded her face.
Ass-kicker, she thought.
She’d kill him.
Later.
“For the rest of this all-hands,” he said, “you’ll hear from them. They’ll talk about specifics. Org charts. Benefits. The things you actually care about when you go home. I’m not going to stand here and say ‘synergy’ even once. I promised myself that when I was twelve. I’m keeping that promise.”
Ripples of laughter again.
He smiled.
“Last thing,” he said.
The room quieted.
“You don’t owe me your trust,” he said. “You don’t owe me your loyalty. I haven’t earned them yet. What I’m asking for is your… attention. Watch what we do. Not just what we say. If, six months from now, you think we’re just NexTelis with better branding, leave. Find someone who deserves you. If, six months from now, you see that we meant this, that we kept enough of these promises to be worth sticking with… stay. Help me prove I wasn’t wrong about what’s possible.”
He looked out over the crowd.
“For now,” he said quietly, “thank you. For listening. For coming along, even if you’re kicking and screaming. Especially if you’re kicking and screaming. We’re better with people who push back. Even when it annoys me.”
His eyes flicked to her again.
She rolled her eyes. He smirked.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk details.”
The room exhaled.
Applause swelled.
He stepped back, shoulders slumping just a little.
As the others took the stage, he slipped off into the wings.
She met him there.
His breathing was shallow. His hands trembled, just a bit.
“Color,” she said.
“Plaid,” he rasped.
She laughed softly. “You were… incredible.”
“I felt like I was… naked,” he said.
“You were,” she said. “Metaphorically. It was… good.”
“Did I… overshare?” he asked, uncertain in a way she rarely saw.
“No,” she said. “You told them enough to know you’re not made of stone. And not so much that they’ll try to hug you in the cafeteria.”
“God forbid,” he muttered.
He swayed slightly.
She stepped closer, hand half-extended.
He caught himself on the wall.
“That took… more than I thought,” he said.
“Sit,” she ordered. “Now.”
He obeyed, dropping into a chair in the wings.
She knelt in front of him, blocking his view of the stage, creating a small bubble of semi-privacy.
“Breathe,” she said. “In for four, hold for four, out for six.”
He glared. Obeyed.
Again.
Again.
After a minute, his hands steadied.
“I hate this,” he said quietly.
“What?” she asked.
“Feeling,” he said. “Talking. Losing… control.”
“You didn’t lose it,” she said. “You shared it. That’s different.”
“Semantics,” he muttered.
“Words matter,” she said. “You of all people should know that.”
He huffed a laugh.
“Margot,” he said, eyes on her face. “Thank you. For… pushing. For… holding.”
Her throat tightened.
“Anytime,” she said. “Except Sundays between noon and four. That’s reserved for dumplings.”
He smiled, faint.
The others droned on on stage.
The room buzzed.
Back here, for a moment, it was just them.
Too close.
Too… much.
She stood abruptly.
“You have fifteen minutes before the press conference,” she said. “Get water. Use the bathroom. Do not check Twitter.”
He grimaced. “Tyrant.”
“Yes,” she said softly.
She turned to go.
His hand shot out, fingers closing around her wrist.
Heat jolted up her arm.
She froze.
He realized what he’d done.
His grip loosened. Not completely.
“Don’t… leave yet,” he said, voice low. “Please.”
The please undid her.
She turned back.
He dropped her wrist like it had burned him.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “That was… unplanned.”
“It’s okay,” she lied.
His eyes searched her face.
“Is it?” he asked.
No.
“Yes,” she said.
They stared at each other.
The noise from the stage faded.
The world narrowed.
He lifted his hand again.
Slowly this time.
Gave her plenty of room to move.
She didn’t.
His fingers brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
Light.
Barely there.
Electric.
Her breath hitched.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
He froze.
“Don’t what?” he asked.
“Don’t make this harder,” she said. “We’re… so close. To… something. Good. Don’t… break it.”
His jaw clenched.
He dropped his hand.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”
Silence pulsed.
“Three days,” he said. “Then we talk.”
“You keep saying that,” she said. “Like there’ll be some magical moment when everything is… simple.”
“It won’t be simple,” he said. “It might be… clearer.”
She had her doubts.
But she didn’t voice them.
Instead, she stepped back.
Put just enough space between them to breathe.
“Water,” she said. “Now.”
He obeyed.
***
The press conference was a blur.
Cameras. Lights. Microphones. Questions that alternated between thoughtful and asinine.
“Aren’t you worried about overextending?” “How will this impact Hale’s short-term margins?” “What do you say to critics who call this a vanity play?”
He answered, deftly weaving between truth and strategy.
Margot watched from the side, jaw clenched when someone referenced his op-ed with a smirk.
“You played the ‘my granddaddy lost his store’ card pretty hard,” one journalist said. “Is that just… emotional cover for a power grab?”
Her hands curled into fists.
Declan’s eyes went cold.
“I told that story,” he said evenly, “because it’s true. Because it shaped how I see systems. You can call that a card if you like. I call it… context. If you’d prefer CEOs to make multi-billion-dollar decisions with no self-awareness of their own histories, that’s your prerogative. I think that’s… dangerous.”
A murmur.
The journalist looked chastened. Slightly.
Later, as they walked back to his office, he said, “I knew they’d do that.”
“Use it against you,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “It still… stung.”
“I know,” she said. “You handled it.”
“Barely,” he said.
“You didn’t call him a sociopath,” she said. “That’s a win.”
He snorted.
She smiled.
They reached his office.
He collapsed into his chair.
She dropped into the one opposite, too tired to maintain professional posture.
“Color,” she said.
“Plaid,” he said. “You?”
“Plaid with glitter,” she said. “Worst kind.”
He laughed, weak.
They sat in companionable exhaustion.
After a minute, he said, “If you had to… make the call today. About me. What would you say?”
She frowned. “Make what call?”
“Stay or go,” he said. “If this were day thirty instead of day three-to-go.”
Her heart thudded.
“That’s… hypothetical,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Answer it anyway.”
She studied him.
The shadows under his eyes. The lines of strain around his mouth. The ink smudge on his thumb from scribbling diagrams.
The way he’d talked to Jess.
The way he’d helped her father.
The way he’d stood on that stage and said, *You don’t owe me your trust.*
She took a breath.
“I’d stay,” she said.
His eyes flared.
“Why?” he asked, voice almost a whisper.
“Because,” she said slowly, “for all your… intensity, and arrogance, and control issues, you’re… trying. Harder than anyone I’ve worked for. Because you listen. Because you let me push. Because you don’t hide behind bullshit when it counts.”
She held his gaze.
“Because I… like who I am when I work with you,” she finished, very quietly.
His breath hitched.
“Margot,” he said.
She scrambled to deflect. “And the pay is obscene.”
He laughed, tension breaking.
“Of course,” he said. “Always the money.”
“Yes,” she said. “Always.”
Silence fell again, softer now.
He leaned forward, forearms on his knees.
“You asked me, weeks ago, to give you a reason to stay that wasn’t me,” he said. “NexTelis. Systems. Changing the rules. Is it enough?”
She thought about it.
About her father’s signed papers. About Jess’s email. About Priya’s cackle when she talked about saving men like her grandfather.
“It’s… a start,” she said. “But the truth is, there is no clean separation. You *are* part of the reason. Whether that’s good or bad… I haven’t decided yet.”
He nodded slowly.
“That’s… honest,” he said.
“You hired me for that,” she said.
“I did,” he said. “Even when I hate it.”
They looked at each other.
The clock ticked.
Three days.
Somewhere, someone hit “send” on an internal memo.
Somewhere else, a NexTelis worker read it and cursed.
In this glass box, two people balanced on the edge of something that could be very good.
Or very, very bad.
“Go home,” he said suddenly.
She blinked. “What?”
“It’s nine,” he said. “You’ve been here since seven. Go. Sleep. See your parents. Touch grass. Or whatever people do.”
“You’re still here,” she pointed out.
“I’ll be here either way,” he said. “You don’t… have to be.”
He held her gaze.
“This is me,” he said quietly, “trying not to… break you.”
Her throat constricted.
“Fine,” she said gruffly. “I’ll take the night. But if you implode without me, I’m haunting you.”
“I’d deserve it,” he said.
She stood.
Paused at the door.
“Declan,” she said.
He looked up.
“In three days,” she said, voice steady despite the wild beating of her heart, “if this closes… if we’re both still standing… I’ll have that talk with you.”
His eyes darkened.
“About us,” she added, because the air needed the word.
He swallowed.
“Okay,” he said.
“Don’t… get hit by a bus before then,” she said.
“I’ll try not to,” he said.
She left.
As the elevator doors closed, cutting off his floor, she pressed her head against the cool metal and exhaled.
Three days.
She’d survived longer countdowns.
But not ones that felt this… loaded.
Above her, in his office, Declan stared at the number on the board.
**3**.
He uncapped the marker.
Wrote, under it, in small, neat print:
*Don’t fuck this up.*
He wasn’t entirely sure whether he meant the deal.
Or her.
Or himself.
Probably all three.
The line in the sand waited.
And the tide, inexorable, crept closer.