Miss CEO, EX-Convict

What is Wrong

Denise put me on Adrian Kestrel's floor two days later, no explanation, just a new badge and a different elevator code. I didn't ask why. Getting close to the top of a company that was circling Reyes Group had been the plan since the bus stop bench, so I didn't question my own luck. I should have. Every filing I read for Adrian was a filing I could also read for myself, and somewhere in these numbers was the paper trail that would tell me who really signed my name away.

His office had glass walls and no blinds, which meant everyone on the floor could watch every meeting he ran, including the one I walked into eleven minutes late because the elevator stalled between eight and nine for no reason anyone bothered to explain.

"You're late," he said, without looking up from the folder in front of him.

"Elevator."

"There's a stairwell."

"Nine flights."

He looked up then. Whatever he'd expected the outside consultant to look like, I wasn't it, I could tell that much from the half second his face did something before it settled back into nothing.

"Sit," he said.

I sat. Same wobble as the annex chair.

He slid a folder across the desk. "Reyes Group's escrow numbers don't add up the way our acquisitions team thinks they do. I want your read before I take this to the board."

I opened the folder. Three pages in, I found a projection that assumed Reyes Group's debt load was worse than it actually was, based on filings I'd spent two nights reading in an annex nobody used after six.

"This is wrong," I said.

"Which part."

"The debt-to-asset ratio on page three. Whoever ran this pulled last year's numbers instead of this year's. Reyes Group restructured in the spring. If you take this to the board, you'll be arguing for a discount that doesn't exist anymore."

He didn't say anything for a second. Then he pulled the folder back toward himself and flipped to page three like he hadn't already memorized every number on it, which told me he had.

"You're saying we walk away."

"I'm saying you renegotiate from a weaker position than you think you're in."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's the answer anyway."

Something in his jaw moved. He didn't finish whatever he'd been about to say.

"The board wants this deal closed by end of quarter."

"The board wants a lot of things. That doesn't make the numbers different."

He stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at nothing in particular for long enough that I started counting the seconds without meaning to. I got to nine before he turned back around.

"Who told you to push back on this."

"Nobody told me to do anything. You asked for my read. That's my read."

"Most consultants tell me what the board wants to hear."

"Then you hired the wrong consultant."

He almost smiled. I watched it start and then get called off. Whatever mood he'd walked in with didn't have room for it.

"Fine," he said. "Redo the projection. Current numbers. I want it by Thursday."

"That's two days."

"You said the current numbers exist. Go find them."

I gathered the folder and stood, and my sleeve caught the edge of his coffee cup on the way up, not enough to spill it, just enough that it rattled against the saucer and both of us looked at it for a second before I steadied it with two fingers.

"You didn't have to catch that," he said.

"Habit."

"Most people around here just apologize and let it fall."

"I don't like wasted things."

He didn't say anything to that. He looked at me a second too long, then looked back down at his desk. The conversation was over. His face hadn't caught up to that yet.

"Thursday," he said again, like the coffee cup hadn't happened.

"Thursday," I said back.

I made it to the door before he spoke again.

"Vale."

I stopped without turning around all the way.

"Whoever you worked for before this. They were lucky to have you." He wasn't offering a compliment. He'd already decided it was true, and he said so.

I didn't answer that. I couldn't have answered it without giving him a piece of the truth I wasn't ready to hand over, not yet, not to the one person in the building who could undo everything I'd built in two weeks by asking a single follow-up question.

"I'll have the numbers by Thursday," I said, and left before he could decide whether that counted as an answer.

The elevator worked fine going down. Two days to redo the projection. Two days to find something in those numbers worth the risk of being wrong in front of him twice.