He suggested that men like Rowan were sentimental, easily read, and ultimately beneath the table where real power was decided. Then he slid a document across the linen, a proposal as clean and confident as a trap always is. Ashcraftoft Crown would fund a lawsuit against Hail North. Sloan would be restored as chief executive once Rowan lost control, and in exchange, she would deliver the debt repayment schedule and the roster of Rowan's confidential investancers. He watched her pretend to consider it, mistaking her stillness for the old hunger he knew so well.
Sloan played her part carefully, asking pointed questions about the intermediary companies that had bought Witmore Meridian's bonds. Gideon, arrogant and certain she cared only about reclaiming her chair, revealed far more than he should have. He named structures, dates, and mechanisms, laying out the architecture of his scheme, like a man showing off a painting. Then he said the thing that finally severed whatever spell he had ever held over her. 7 years ago, you chose correctly.
Men like Rowan are useful when we need to feel loved. But they do not belong at the table where power lives. In that moment, Sloan understood that Gideon saw Rowan exactly as her father always had as a lesser man to be tolerated and discarded, and she understood that she had once seen him the same way. She asked Gideon to send the terms by email so her attorney could review them, framing it as caution when it was really the final piece of evidence she needed. Gideon, delighted by what he took for surrender, agreed.
But a member of his own staff had photographed the meeting and quietly circulated the image. And now Rowan had it on his phone. When Rowan asked her directly what the meeting had been about, Sloan found herself unable to tell him the truth. Evelyn Blackwood, the independent attorney Hail North had retained to investigate the takeover, had warned her that if Gideon learned he was under investigation, he would destroy every document overnight. So Sloan said only that the meeting had concerned a personal matter and offered nothing more.
Her silence dragged Rowan straight back to the night. She had refused to explain herself and simply walked away. He did not shout. did not accuse, did not slam a door. He simply removed Sloan from the critical financial project she had been leading, reassigning her responsibilities without discussion. The coldness of it wounded her far more deeply than a shouting match ever could have because it was the sound of a door closing rather than a door being broken.