He raised an eyebrow at me. “What’s our budget?”
“No budget.” I stood up a little straighter. “We’ll buy Nora out of her votes if we have to, but otherwise, pin these two down, offer them the world, and seal the deal.”
He nodded and gathered the selected profiles, but my attention drifted back to the remaining faces. A room full of unsuspecting players who had no idea the wolves had already circled the rotting carcass of the company they’d ruined, but still, all I could think about was her.
JaneMargaretThayeraccording to the company docs.My Killer.
Her scent had lingered in my car long after she’d slammed the door and marched up her icy steps like she wished the earthwould just part already and swallow me whole. It wasn’t the patchouli that had gotten to me, though.
I would know that scent anywhere. Charlotte used to take those same basement studio torture classes and she’d always smelled like she’d been rolled in incense afterward.
No, Jane smelled like clean fabric, money, and class. The patchouli hadn’t been able to hide that.
I lifted one of the profiles again, but I didn’t even see the board member’s face. Just hers. Those gray eyes that never softened, the perfect posture, and the way she’d held her mother’s wrist so gently, but spoke like she would knife anyone who interrupted her.
Something told me she was right to speak that way, too. If her family hadn’t been in that dining room, she probably would have stripped every Westwood in attendance down to the bone and left us there to rot.
“Are you good?” Nate asked, glancing up at me. “You seem a little out of it today.”
I blinked a few times too many but nodded. “Yeah, of course. I’m fine.”
He didn’t believe me. None of my brothers would, because I didn’t getout of it. My head had never even met the clouds, let alone been in them, but he let it go, stacking the folders into a neat pile and sliding them into a leather briefcase.
“I’ll prep the pitches,” he said. “Anything else?”
I straightened up a little and turned to the window, watching the snow slowly drifting down outside. “We move fast on this, Nate. The moment we get one vote, the momentum will shift. I want every angle covered.”
“Done.”
I was still watching the soft white powder gathering on rooftops and windowsills all around as I thought back to that moment in my car, drifting again even though I knew Ishouldn’t. But when I’d leaned over her lap to shut the door, trapping her in a cocoon of safety and warmth, I’d caught hints of suede and cashmere dusted with vanilla.
Clean. Refined. So subtle it had to be natural because Jane Thayer didn’t bother with perfume. She didn’t need it either.
When she walked into a room, the atmosphere shifted. When she’d sat in my passenger seat, the car had felt too small. When she looked at me, I felt like I’d done something wrong.
She’d effectively invaded my mind and I didn’t even understand her just yet, but for whatever reason, I was desperate to. “I want your hacker to look into Jane Thayer.”
“She already has.” Nate crossed the room to the side table, fetched a file, and extended it toward me.
The second it touched my fingertips, adrenaline ripped through me. I sat down again and opened it, and time slowed to a crawl as I looked it over.
Well, this isn’t what I expected.
She wasn’t just another once-rich, ex-socialite thrust into her family’s business against her will. Nor was she some damsel in distress, waiting around for a rich savior or corporate raider to swoop in and free her from responsibility.
Frankly, she wasn’t someone to fuck with, which was exactly what I was doing by going after board votes.
She wasDr. Jane Thayer. Twenty-nine. A three-time graduate of Yale.
Her undergrad had been in business management, her MBA was in Advanced Management, and her PhD was in OrganizationandManagement.
I’d met CEOs twice her age who didn’t have that pedigree. People who built empires without ever touching a classroom after graduating high school, but this woman had collected knowledge like weapons.
I exhaled slowly, barely breathing as I turned the page to find offer letters by the dozen. From some of the most prestigious companies in the world.
Her future had been sealed in gold. She was a genius. A business prodigy. A one-in-a-billion mind, the kind of person entire institutions salivated over and people designed roles around.
Yet she worked for Thayer and she was sinking with the ship.
