2. Sayer
SAYER
She’d looked me dead in the eye and told me I was wrong. In a room full of my own people. In front of my own CFO.
And she’d been right.
Afterward, I’d stood in Lawrence Overton’s doorway while his team packed up the conference room behind us. “Tatum Marsh. I want her on the deal.”
His jaw had tightened, his gaze shifting to the conference table for half a second before coming back to me. “I’ll make it happen.”
That was Monday. By Thursday, she was sitting on the couch in my office at Forge with her laptop open and a pen between her teeth, and I was pretending to read the same page I’d been staring at for six minutes.
She’d arrived at seven—an hour after my building had emptied. Blazer on, hair pulled back, no small talk. She’d walked past my desk to the couch like she’d been here before, spread her materials across the low table, and started working without asking where anything was.
I leaned back in my chair and watched her from behind my desk.
She was small. I hadn’t registered that in the conference room because her voice had filled every corner of it.
But here, folded into the far end of my couch with her shoes off and her feet tucked under her, she looked like she could disappear into the cushions.
She wouldn’t, though. The posture was too straight. The pen moved too fast.
Her copper-colored hair was pulled tight at the back of her neck. A few strands had come loose near her ear, and she hadn’t fixed them. Her blazer was sharp, fitted, and probably cost a fraction of what it looked like. She wore it like armor. I recognized the move.
“You’re staring.”
She said it without looking up. The pen kept moving.
“You corrected me in front of my CFO.”
“You were wrong in front of your CFO.”
I almost smiled. Caught it. She glanced up at exactly the wrong moment and saw it happen anyway.
“The Novariq filing,” I said. “How’d you catch it before my team did?”
“I was awake.” She pulled the pen from her teeth. “Six in the morning. Your team was probably still asleep.”
“And you weren’t?”
“First-year analysts don’t sleep much.”
“That’s not why you were awake.”
Her eyes came up. Green. I hadn’t noticed in the conference room because I’d been too busy processing the fact that the most junior person at the table had just taken me apart in front of my own people.
But here, with the city going dark through the windows behind me and the overhead lights dimmed to the desk lamp, her eyes were unmistakable.
She held my gaze. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.
Nobody did that.
“I was awake because I always check the filings before a meeting,” she said. “It’s not complicated.”
“It’s not common, either.”
“Then you’ve been working with the wrong people.”
The pen went back between her teeth. She looked down at her laptop. Conversation over, as far as she was concerned.
I stood up from my desk and crossed the room. Her eyes tracked me without moving her head. I sat in the chair opposite the couch, close enough to see the notes she’d made in the margins of the pitch book. Small, neat handwriting. Every line precise.
“You do that a lot?” I asked. “Tell people they’re wrong in rooms full of their own employees?”
“Only when they’re actually wrong.”
“What if I hadn’t been?”
“Then I wouldn’t have said anything.” She looked up. “I don’t perform. If I open my mouth in a meeting, it’s because I have something worth saying.”
Something shifted in my chest. Not attraction, or not just that. Recognition. She operated the way I did. No performance, no positioning. Just the work and whatever came out of it.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Old enough to read a filing.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Twenty-three.”
She said it flat, like she was daring me to make something of it. I didn’t.
“Twenty-three,” I repeated. “And you’ve been at Pleasure Valley Capital for how long?”
“Nine months.”
“And before that?”
Her pen stopped. She looked at me for a long beat, reading something in the question I hadn’t meant to put there. Or maybe I had.
“Before that, I was in school,” she said. “And before that, I was in a kitchen in a house that was too quiet, doing homework by myself while my dad worked a double shift. Is that what you’re asking?”
The room went still.
“No,” I said. “But I’m glad you told me.”
She blinked. Whatever she’d expected me to say, that wasn’t it. Her jaw softened by a fraction. The pen came down to her lap.
“Why did you request me on this deal?” she asked.
“Because you were the only person in that room who was paying attention.”
“Lawrence was paying attention.”
“Lawrence was managing the client. You were doing the work.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “There’s a difference.”
She studied me. I let her. I didn’t shift or rush to fill the silence the way most people would.
“We should get back to the pricing model,” she said finally.
“We should.”
Neither of us moved.
The city was fully dark through the windows now.
My office sat on the top floor of the Forge building with nothing above us but the mechanical floor and the roof.
At this hour, the whole level was empty.
No assistants, no CFO, no Lawrence Overton watching with his pen frozen over his legal pad.
Just the desk lamp, the skyline, and a woman with copper hair and green eyes who’d told me I was wrong and hadn’t apologized for it.
I sat back in the chair. Crossed my arms. Let the silence hold.
She looked at me one more second. Then she put the pen between her teeth, turned back to her laptop, and kept working.
I didn’t go back to my desk.