“You okay?” Becca peers over the partition. “You’ve been staring at that spreadsheet for twenty minutes.”
“I’m fine. Just focused.”
“You don’t look focused. You look constipated.”
I sputter my lips and reply, “Thanks for that.”
She grins and disappears back to her side. I force my attention back to my screen, but the numbers swim together. I can’t concentrate. Not with him so close.
The worst part is how different he seems here. At the bar, he was charming. Playful. The kind of guy who made you feel like you were the only person in the room.
Here, he’s someone totally different.
I watched him eviscerate the head of marketing in a meeting yesterday. The man presented a quarterly report full of optimistic projections and vague promises, and Menlow picked it apart piece by piece. His voice never rose above a conversational tone, but by the end, the marketing director looked ready to crawl under the table and die.
“These numbers are based on what, exactly?” Menlow asked as he flipped through the presentation. “Hope? Wishful thinking? Because I don’t see a single data point to support your conclusions.”
“Well, we projected based on historical trends—”
“Historical trends from a company that was hemorrhaging market share before I acquired it. Try again.”
It was brutal, how precisely he dismantled every argument.
And God help me, I found it fascinating.
The contrast shouldn’t be attractive. It definitely shouldn’t make me wonder what other sides of him I haven’t seen yet.
I need to get a grip.
My computer pings with a new email. I click on it, grateful for the distraction.
It’s from Gordon Wallace, one of the senior managers from the old regime. The subject line reads: Brief Meeting—Your Presence Required.
My stomach drops.
Gordon Wallace and his colleague Richard Tillman were part of Vasiliev’s upper management before the takeover. They’ve been keeping their heads down since Menlow arrived, lurking in their offices and avoiding the spotlight. I’ve barely spoken to either of them beyond the occasional hallway greeting.
So why do they want to meet with me?
I type back a quick confirmation and check the time. The meeting is in fifteen minutes. Just enough time to work myself into a full-blown panic.
Stop it. It’s probably nothing. Maybe they need help with a report. Maybe they have questions about the data systems. There are a hundred innocent explanations.
But my gut tells me this isn’t innocent.
I save my work and head toward the elevator. Wallace and Tillman have offices on the floor above mine, in a section of the building that’s been eerily quiet since the merger.
The elevator doors open, and I step into a hallway that feels abandoned. Half the offices are empty now, their former occupants either laid off or reassigned.
The door to Wallace’s office is already open by the time I get to it, and he’s sitting behind his desk. He’s a heavyset man in his fifties with thinning gray hair and a face like a bulldog. Tillman stands by the window, wearing the kind of smile that feels rehearsed.
“Ms. Berry.” Wallace gestures to the chair across from him. “Thank you for coming. Please, sit.”
I lower myself into the chair and fold my hands in my lap. “Of course. What can I help you with?”
Wallace and Tillman share a look I can’t read. Then Wallace leans forward, resting his elbows on the desk.
“We’ll get straight to the point. A few weeks ago, you accessed a folder on the shared drive. One that wasn’t meant for general employees.”
