"Not right now," he said. Let him wait. Something in her face shifted. Not defiance. Something quieter and more personal.
She put the phone in her pocket without answering. He's going to push the personal disclosure motion at a pre-board session on Tuesday. She said, "My assistant just texted me. He's calling an informal meeting. Monday, he wants to walk Whitmore and Chen through the details of my father's investment before the full board sees it.
Then you need to get to Whitmore and Chen before Monday. Marcus said, "I was thinking the same thing. She was already thinking fast." He could see it. "If I can have conversations with both of them Sunday, not calls," Marcus said. "In person," she looked at him.
"Renick is operating behind closed doors." Marcus said, "You operate in the you show up at their on a Sunday and you have a real conversation. You make it human before he can make it political." She was quiet for a second thinking. Then you're right. Call Whitmore first. Marcus said he's already halfway there.
Get him fully there before Monday. Then Chen is easier. She was already reaching for her phone and then she stopped. Marcus. She looked at him with an expression that was direct and real and slightly afraid in a way he had only seen from her once.
Before the night she'd said, "No, I'm not entirely all right." Whatever Renick does in that meeting, whatever gets said, I need you to know. She stopped, started again. I need you to know that this gesture not at the property or the coffee or the morning specifically, but at something larger, something that included all of it. This matters to me in a way that has nothing to do with what happens in a boardroom. Marcus looked at her for a long moment.
I know, he said. I'm not good at this, she said, saying this kind of thing. I'm practicing. I know that too, he said. And then because she had been practicing and because the ground between them was solid enough and because some things you have waited long enough to say, it matters to me, too.
It has for a while. I'm not telling you that to complicate what you need to handle in the next 9 days. I'm telling you because you deserve to know what's true. Olivia Bennett looked at him and for once she did not recalibrate. She did not assemble the CEO or find the armor or move the weight of it to a controlled place.
She just stood there and received it and let it be real. Okay, she said. Her voice was very quiet. Okay, now call Whitmore, Marcus said. She almost smiled.
You're bossy for a contractor. You hired my company, he said. Technically, you can't fire me until the job's done. She did smile then and dialed and walked away down the path talking and Marcus went back to work. The rest of the weekend moved quickly in the way that weekends move when everything is in motion.
Sunday morning, Olivia sent him a text at 7:18 that said simply Whitmore is with me Chen meeting at 2. And then 20 minutes later, how do you feel about being characterized as a calculated business decision made by an old man and also somehow simultaneously as a romantic entanglement designed to compromise executive judgment? And then before he could respond, Renick has a creative mind. I'll give him that, Marcus wrote back. What did Whitmore say about it?