Laura
Chapter Seven
“We need to talk about the gala.”
Callum looked up from his screen. He’d been reviewing the Alden timeline or pretending to. “The gala’s six weeks out. We’ve got the caterer, the venue, the renderings for the lakefront project. What’s left?”
She said it without hesitation, without the careful hedging she used to wrap around her ambitions. The words landed on his desk like a contract slid across the table, waiting for a signature.
Callum didn’t pick up the pen. “I’m not saying no.”
“You’re not saying yes either. That’s the problem.”
Callum’s chair creaked as he shifted. “The gala is about the anniversary. The Alden project. It’s not a personnel announcement.”
“It’s not about personnel changes if you make it about Holland.
” Laura’s voice stayed even, but the edge was there, honed fine.
“If you get up there and thank your wife for her support and her vision and her quiet dedication, then what am I? The woman who stands three feet behind you holding a clipboard? The COO who handles operations while the real talent stays home?”
“That’s not what you are.”
“Then say it publicly. Announce me as partner. Make it clear that I’m not just running logistics – I’m the face of this company moving forward.
” She leaned forward, her tablet forgotten, her hands braced on the armrests.
“You’ve been telling me for a year that this is where we’re headed.
The gala is the moment. Don’t blink now. ”
Callum’s jaw tightened. He looked at her, then past her, out the window toward the gray March sky hanging over the lake. “Holland still has relationships with half the legacy clients.”
Laura’s mouth pressed into a line. “Holland hasn’t been in the office for four days.
She’s not returning calls. David told me she forwarded the Morrison file to him without a note and then went dark.
She’s pulling back, Callum. She’s already halfway out the door and you’re acting like she’s still holding the whole building up. ”
“She is holding part of it up. That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact. The Morrisons won’t deal with anyone else. The lakefront design language is hers – every contractor, every supplier, every finish spec. If she walks, we lose more than a name on the door.”
Laura let the words sit. Then she tilted her head, and her voice dropped into something softer, something that sounded almost like concern. “You’re still depending on her.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“No. You’re scared of what happens if she actually leaves.
And that’s different.” Laura stood up. She walked to the window and stood with her back to him, looking out at whatever was down there.
“The optics are getting messy. You know that, right? The industry watches this stuff. They see you at events with me, they see me on-site handling the crisis calls, they see me in the meetings while your wife is at home. And then they hear you thank her at the gala like she’s the silent partner who made it all possible. What does that make me look like?”
Callum didn’t answer.
“It makes me look like the other woman,” Laura said. “The one who’s trying to take something that isn’t hers. And I am not going to stand in that room and let you make me look like a mistress when I have been running this company beside you for two years.”
“You haven’t been running it beside me. You’ve been running operations. There’s a difference.”
Laura’s eyes flickered. Something cold passed through them and was gone before Callum could name it.
“There’s a difference because you keep making one.
You keep Holland in a box labeled ‘foundational’ and me in a box labeled ‘operational’ and you think that keeps everything neat.
But the boxes are starting to collapse, and when they do, I’m the one who looks like she doesn’t belong. ”
Callum stood up. He didn’t move toward her.
He stayed behind his desk, his hands flat on the surface, and when he spoke his voice was lower, more careful.
“I want you beside me. I always have. But Holland has to stay functional. She’s the only one with credibility among the old guard—the clients who built this firm.
If I push her out, those relationships shatter, and we can’t afford that right now. ”
“So you want both of us.”
“I want you in public. I want her in private. That’s not a contradiction. That’s a strategy.”
Laura stared at him. The silence in the room was not the kind that stretched. It was the kind that pressed, that pushed against the walls, that made the hum of the building’s ventilation suddenly audible. “You think she’ll accept that.”
“She’s accepted it for seven years.”
“She accepted it when she didn’t know about us.
She accepted it when she thought she was your only partner.
She knows now, Callum. I don’t know what she knows or how she found out, but she’s not in the office, she’s not taking calls, and she’s not acting like a woman who’s content to stay in the background.
She’s acting like a woman who’s gathering ammunition. ”
Callum’s expression didn’t change, but his fingers curled slightly against the desk. Laura saw it. She made a note of where to press.
“If you announce me as partner at the gala,” she said, “you make the future clear. You stop the confusion. You give the industry a story they can understand: Callum Hart and Laura Vale, the new leadership team at Crestline. Holland can stay or go, but her role becomes what it should have been all along – supportive, not central. You can’t keep pretending she’s the face of this company when she won’t even show her face. ”
“She built the design language.”
“And I can learn it. I can learn the client preferences. I can learn the Morrison history. I can learn everything she knows if you give me access instead of keeping me in operations. The only reason I don’t have that knowledge is because you’ve never given it to me.
You’ve kept it with her because it’s easier for you. But it’s not easier for us.”
Callum was quiet for a long moment. Laura watched the calculation moving behind his eyes as he measured every angle, assessed every risk. For seven years, Holland had been his non-negotiable asset. Laura’s proposal was simple: recalibrate her worth.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“That’s not good enough.”
“It’s what I can give you right now. The gala is six weeks away.
A lot can change in six weeks. If Holland continues to pull back, if she makes it clear she doesn’t want to be involved, then the decision gets easier.
But I’m not going to announce a formal partnership while she’s still technically a founding partner and I don’t know where she stands.
That’s not strategy. That’s recklessness. ”
Laura picked up her tablet and tucked it under her arm, and when she spoke again her voice had lost its softness. “You need to figure out where she stands. Soon. Because I’m not going to keep standing in the background while you decide whether I’m worth acknowledging.”
She walked to the door. Her hand was on the handle when she stopped and looked back at him.
“One more thing. The Morrisons called this morning. They asked for Holland. I had to tell them she wasn’t available.
Do you know how that sounded? The legacy clients asking for the wife, and the COO having to say she’s not available.
That’s the kind of thing that makes people ask questions.
And the questions they ask are never about me. ”
She opened the door. She didn’t slam it. She closed it with the same soft click she’d used when she entered and walked back through the open office floor with her spine straight and her expression neutral, as if she had just finished a routine budget review.
Callum stayed behind his desk. He looked at the door for a long time after it closed.
Then he looked at his phone, at the message thread with Holland that had gone silent four days ago.
No responses. No read receipts. Just the last message he’d sent – We should talk about this – sitting there unanswered, a small gray bubble in a sea of white space.
He didn’t pick up the phone. He didn’t send another message. But he sat there, and he thought about what Laura had said, and he thought about what Holland might be doing with four days of silence and a mind that had always been sharper than anyone gave her credit for.
The gala was six weeks away. Laura had made her demands clear.
But Holland, with her silence, was making hers as well.
Sitting alone in his office, with the lake gray and flat outside his window, Callum finally understood he wasn't choosing between two women.
He was choosing which half of his company to lose.