Carter Cross had built a reputation in this building as the one person in Marketing who could make a spreadsheet feel like a personal attack. It wasn't intentional, exactly. It was just that when numbers didn't add up, he said so, loudly, and with the specific outrage of a man who considered creative overspending a moral failing.
Which was why, when Chloe Bennett walked into the fourth-floor conference room with a mockup board under one arm and a budget request that was forty percent over what Finance had approved, Carter's first reaction was to stand up.
"Absolutely not."
Chloe didn't even blink. She set the board down, unhurried, and looked at him the way a person looks at a vending machine that's eaten their dollar. "I haven't said anything yet."
"You don't need to. I've seen the nu
