He never once looked at her when he said it. 15 minutes in, she raised her hand. The projected ROI in year three assumes a 12% occupancy premium over current Southside market rates. She kept her voice even professional. What's that assumption based on?
Brad paused barely. Then he turned, not to her, but slightly past her toward the CFO two seats down. We've accounted for the market uplift the development itself will generate. He tapped the slide. Rising tide, you understand?
He hadn't answered her question. She wrote that down. 20 minutes later, she spoke again. The community displacement projections in section 4. The footnotes reference a consultant report, but I don't see it in the materials we were sent.
Can you speak to those numbers directly? Brad clicked to the next slide. We'll have full documentation available post-closing, he said smoothly. Then he looked at Mattie. Does that address your concern?
Mattie said nothing. He kept his face perfectly still. Elena wrote that down, too. Two seats to her left, a board member named Giovanni, late 50s, pink tie, the restless energy of someone who'd had too much coffee, covered his mouth with one hand. His shoulders moved.
He was laughing quietly, privately. The kind of laugh that says, "I see what's happening and I think it's funny. " Elena didn't look at him. She didn't need to. Across the table, Emily Vander was watching, not the presentation. Elena, she had barely glanced at the slides.
She held her pen loosely in one hand and kept her eyes on Elena with the calm, focused attention of someone tracking something important, something she'd been tracking for a long time. The presentation rolled on. Brad spoke about tax incentives, about municipal partnerships, about the transformative potential of reimagining underutilized urban space. His voice had a rhythm to it, confident, self-satisfied, the verbal equivalent of a man who'd never once been told no by anyone who mattered. Elena filled two pages of notes.
She caught everything. The gaps in the financials, the vague language around resident impact, the way the word relocation kept appearing in places where a more honest man might have written displacement. She caught the moment Brad referenced a city planning contact by first name, casually, like mentioning an old friend, and the way two board members exchanged a brief knowing glance when he did it. She wrote that down, too. At the 30 minute mark, she asked a third question, clean, specific, about the debt structure on the back half of the project's financing.
Brad answered it to the window. Giovanni laughed again openly, this time, a short bark that he turned into a cough. The man beside him smirked into his water glass. The CFO studied something fascinating on his tablet screen. Mattie's jaw tightened.
Elena could see it from the corner of her eye. She touched his arm once lightly under the table. Easy. Brad wrapped up with a grand sweeping statement about legacy and vision and the future of Chicago's great neighborhoods. He gestured toward Elena's portfolio with the easy confidence of a man who considered the money already deposited.