Julian's POV
The board meeting was set for the fifteenth, the same day Nadia’s consulting contract hit its three-month mark. She didn’t mention the milestone. She didn’t need to. I saw it in the way she packed her laptop each morning, lighter shoulders, quicker steps.
Monday night, she rehearsed her updated deck in the living room. Elise crawled between us, tugging at laptop cords. I scooped her up before she could yank anything loose.
“Worst-case revenue dip is now fifteen percent instead of ten,” Nadia said, clicking to the slide. “I front-loaded the mitigation steps. They can’t claim we’re hiding risk.”
I nodded from the armchair. “They’ll still ask about competitor response. You have the counter-data?” “Page twelve. Side-by-side user acquisition costs. We’re forty percent lower on
