Page 28 of True Colors

She looks at me, and immediately, I see her reeling it back in. She knows she’s being a bully, and she needs to calm down.

“Can you tell us what you’ve already worked on, Anouk?” I ask gently. “Can you put it on the screen?”

She looks at me with panicked green eyes, and I want to hold her hand, tell her it’s going to be alright.

Erin sighs. “We don’t have time for this, Luther,” she bites out.

“Let’s make the time,” I reply coolly.

Erin knows this tone; it’s polite, but it’s asking her to shut the fuck up.

Anouk stands slowly, visibly steadying herself.

She connects her laptop to the monitor, and the spreadsheet populates across the screen—clean columns, structured pivot tables, crisp conditional formatting. The work of someone who sees data like music.

“Uh…s-so,” she begins, swallowing. “I—I st-started with N-Novagene’s thr-three…t-tier sup⁠—”

She falters, breath hitching, but she doesn’t stop.

Vijay glances at her—not at the room. “Three-tier supplier model,” he offers, lightly, like a footnote rather than a rescue.

I see a flicker in her eyes, but she keeps going. She seems less bothered by his help, though, when I tried to help her finish her words, she’d shaken her head.

What the fuck was her game?

“The pr-primary driver of cost instability is r-r-raw material v-va…va⁠—”

She pauses, jaw tightening as she works through it.

“Variance,” Vijay says again, gently, almost deferential, eyes still on the screen as if to soften the intrusion.

Her mouth presses into a thin tight smile.

“Y-yes,” she says, reclaiming the floor. “A-and their r-reagent s-supplier in I-I-stanbul⁠—”

“BTI Corporation,” Vijay adds.

A few people glance up, impressed by the coordination.

It bothers me more than it should that he already knows her rhythm—that he fills the gaps like it’s instinct, like permission was ever given.

She straightens, steadier now. “Lead t-times d-drop if they renegotiate m-minimum order th-thresholds.”

“That’s correct,” Vijay says, clearly impressed. “And she quantified the downstream impact.”

Anouk clicks to the next slide. “S-Scenario Two sh-shows a sixty-s-seven percent r-reduction in volatility.”

A stunned silence settles over the room.

One of the analysts whispers, “Sixty-seven?”

I grin at how everyone has gone from thinking ”Can she hurry the fuck up” to ”Holy mother of God, but she’s good.” This is exactly why I wanted her to present to everyone what she’d shown to me.

When she finishes, she lowers herself back into her chair, chest rising and falling like she’s run a race. She twists her fingers in her scarf—clearly thinking she bombed it.

She didn’t.

Not even close.