She Never Loses
893 Words
Elyn had a system.
Every negotiation had three phases.
Phase one, let them talk. Men especially loved to talk. They came in with big numbers and bigger confidence and if you let them go long enough they’d eventually say something that handed you the entire deal on a plate.
Phase two, dismantle quietly. No raised voice. No visible emotion. Just clean precise pressure applied exactly where it hurt most.
Phase three, close. Fast. Final. No room for a counteroffer they could sleep on.
She had never needed a phase four.
“The valuation your team submitted,” Rhys said, sliding a document across the table, “is ambitious.”
“It’s accurate,” Elyn said without touching the document.
“It’s thirty percent above market.”
“Vantex isn’t a market asset Mr. Calder. It’s a strategic one. The thirty percent accounts for what it becomes inside Crest Holdings within eighteen months.” She paused. “Your team knows this. That’s why you’re here instead of walking away.”
One of his team members shifted in her seat.
Rhys didn’t move.
“Eighteen months is a projection,” he said. “Not a guarantee.”
“Everything in business is a projection,” she said. “The question is who you trust to execute it.”
“And I should trust Crest Holdings because?”
Elyn looked at him steadily. “Because in eleven years we have acquired fourteen companies. Every single one outperformed its original valuation within two years. That isn’t projection Mr. Calder.” She tilted her head slightly. “That’s a pattern.”
Silence.
His team member on the left was typing something rapidly. The one on the right had stopped pretending to look at her documents and was just watching.
Rhys looked at Elyn.
Elyn looked at Rhys.
He picked up the document she hadn’t touched and slid it back toward his side of the table.
“Take a break?” he said pleasantly.
“I don’t need a break.”
“My team does,” he said. “Twenty minutes.”
She held his gaze for one beat. Two.
“Twenty minutes,” she said.
The corridor outside the boardroom was all floor to ceiling windows overlooking a grey Harlow City skyline. Elyn stood at the far end with her water and her phone and her absolute refusal to think about the last four hours.
She was thinking about the last four hours.
Specifically she was thinking about the fact that Rhys Calder negotiated the same way he existed. Unhurried. Precise. Like he had already seen three moves ahead and found them mildly interesting.
She didn’t like it.
She negotiated against emotional men mostly. Men who took her positions personally and got loud about it and made mistakes because their ego was louder than their strategy.
Rhys had no visible ego.
That was inconvenient.
Footsteps behind her.
She didn’t turn around.
“Your pattern argument was good,” Rhys said.
“I know.”
He stopped beside her at the window. Not close enough to be a statement. Close enough to be a fact.
“Fourteen acquisitions,” he said.
“Fourteen.”
“You ran point on all of them?”
She glanced at him sideways. “Is this negotiation or conversation?”
“Can’t it be both.”
“No.”
He almost smiled. “You built that pattern. Didn’t inherit it.”
It wasn’t a question. She looked at him properly now. Trying to find the angle. The thing he was building toward. Men didn’t compliment her without wanting something. It was the one thing she could always count on.
His face gave her nothing.
“What do you want Mr. Calder,” she said flatly.
“To understand who I’m dealing with.”
“You have my company profile.”
“Profiles don’t tell me everything.”
“They tell you enough.”
He turned to look at her fully. Unhurried. Those dark eyes moving across her face like he was reading something she hadn’t written for him.
“You came in twelve minutes early,” he said. “Sat at the head without waiting for a seating arrangement. Didn’t touch the document I slid across because touching it would have implied you needed to read it.” He paused. “You’d already memorised it.”
Elyn said nothing.
“You don’t negotiate,” he said quietly. “You dismantle.”
The rain hit the windows in a slow steady rhythm.
She held his gaze and felt something she hadn’t felt across a table in a very long time.
An equal.
She buried that thought so fast it barely existed.
“We should go back in,” she said.
“Probably,” he agreed.
Neither of them moved for exactly four seconds.
Then Elyn turned and walked back toward the boardroom and did not think about the way he’d said dismantle like it was something worth admiring.
She did not think about it at all.
She sat back down at the head of the table.
Rhys sat back down across from her.
Opened his file.
Looked up.
“Shall we continue?” he said.
Under the table Elyn’s hand moved to her jacket pocket.
The card was still there.
She pulled her hand away.
“We shall,” she said.
And phase two began
- Writer
