Page 7 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

Chapter Two

Logan

The meeting should have ended twenty minutes ago.

I know this because I scheduled it for forty-five minutes, which was already ten more than it required, and because the man currently talking has now said the same thing three different ways without appearing to notice that I stopped responding after the first.

David Mercer is a competent enough regional director — his numbers are clean, his team performs, his instincts on the infrastructure rollout have been mostly sound. But he has a habit of mistaking thoroughness for intelligence, and right now he is walking me through a contingency plan I identified the flaw in while he was still pulling up the slide.

"The secondary failover," I say, cutting across whatever point he is currently building toward.

"It's dependent on the Portland node. If Portland hasa capacity issue during peak load — which, based on last quarter's data, it will — the entire contingency collapses."

Mercer stops. He looks at the slide. Then he looks at me with the particular expression of a man recalibrating in real time.

"I'll have the team run the load projections again."

"Have them on my desk by Thursday." I close the folder in front of me, which is the only signal anyone in this building needs that a meeting is over.

"The core strategy is sound. Fix the failover dependency and bring me the revised model."

He nods and gathers his materials with the efficiency of someone who has learned not to linger. The two analysts flanking him follow his lead without being told. I appreciate that about the people who last here — they learn to read a room quickly, and the ones who don't learn it don't last.

The conference room empties in under ninety seconds. I stay at the table for a moment, reviewing the notes I made during the presentation — three lines, all of them actionable, none of them requiring further meetings to resolve. Through the glass wall behind me, the floor operates at its standard tempo. Forty-three people in this division alone, all of them moving with the focused efficiency of a workforce that understands what is expected and why meeting that expectation matters.

I built the culture of this office over the past several years with the same precision I apply to everything else — not through speeches or vision statements, but through consistent and unambiguous standards. People performat the bar you set. Set it low and you get exactly what you deserve.

I push back from the table and walk toward my office at the far end of the floor. Keith falls into step beside me before I've reached the halfway point — he has an instinct for timing that I've come to rely on without ever saying so directly. Six years at Drake Industries, which in this industry qualifies as a full career. He handles strategic partnerships with the kind of quiet competence that doesn't require managing, which is the only kind of competence I have patience for. He's also one of the few people in my professional orbit who will say something I don't want to hear without dressing it up first, which I value more than I've ever told him.

"Mercer?" he asks, glancing at the folder under my arm.

"Fixable. Thursday."

"The Nakamura group called while you were in there. They want to move the quarterly review up a week."

I push open the door to my office. "Why?"

"Board scheduling conflict on their end." He follows me in, stopping at the threshold the way he always does — Keith has never once sat down in my office without being invited to, which is another reason he's lasted this long.

"I can push back if you want."

"Move it up. Reschedule whatever's in the way."

"Already done." He pauses, and I recognize the pause — it means there's something else. "The Vertex presentationis confirmed for the fourteenth. I'll send you the updated brief this afternoon. Also — Hargrove is pushing back on the licensing terms again. Third time this month."

I turn from my monitor and look at him directly.

"What specifically?"

"The exclusivity window. He wants eighteen months. We offered twelve."

"We offered twelve because eighteen gives him leverage he hasn't earned and exposes us if the partnership underperforms in the first year." I turn back to my screen.

"Tell him twelve is the ceiling. If he wants to keep negotiating, he can find another partner who has more patience for it than I do."

Keith absorbs this without reaction.

"I'll communicate that."