6. Talia
Talia
“Absolutely not.”
Declan says it before Graham finishes explaining the proposal, which would be more satisfying if it didn’t involve me being trapped across a conference table from him for the foreseeable future.
Beside me, Rebecca goes very still.
Across the table, Graham doesn’t blink. Marcus merely looks down at the document in front of him as though Declan’s objection is both expected and already factored into the agenda.
Adrian sits near the end of the table with a cup of coffee in one hand and the expression of a man who has attended enough meetings to know the real entertainment usually begins after someone says no.
Sloane Parker stands beside the screen at the front of the room, arms folded, her gaze moving once between Declan and me before she wisely says nothing.
I keep my hands folded in my lap. It’s either that or leave. Leaving would be easier. Unfortunately, easy hasn’t been offered to me in quite some time.
Graham waits a beat. “I understand this is not ideal.”
Declan laughs once, short and humorless. “That’s a generous way to describe forcing me into a joint task force with the woman who—”
His mouth closes before the rest of the sentence can escape.
Every inch of me goes cold, because I know there are half a dozen ways that sentence could end—and none of them would be wrong. The woman who kept his son from him. The woman who walked away. The woman who shattered whatever certainty he walked into the café carrying that morning.
I don't ask which version he was about to say. I don’t move, and I don’t give anyone in this room the satisfaction of seeing how close those words come to finding something tender.
Graham’s expression shifts, not with anger exactly, but with warning. “This is not optional emotional housekeeping, Declan. It’s business.”
“Funny how often people use that word when they want me to ignore the rest of my life.”
Marcus finally looks up. “No one is asking you to ignore it.”
Declan’s gaze cuts to him. “That’s convenient.”
The words are sharp, but his voice isn’t loud. That’s worse now that I know what his quiet means.
I force myself to look at the document Rebecca slid in front of me ten minutes ago. Joint integration task force. Crossridge-Ashcroft merger. Accelerated terms review. Foundation allocation protection. Co-leads: Declan Ward and Talia Wynn.
My name beside his looks absurdly calm on paper.
“We have alternatives,” I say.
Everyone looks at me. Why wouldn’t they? The woman at the center of the disaster has spoken. How brave. How inconvenient.
I keep my voice steady. “Ashcroft can appoint another consultant to co-lead the risk review.”
Rebecca’s head turns slightly toward me. “Talia.”
“It’s a reasonable option.”
“It’s a bad option,” Marcus says.
I look at him. He doesn’t soften the assessment, which I appreciate more than I should. At least he has the courtesy to be direct while dismantling my escape route.
“You built the current risk model,” he continues. “You caught exposure neither side had fully connected to the Foundation timeline. Replacing you delays review by at least two weeks and introduces a new learning curve.”
Declan leans back in his chair. “Then delay it.”
Graham’s jaw tightens. “We can’t.”
For the first time since the meeting began, the room changes in a way that has nothing to do with Declan and me.
The men across from me do not exchange dramatic glances.
Crossridge does not seem to specialize in dramatic anything.
But Marcus shifts one page forward, Sloane’s mouth tightens, and Adrian’s gaze sharpens over the rim of his cup.
There’s something else here. Something I don’t know.
Rebecca notices too. “What aren’t we seeing?”
Graham looks toward Marcus and Marcus answers.
“Apex has become increasingly aggressive since the scandal fallout.”
Declan’s expression barely changes, but I catch the slight flicker at the edge of it. Recognition. Irritation. Dismissal already preparing itself.
“The scandal fallout,” Rebecca repeats carefully.
Sloane steps forward then, and the air changes again. I know who she is, of course. Everyone in our field knows who Sloane Parker is now, if only because half the business press spent several weeks pretending a corporate communications director’s personal life was market analysis.
What the public saw was a woman beside Marcus in staged photographs and controlled statements. What I see is someone who has survived being underestimated and hasn’t forgiven the industry for it.
“Apex lost leverage when Crossridge stabilized the narrative,” Sloane says. “They expected investor confidence to fracture longer than it did.”
“Because of your press strategy,” Rebecca says.
“Because the facts were on our side,” Sloane replies.
Marcus’s mouth moves slightly, not quite a smile, and I understand more about their marriage in that half second than any article could have told me.
Sloane looks back at the screen. “Since then, Apex has been working harder to interfere with strategic growth. Analyst whispers. Quiet calls. Private investor forums. Nothing we can prove cleanly yet, but the pattern is there.”
“And Julian?” Declan asks.
The name sounds like poison with enough history that even I notice.
Sloane’s face cools. “Julian is not enjoying irrelevance.”
Marcus’s expression goes flat in a way that makes the room feel several degrees colder. “He is determined to slow anything that strengthens Crossridge’s position.”
“Especially the Foundation expansion,” Graham adds.
That catches me before I can stop it. “The child development programs?”
Graham looks at me then, and his expression changes. Not guarded. More human.
“Yes.”
I glance down at the proposal again, and this time my attention catches on a different section. Foundation allocation protection. Child development programs. The words seem brighter than the rest of the page, pulling my focus back no matter how many times I try to look elsewhere.
I think of Flynn outside my apartment this morning, arguing that airplanes have feelings. Flynn at the café table, one sock sliding down his ankle, telling a stranger with his own eyes that clouds look like mashed potatoes.
Then I think of child development programs. Resources. Funding that might reach children whose parents are doing everything they can and still wake up each morning facing problems they never planned for and can’t entirely control.
I hate the way my resolve shifts the moment I stop seeing numbers and start seeing people.
Declan notices. His gaze moves over my face, and for one awful second, the room disappears. Not completely, and not enough to make me foolish. But enough that I remember the small conference room off the café, his voice low with hurt, the question I had spent six years dreading.
Why didn’t you tell me? I had answered him because I had to. You weren’t ready to listen. Now he’s looking at me like he heard more in those words than I intended to give him.
I turn away first, because professionalism is sometimes just survival with better posture.
“This merger strengthens the Foundation?” I ask.
Graham nods. “Significantly.”
“How significantly?”
Adrian sets his cup down. “Enough to expand pilot programs in three additional regions within the first year if the integration timeline holds.”
I look at him. “Child development only?”
“Early learning, family support partnerships, and resource access through existing community organizations,” Adrian says. “Tessa helped with the initial framework.”
Tessa. Graham’s wife.
I have never met her, but I know enough from the public-facing Foundation materials to know her name belongs there.
Not because she married Graham, but because the programs carry the kind of fingerprints that come from someone who understands real people need more than headlines and charity luncheons.
My fingers tighten slightly around the edge of the document. I can feel Declan watching me.
“I understand the importance,” I say, because anything else would reveal too much.
Declan’s voice comes from across the table. “Do you?”
My eyes lift, and what I find there steals the next breath from my lungs. The charm is gone. So is the easy grin and the effortless humor he usually hides behind. What remains is the man from the café, stripped down to something far more honest.
My chest tightens before I can stop it.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “I do.”
His gaze holds mine for half a second longer than it should. Then he looks away, jaw tight.
“I still think this is a bad idea.”
Marcus exhales. “Noted.”
“It’s a terrible idea.”
“Also noted.”
“I’m serious.”
“So are we.”
Declan’s attention snaps back to him. “You think putting Talia and me in charge of the same workstream right now is wise?”
“No,” Marcus says. “I think it’s necessary.”
Sloane glances at her husband, and the look they share is brief but loaded. Something passes between them. Agreement. Concern. Maybe a memory of what happens when business and personal damage get tangled until nobody can tell where one ends and the other begins.
I look down again because watching them is dangerous. There’s intimacy in being known that well. I have spent six years avoiding dangerous things.
Rebecca folds her hands on the table. “From Ashcroft’s side, Talia is the most efficient choice.
She has the risk model, the transition recommendations, and the compliance impact notes.
Reassigning the work is possible, but it slows us down and weakens our position if Apex is actively trying to interfere. ”
I almost say no anyway. The word comes easily, bringing every reason I should walk away with it.
Declan. The forced proximity. The meetings, the late nights, and the charged silences that seem destined to live between us.
The conversations neither of us wants to have.
The way he looked at Flynn. The way Flynn looked back.