She tilted her head. “Calla, perhaps this isn’t the right evening for a domestic scene.”
My shoulder burned beneath my navy silk dress. I adjusted the strap, lifted my chin. “No. I think I’ll stay for the announcement.”
Ambrose’s smile tightened. He was Meridian’s chief strategy officer, and for three weeks he’d talked about the promotion he expected tonight — certain the board would name him president. He also believed I spent my days managing a modest inheritance and volunteering at an arts foundation.
He’d never once asked why my late mother’s investment office occupied three floors downtown. He preferred the version of me that made him feel taller.
He preferred the version of me that made him feel taller.
“The announcement’s for executives,” he said. “Not decorative wives.”
Delphine laughed softly.
Across the ballroom, Chairman Warrick Sloane caught my eye and touched two fingers to his cuff — the signal we’d agreed on after the closing documents were signed that afternoon. Beside him stood Meridian’s general counsel and the forensic accountant who’d spent six weeks quietly examining vendor payments authorized by Ambrose.
I picked up an untouched glass of sparkling water. “Enjoy the next ten minutes,” I told my husband.
He seized my wrist. “What does that mean?”
“It means you should listen carefully.”
The lights dimmed, the stage washing blue. Warrick approached the microphone, thanked the employees who’d kept Meridian alive through eighteen months of debt, canceled orders, a failed expansion. Ambrose released me and straightened his jacket, already arranging his victorious expression.
“Tonight,” Warrick said, “we welcome the investor whose capital preserved eight hundred jobs and retired our most dangerous debt. The acquisition closed today. Halloway Capital now owns fifty-eight percent of Meridian Systems.”
