Reese corrected her plainly, calling him by his full title, Mr. Holloway, registered owner of the aircraft carrying the tail number November 701 Golf Hotel. And for the first time since boarding, the cabin went completely silent. One of the executives who had laughed loudest minutes earlier now bent down, picked up the discarded jacket, and brushed it off before returning it to Grant, who accepted it without comment and without cruelty. Sloan tried to recover, suggesting perhaps he was only a figurehead, someone who had borrowed money or lent his name to a wealthier investor behind the scenes, because the alternative was too disorienting to accept all at once.
Grant said nothing to that, either. He simply asked Reese to prepare for departure, reminding everyone gently that thousands of Blackthorn employees should not suffer delays because of one executive's mistake. His calm only deepened Sloan's discomfort, because she had wanted him to raise his voice, to give her something to dismiss as bitterness from a man still nursing old wounds from their divorce. And he refused to give her that satisfaction. Instead, Grant offered her a choice with no anger behind it at all.
She could leave the aircraft exactly as she had just ordered him to do, or she could sit down and conduct herself like the executive she claimed to be. Because the Seattle meeting could not wait, Sloan chose to stay, sinking into her seat with far less certainty than she had walked in with. Grant did not take the largest chair in the cabin, the one usually reserved for the person everyone assumes matters most. He returned instead to his familiar seat by the window, opened his laptop, and resumed working as though nothing unusual had happened at all. Curious and unsettled, Sloan leaned toward a young flight attendant and asked quietly how long Mr.
Holloway had owned this particular aircraft. The attendant answered without hesitation that this was the seventh jet in his private fleet, spoken as casually as someone naming a favorite coffee order. Sloane felt something cold settle behind her ribs as she understood for the first time that the $80 million cabin she had just tried to throw him out of was nowhere near the full measure of what he owned. On the folding table in front of her sat the investment proposal she had rehearsed for 6 months. Its cover page bearing a single line she had somehow not registered until this exact moment.