Not one of them met my eyes as they left, leaving only the three of us in the cavernous space. Nate looked mildly amused. Alex looked pleased as he adjusted his grip on my waist, still not letting go despite the show being over now.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Alex smiled down at me, infuriatingly relaxed. “I handled it.”
I stared at him, about to ask exactly how he’d done that when he broke eye contact to glance at his watch. “Are you hungry? We were going to go for lunch.”
I gaped at him as Nate stepped forward and opened the door for me, like rolling into someone’s else’s office and causing chaos was just another Monday for them both.
“After you, Dr. Westwood,” he said lightly.
Oh, absolutely not.
I grabbed Alex by the arm, my fingers curling into the sleeve of his jacket, and dragged him down the hall. He let me tow him past startled assistants and gawking employees until we reached my office and I slammed the door behind us.
While I still had no idea what they’d just done or why this was beginning to feel distinctly like another Westwood power grab, I had no intention of being swept to the side, kept in the dark, and fed shit. I wasn’t a mushroom, and it was about damn time that my husband learned that about me.
CHAPTER 20
ALEX
Jane’s office was barely big enough for both of us, and the second I stepped fully inside, it confirmed something I’d suspected from the moment I’d met her. The board hadn’tgivenher the COO position out of respect or faith.
They’d done it because they’d wanted to keep what they deemed to be an enemy close. Close enough to watch but also to bury. This wasn’t an executive suite. It was containment.
Fury bubbled up in my chest as I looked around the windowless shoebox with just enough room for a desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet that had seen better decades. Jane Thayer could have worked anywhere. She could have taken one executive bonus and invested her way into a majority vote on this board if she’d wanted to.
Instead, she’d come back to Thayer based on nothing but loyalty and a promise. It made me want to rip her board’s goddamn heads off, but she turned on me, snarling like she wanted to ripmyhead clean off, her hands braced on the edge of her desk.
“What did you do?” she asked, her voice shaking with fury that matched the aggression swirling around my insides. “What right did you have to corner my board members, Alex?”
I cut her off before she could really get going. “This is what I’m entitled to as your husband.” Her eyes flashed, but I didn’t back up even an inch. “I have a stake in this now. I came here to introduce myself, but the meeting dissolved into a dick-measuring contest so fast, I’m honestly shocked I didn’t have one of them pinned against one of those walls of windows, threatening to push him through it by the time you arrived.”
She scoffed. “This is about ego?”
“No,” I said. “It’s about power.”
I didn’t tell her this, but it was more about the power they didn’t wantherto have. Those men despised Jane. They were the typical board member type, too rich, too sexist, and too set in their ways to see her as more than just a pretty face.
At least, that was what I’d thought. I’d realized since that I hadn’t been entirely right. Partially, sure, but not completely. In reality, they saw her as a threat to the system they had in place and they hated that she had any power whatsoever to destroy it.
“The power to do what?” she snapped. “If you all want a dick-measuring contest so bad, then call them back in and I’ll grab a ruler.”
I snorted. “You wouldn’t need one to know the truth.”
“And what truth is that, Alex? What truth do you think you’ve uncovered by ambushingmyboard?”
I ignored the jab, though I was tempted to act like a child and just whip it out so she could see for herself. I knew she’d probably chop it off if I tried. More importantly, I knew this reaction was mostly born from fear, confusion, and perhaps a sense of betrayal.
Right now, all she needed from me was to be upfront, not a glimpse of my dick—no matter how much it turned me on when she got like this, so fiery and real. So I leveled with her.
“All they want is to keep Thayer functioning just well enough to pad their own pockets while giving themselves theopportunity to fish for a buyer. An acquisition. Piecing the company out altogether instead of putting a functional CEO in place.”
Her expression shifted into a mask of shock, but I kept going anyway. “Their current choice of CEO is allowing them to do exactly that, but now, I’m involved and they’re scared.”
She straightened, folding her arms tightly over her chest as her chin lifted in defiance. “Of course, you’re only interested in Thayer’s well-being now because you’ll do exactly what they want. Sell out.”
I scoffed before I could stop myself, a harsh sound that bounced off the walls. Then I laughed, but it was bitter and humorless. Nothing about this exchange was going at all the way I’d thought it might. “Is that what you think of me?”
