Once this goes public, they'll move against both of us. They'll claim conflict, misconduct, data misuse. They'll try to isolate you from me before the board meeting. Evelyn gave him a hard look. Then we don't give them that chance.
They may not let me stay at your level, he said quietly. They may try to reassign me before morning. For the first time, fear crossed her face. Not fear for herself, but fear that he was right. "No, " she said almost too fast.
"If they try that, I'll stop it. " Marcus almost smiled, but not quite. And that will prove their point. That was the problem. She knew it.
He knew it. The system had been designed so that any move she made to protect him could be used against her. It was a trap with no elegant exit. For several seconds, neither of them spoke, and in that silence, the tension between them deepened into something more intimate than either of them wanted to name. It was not romance, yet not openly, but it was no longer just loyalty or duty.
It was the terrible awareness that when everything else was stripped away, they were standing on the same side of a line that powerful people had drawn for them. Outside the office, the building had gone quiet. The evening shift had drifted away, and the sounds of the city rose faintly through the glass like a distant tide. Evelyn finally looked up and asked, "Did anyone else know you were coming here tonight? " Only Olivia Trent Marcus said, "I needed her to reactivate a temporary pass after legal revoked the old one.
" Evelyn frowned. "Why would she help? " "Because she's smart enough to know when a company is being poisoned from the inside, " he said. And because she already suspected the trail didn't make sense. Evelyn nodded once.
Olivia Trent was cautious, precise, and impossible to intimidate with titles. That made her useful now. Marcus slid another document across the desk. This is the timeline, he said. If we can get Olivia into the boardroom before they vote, we can freeze the session.
But there's one more thing. Evelyn's eyes sharpened. What? Damian's company didn't just help seed the dossier. They pulled from internal financial projections that only a handful of people had access to.
That means either someone in the board leaked them or someone with board-level access handed them over. Evelyn stared at him. Grant Whitaker, maybe more than Grant. The idea was almost impossible to swallow. She had built the company through loyalty, vision, and discipline.
Now she was realizing that the most dangerous enemies were not outside the building. They were already seated at the table. A soft knock sounded at the door. Both of them turned. Evelyn did not answer right away.
Marcus instinctively stepped slightly to the side, but the shift did nothing to erase the fact that they were both there alone at this hour with a crisis. No one else in the company knew how bad it truly was. When the door opened, it was not security. It was one of the junior assistants, pale and nervous, holding a sealed envelope. "Miss Carter, " she said, not meeting Evelyn's eyes.
"This was delivered downstairs. They said it was urgent. " Evelyn took the envelope and broke it open. Inside was a formal notice from the board requesting her immediate attendance at an emergency meeting the following morning. The memo used polite language, but the message was clear.
The pressure was escalating and someone had already started moving the pieces into place. Evelyn read it once, then again, then placed it on the desk without a word. The room felt suddenly smaller. Marcus saw the change in her expression and understood that this was no longer a warning. It was the first strike.