I flipped another page, then another. It continued for what felt like ages, a list of opportunities anyone else in her age group would’ve sold organs to have, yet she’d declined them all.
Why, though? She has no club memberships. No invitations to galas. No social life. No footprint in circles she should have dominated.
Then I got to the page about her family ties. She was the eldest, but I’d known that. She’d mentioned it in the taxi. Her brothers ranged from seventeen to twenty-six, most still in college. Good colleges. Expensive colleges.
Which was odd, considering the financial breakdown Nate’s hacker had compiled of their company, on top of what I’d seen from Thayer’s internal numbers.So who’s paying for school?
She wasn’t making a single percentage of what a COO in a company like theirs should be making. Not even close. In fact, what she earned was barely more than what a manager at one of our subsidiary departments pulled in a month.
Her family had lost everything during the trial, their trust funds seized and the entire estate gutted. Offshore accounts had been confiscated to pay fines and fees. Their father’s legacy had been salted and burned.
The house where she lived had been paid off long ago, a relic from the turn of the nineteenth century. Beautiful, cold, and falling apart probably, but still theirs.
And from what I was seeing, she was the one holding it all together. Barely but hanging on.
This is such a goddamn mess.
I didn’t know how I would handle watching my family lose everything. How I would survive watching Westwood and Sons be stripped down to bones and ashes in the press while strangers dissected centuries of work with glee.
Somehow, that was exactly what Jane had done for the past year in her role as COO—and it wasn’t her fault. It had never been her fault.
I closed the file slowly and realized the office was nearly pitch black. I’d been sitting here for hours. Nate was gone. My phone had buzzed a few times.
I hadn’t heard it and I honestly didn’t care. My mind was stuck on the image of her, wrapped in her long coat with snow melting in her hair, her gray eyes burning through me when she’d saidnoto sharing that cab.
Reaching for the front page of her file again, I found the contact sheet and my gaze skimmed it until I spotted her phone number, her email, and her address. All of it.
My thumb hovered over her phone number after I’d programmed it into my contacts.Jane Thayer.
Just having her name there felt like a warning, but I still sat there, staring down at my phone with my thumb resting next to the green telephone icon. It had been years since this had happened to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to call.
I was like a fucking teenager all over again, rendered completely immobile by the thought of dialing up a pretty girl. It was completely ridiculous and yet everything about my reaction to her had been.
It almost made me wish I didn’t have to go after those seats on her board, but this really was the deal of a lifetime—andshe wasn’t the only one trying to make their own mark in their family.
CHAPTER 7
JANE
Wyatt was up on the mat, shaking out his arms and his headgear strapped tight. He bounced on the balls of his feet like he was made of adrenaline and nerves. He was only seventeen and already built like a tank.
Mom said he was the only Thayer child who had inherited our grandfather’s frame, broad and grounded like an oak tree. But right now, he looked impossibly young, shifting his weight while the ref called the wrestlers to order.
My phone buzzed as he dropped into his stance.
Mom: Going out tonight. Don’t wait up.
I blinked once. Then twice. Then worry flooded my senses like a tidal wave.Going out? Going where? With who?
My fingers flew across the screen to ask where she was going, but after I’d sent the reply, three dots appeared, then disappeared and never returned. Anxiety and unease bloomed in my stomach, chewing at my gut as I rolled my lips into my mouth.
According to Colin, for the first couple months after the news had broken that my father was being investigated for a white-collar crime, she’d tried to keep up appearances. She’d gone out withfriends, ignored invitations that had suddenly beenwithdrawn orgotten lost in the mail, and gone on with business as usual.
All that had stopped when he’d been convicted. These days, a message like this from her was as rare as a flawless, natural diamond. Immediately bringing my phone to my ear to call her, I kept a close eye on my youngest brother on the mat.
Wyatt was circling his opponent, so he was fine, but Mom didn’t answer, sending me straight to voicemail instead. I ground my teeth, switching tactics and calling Colin instead.
“What?” he asked when he answered. “I’ve only got a minute.”
