The boardroom felt colder than usual. Maybe because Ryan was already seated when we walked in... early, suited, stiff-spined, and sharper than legal consequence. He didn’t look like the man I’d kissed in secret or the one who confessed he missed me at three in the morning. He looked like a CEO with a vendetta, and not even the complimentary espresso shots lined up at the sideboard dared to breathe wrong.
Ezra didn’t show up alone. Camille walked in beside him, her mouth curved in that PR smile that belonged on a billboard for anxiety medication. Her hair was pinned, her blazer was white, her eyes didn’t meet mine. Ezra pulled out her chair like a gentleman. I resisted the urge to throw something.
Ryan didn’t waste time.
“This isn’t a meeting. It’s a reckoning.”
That was how he opened i
