Rejected Luna: Pregnant By The Ruthless Alpha Ceo After One Night

chapter 5 : The Riverside Property

REMI'S POV

Monday morning, Dax left a folder on my desk before I arrived.

I found it waiting at 7:48 AM — thick, no note, but I'd worked here long enough now to understand that the folder itself was the note. I opened it. Background reading on the Riverside property negotiation. Three independent property appraisals. A twenty-page summary of Sterling Enterprises' previous development partnerships. A short, handwritten list in Dax's precise handwriting:

Prep questions — anticipate Jade's counterarguments on each appraisal point. Find the weakness in appraisal 2 before she does.

I read the three appraisals by nine AM. By ten I'd found the weakness in appraisal two — a comparable property sale that the appraiser had weighted at fifteen percent when the market correction data suggested it should have been closer to eight. It inflated the Riverside valuation by roughly 1.2 million dollars. Not fatal to Wolfe's position, but exploitable.

I wrote a one-page note laying it out clearly, crossed to Dax's open door, and knocked on the frame.

He was reviewing documents and didn't look up. "What."

"Appraisal two. The Henley Street comparable is over-weighted. If Sterling's team has done their homework, they'll use it. You'll want to address it preemptively or they'll bring it up at the table and it'll look like you missed it."

He looked up then. Read my face for a moment. "Show me."

I set the page on his desk. He read it in forty-five seconds.

"The correction data," he said. "Where did you source it?"

"City planning office. They released a market correction index for that corridor last quarter. It's public record, just not indexed anywhere obvious."

Another forty-five seconds of silence. "Go back to your desk. I'll handle the appraisal."

"Okay."

"Miss Cole."

I stopped.

"Good catch." He said it the way he'd said most people wouldn't have found that — flat, factual, delivered and moved on. But I'd been working here long enough to know that from Dax Wolfe, good catch was the equivalent of anyone else throwing a parade.

I went back to my desk and tried not to feel unreasonably pleased about two words.

Tuesday. Conference Room A. Ten AM.

I arrived at nine-forty-five. Dax was already there.

He was standing at the windows, looking out at the city below. Not reviewing documents this time — just standing, hands in his pockets, in the particular stillness that I was learning meant he was thinking rather than resting. The suit was charcoal today, fitted precisely, the kind of suit that didn't look expensive because it was trying to look expensive. It looked expensive the way his watch looked expensive — because it simply was, without needing to announce itself.

"Close the door," he said without turning.

I closed it. The ambient noise of the floor dropped away.

"Today's meeting is different from the Sterling negotiation last week." He turned from the window. "That was preliminary. She was taking measure. Today she's here to make a move." He crossed to the table, picked up the folder I'd prepared — the background reading, the appraisal notes, the Carlisle compliance information. "She'll try to bring in personal dynamics. She does that when she thinks she's losing ground on substance."

"Personal dynamics meaning your history with her?"

"Among other things." His eyes were level, giving me nothing. "She will also direct attention at you. Questions, observations, seemingly casual. Her goal is to find out who you are and what I've told you."

"What should I tell her?"

"Nothing. You're taking notes. That's the entirety of your identity in that room." He picked up his pen, clicked it once. "If she corners you — if I'm out of the room and she moves on you directly — you give her nothing and you find a reason to be somewhere else."

"Understood."

"Marcus will be on my right. David from legal on his right. You're at the end of the table nearest the door." He looked at me steadily. "Don't move to a different seat regardless of what she suggests."

"She'll suggest I move?"

"Jade rearranges rooms. It's how she establishes control." He picked up the folder. "She moved our legal team to the wrong side of the table in the Harrington merger meeting and they didn't even notice until she'd already changed the framing of three key terms."

I filed that away. "She won't move me."

"No," he said. "She won't."

Something in the way he said it was different from a prediction. It was more like a decision he'd already made.

Marcus arrived at nine-fifty-five, followed by David, a quiet, precise man with the careful eyes of someone who read contracts for a living and had learned to distrust anything that looked straightforward. They both nodded at me. Marcus gave me a slightly longer look that communicated both good luck and I'm glad it's you instead of me.

At ten exactly, the conference room door opened.

Jade Sterling walked in like she owned the building. Silver-blonde hair, ice-blue eyes that moved through the room the moment she entered — cataloguing, calculating, filing everything away before she'd said a word. She had two men with her, and they moved with the particular quality of people who existed to make her look like she didn't need them.

"Dax." She crossed the room directly to him, bypassing Marcus and David entirely, and kissed both his cheeks with the ease of someone who'd been doing it for years. Her hand rested on his arm for just a moment. "I was beginning to think you'd send Marcus again."

"You said you wanted to negotiate," Dax said. "I'm here."

She stepped back, and her eyes moved to me. I was already in my seat, laptop open, notepad beside it, positioned exactly where Dax had told me to be.

"Miss Cole." She smiled. "Still here."

"Still here," I agreed.

Her eyes stayed on me for a beat longer than necessary — trying to read something, trying to figure out whether my presence in this room was professional or personal or both. Then she moved to her seat. Directly across from Dax, as if that had been pre-arranged, which perhaps it had in her mind.

Her two executives flanked her. She set a folder on the table and opened it without looking at anyone.

"The Riverside property," she said. "Let's be efficient about this."

"Please," Dax said.

She slid a document across the table. "Our current offer. Fourteen million. We've moved from twelve."

Dax picked it up. He didn't read it the way a normal person reads something — he read it the way a scanner processes information, eyes moving in a pattern that suggested he was pulling the document apart into component parts simultaneously. He set it down after forty seconds.

"Fourteen million is still eight million below fair market value."

"The appraisals you commissioned are optimistic."

"Three independent firms."

"One of whom over-weighted a comparable sale on Henley Street." Jade leaned forward slightly. "Appraisal two. The Henley Street weighting inflates your position by over a million dollars."

Marcus shifted in his seat. David's pen paused.

Dax didn't blink. "I'm aware of the weighting discrepancy. I've already adjusted our internal valuation accordingly. Our floor is still twenty million." He slid a single page across the table. "Here's the corrected analysis. You'll see it doesn't materially change our position."

Jade looked at the page. Something moved across her face — just briefly, just a flicker of recalibration. She'd expected that to land harder.

I kept typing.

"Twenty million is aggressive," one of her executives said.

"Twenty million is accurate." Dax leaned back. "The Riverside site has frontage on three transit corridors, mixed-use zoning that was granted eighteen months ago, and an anchor tenant already in negotiations with our development team. Your offer assumes none of those factors have market value. They do."

"Who's the anchor tenant?" Jade asked.

"That information becomes relevant after we have a signed agreement."

"You're asking me to bid on incomplete information."

"I'm asking you to bid on publicly available information about location and zoning. The tenant is proprietary." Dax's voice was perfectly even. "If Sterling's team has done adequate market research, they know what this property is worth without the tenant. The tenant is a premium on top of that figure."

Jade's jaw moved. Microscopic — barely visible — but I caught it because I'd been watching her face the way Dax had told me to watch the room.

"Let's take a break," she said. "Twenty minutes."

"Of course." Dax gestured toward the door.

Her executives stood. She stood. They moved toward the hallway. At the door, Jade paused.

"Miss Cole." She looked at me pleasantly. "Would you mind getting me some water? Sparkling, if you have it."

It was beautifully done. Harmless-looking. Assistants get water for guests — it was a completely reasonable request. Except that if I left my seat to go to the kitchen, I'd be out of the room. And if I was out of the room, she'd have whatever window she wanted with the remaining people at the table.

"Of course," I said. "I'll have someone bring it up right away."

I picked up my desk phone without leaving my seat, called the catering extension, requested sparkling water for the conference room, and set the phone down.

Jade looked at me. I looked back. Her smile didn't change, but something behind it did.

"Efficient," she said.

"That's what I'm here for."

She left. The door closed.

Marcus let out a breath slowly through his nose. David made a small note in the margin of his legal pad. Dax looked at me from the head of the table.

He didn't say anything. But something in the angle of his head shifted — a minimal acknowledgment. I'd been tested and I hadn't moved from my seat.

I looked back at my laptop and kept typing.

During the break, Jade didn't disappear to make phone calls. I knew because after she walked out the main door, the conference room had a secondary entrance through the adjacent meeting room — and twenty minutes later, that door opened.

Just Jade. Alone. Her executives weren't with her.

I was the only one left in the room. Marcus had stepped out. David had gone to the bathroom.

She closed the secondary door behind her and crossed to the windows, casual and unhurried, like she'd simply found herself here by coincidence.

"I love this view," she said. "I used to have an office on this floor. Did you know that?"

"I didn't."

"Dax and I worked together for almost two years before Wolfe Enterprises fully separated from Sterling's parent company." She turned from the window. Her ice-blue eyes were doing the same cataloguing work they'd done in the meeting, but now without the performance of the negotiating table. "I know this building better than most of his current staff."

"That's interesting."

"You're good," she said. "The water thing. You knew what I was doing."

"I knew what you needed and arranged to have it delivered."

Her smile was almost genuine. "You don't like me."

"I don't have an opinion about you. You're a party in a negotiation my employer is managing."

"Very diplomatic." She moved closer, not aggressively, just conversationally, stopping a few feet away. "How long have you worked for him?"

"Less than two weeks."

"And he brought you into this meeting."

"He needed someone to take notes."

"He has three staff members who take notes. He brought you specifically." She tilted her head. "I'm curious why."

"You'd have to ask him."

"I have. He doesn't answer questions about his staff." She paused. "He's never brought anyone new into a Sterling negotiation. Not until they'd been with him for at least six months." Another pause. "You're not just someone who takes notes."

"Ms. Sterling —"

"I'm not threatening you." She held up one hand, placating. "I'm genuinely curious. Dax doesn't do anything without a reason. If you're in this room, there's a reason." Her eyes moved over me with thoroughness. "Did you know him before you worked for him?"

The question was a scalpel. Clean, precise, aimed at exactly the right spot.

"The catering team should have your water at the main door," I said.

A moment of silence. Then Jade Sterling laughed — a short, real sound, nothing like the polished laugh she'd used at the table. "All right," she said. "Fair enough." She moved toward the secondary door. "For what it's worth, Miss Cole — I don't hate you. I'm just trying to understand the board."

"The board?"

"Everyone around Dax is part of his strategy. Always." She opened the door. "The question is which piece you are."

She left. I sat in the empty conference room and wrote everything down while it was still fresh, because Dax would want to know she'd come in through the secondary entrance, and he'd want to know exactly what she'd said, and the fact that he'd want to know meant it mattered, which meant I needed to remember it precisely.

The main door opened. Marcus reappeared with his coffee. "Everything okay?"

"Sterling came in through the secondary door."

He stopped. "While you were alone?"

"For about four minutes. She asked how long I'd worked here, why Dax brought me to this meeting, and whether I knew him before the job."

"What did you tell her?"

"Nothing."

Marcus looked at me steadily for a moment. "I'm going to tell Dax."

"I was going to tell him myself."

"I know." He sat back down at the table. "But I'm also going to tell him. Just so he hears it twice."

The second half of the meeting lasted another hour.

Jade came back in through the main door with her executives, her sparkling water in hand, and sat down like the conversation in the other room hadn't happened. I watched her recalibrate — small adjustments, the way someone fine-tunes a frequency. She'd learned something from those four minutes. Or she'd decided she hadn't learned enough.

The Riverside negotiation came to a preliminary agreement at eighteen million — still weighted in Wolfe's favor, permits handled by Sterling, construction managed by Wolfe's development team. Jade signed the preliminary document with the focused efficiency of someone who'd already calculated that this was the best available position for today, and today wasn't the last move.

When they were leaving, she shook Dax's hand. Her fingers held on for a fraction of a second longer than the handshake required.

"Dinner," she said. "Catch up properly."

"I'll have Margaret check the schedule," Dax said.

Her eyes slid to me once — quick, measuring. Then she walked out.

After the room cleared, Dax turned to Marcus and David. "Debrief Monday. I want the full preliminary agreement reviewed before then." He picked up his folder. "David, the permit language on page four needs tightening. Sterling's team will look for flexibility in that clause."

"I'll have revisions by Thursday," David said.

"Wednesday."

David made a note. "Wednesday."

Then Dax looked at me. "Your notes. My inbox by noon."

"Done by eleven," I said.

Something almost moved at the corner of his mouth. "Also. Sterling came in through the secondary entrance during the break."

"Yes."

"She spoke with you."

"Four minutes. She asked how long I'd been here, why you brought me to the meeting, and whether I knew you before the job."

"What did you tell her?"

"Nothing useful."

The pause was brief. "What did she tell you?"

"That everyone around you is part of your strategy. And that she's trying to figure out which piece I am."

Marcus, who was gathering his things, made a quiet noise that might have been a laugh.

Dax's expression didn't change. "Go write your notes," he said.

I went.