"Personal issue." He scoffs, arms unfolding.
"That's what I said."
"I don't have a personal issue with you, Mrs. Monroe. I don't know you well enough, nor do I care to enough, to have a personal issue with you. What I have is a nine-figure acquisition, a board breathing down my neck, and the consultant who was hired to calm this storm was walking around looking disheveled and, quite frankly drunk." He tilts his head slightly. "Forgive me if that doesn't inspire confidence."
Tension lingers between us, neither of us knowing what to say.
"I had a difficult night,” is what I finally decide on.
"So did I. The difference is you won't see evidence of mine. Now, is there anything else you needed to get off your chest today, Mrs. Monroe, or can we get to the part where you do the job I'm paying you to do?"
Ugh! This fucking fucker!
My heart thunders in my chest, and the blood in my ears roars so loudly I almost didn’t hear the knock on the conference room door before it slides open without waiting for a response.
Rosalie walks in with two board members behind her, and the way all three of them move into the room tells me something has already happened and they've been discussing it in the hallway.
"Sorry to interrupt." Her eyes move from Bennet to me and back. "May we join you for a few minutes?"
The tension in here is apparently visible from the doorway because all three of them are doing the bounce — him, me, him again — before anyone says anything further.
"What's this about?" Bennet asks.
"The press is running a story." Rosalie gestures toward the screen. "One of our sources gave us a heads up about thirty minutes ago. May I?" She's already reaching for the cable.
"Please," I say before Bennet can answer.
He looks at me briefly but says nothing.
The screen changes, and we all shift to face it. Frank leans forward with his hands on the table and starts talking before anyone else can.
"The Los Angeles Journal is running a piece that frames the Monroe Communications engagement as a publicity stunt. The angle is that the board retained outside help specifically to manufacture investor confidence ahead of Meridian closing." He exhales through his nose. "They're positioning it as damage control theater."
I'm already reading. The byline is someone I know — a reporter with a specific appetite for corporate narrative pieces who has good sources and almost no mercy. The language isprecise and well-informed in a way that suggests this didn't come from speculation.
Someone talked.
The piece is thorough. It mentions Monroe Communications by name, references the board's concerns about Bennet's public image, and frames the entire engagement as a calculated performance designed to reassure skittish investors rather than any genuine behavioral change on Bennet Sullivan's part. There are quotes — multiple unnamed sources that paint the relationship between Bennet and his board as fractured and the PR hire as a last-ditch attempt to hold a deal together.
Then it gets personal.
Three paragraphs detailing Bennet's public history with the particular relish of a writer who knows they have room to run. The fountain. Two prior incidents I'd flagged in my research. A quote from someone described only as a former associate that is, to put it plainly, devastating.
The room is quiet while everyone reads.
I finish reading and sit back to think.
"How long before it is published?" I ask.
"It's live within the hour," Rosalie says.
I nod once. "Okay." I pull my laptop toward me and start typing. "Who knows about the Meridian time-line specifically — the six-week window? Because this piece has the closing date. That's not public information, is it?"
The board members exchange a look.
"No, and it's a short list," Frank says carefully.
"Then we start there." I keep typing. "The story itself we can't kill — it's already live and pulling it would make it worse. What we can do is get ahead of the narrative before it compounds."
