You decided she said about the investment. He said yes I'm taking it. He said terms are fair. Business case is sound. I talked to legal.
He looked at her steadily. It's a clean decision. Olivia separate from everything else. She nodded. Something in her shoulders released just slightly.
I know it is. I know my father. I just She stopped. I wanted to make sure you knew that. I know that.
I know you know that, he said. She looked at him. How do you do that? Do what? Understand what I actually mean instead of what I said.
You're not as hard to read as you think. He said, "You're just used to people who aren't paying attention." She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "The board meeting is in 9 days. How are you feeling about it?" Better than I was, worse than I'm showing. She wrapped both hands around her coffee.
Whitmore called again yesterday. He's bringing two questions to the floor that are going to be hard. Not impossible. Hard. Tell me, she did.
The first was operational. A detailed challenge to the Southeast expansion timeline and the infrastructure gaps she'd acknowledged. The second was personal. In a professional rapper, a motion to require that all significant personal relationships of senior leadership be disclosed to the board for conflict of interest review. Marcus heard the second one and went very still.
That's aimed at you specifically, he said. At me and at my father's investment in your company. She said it flat and clear. Renick drafted it. Whitmore is uncomfortable with it, but he'll bring it to the floor because he thinks transparency is the right principle even when the application is wrong.
Will it pass if I don't handle the room right? Yes. A pause. If I handle it right, I can reframe it as a policy question rather than a personal attack, which is what it actually is. And I can get the policy version passed without the version that's specifically about me.
She looked at him. But it requires me to be very good in that room. You'll be very good in that room, Marcus said. You don't know that. I know you, he said.
That's the same thing. She looked at him with that expression, the open one. The real one, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. The morning moved around them, and the job site was quiet at this hour, and it was just the two of them and two coffees. And nine days before something that mattered would either hold or it wouldn't.