[Theo’s POV]
* Present *
The Rusty Nail hasn't changed its menu since Colin and I started drinking here—back when Meridian was five people in a sublet, surviving on caffeine and stubbornness. The beer is still mediocre, the pretzels are still stale, and the bartender still looks offended by shakers. I love this place.
Colin slides into the booth and flags two pints before his jacket hits the seat. "You've been weird all week," he says, skipping pleasantries entirely. "And you have a child's drawing pinned to your desk lamp."
"It's a dragon-cat. Her name is Sparkle Inferno and she breathes fire and glitter simultaneously, which I'm told is very important." I don’t even blink, and my voice is level despite the fact that my chest constricts from the memory of Sparkle Inferno alone.
"I can see that." He leans back, arms crossed, wearing the expression he reserves for quarterly projections that don't add up. "Want to tell me why the CEO of a two-billion-dollar firm is displaying crayon art?"
I take a long drink instead of answering. The beer is, predictably, terrible. Colin waits—he's always been better at silence than I am, which is irritating in a CFO and worse in a friend.
"I hired Annie Murphy," I say, and his eyebrows climb halfway up his forehead. He knows the name—I talked about my Wharton rival enough during the early years that he once told me it sounded less like competition and more like a condition.
"Annie Murphy." He repeats it slowly. "The one who dismantled your thesis in Porter's seminar and you talked about it for three months."
He stares at me across the rim of his glass while I try to salvage my dignity. "Two weeks—fine, a month—but she was wrong about the EBITDA margin."
"What's she doing at Meridian?" He tears a pretzel apart, examining it with the skepticism it deserves. "She's not exactly junior assistant material."
"She's been married to Jake Reed for five years, and now she's suddenly here." I let that sit between us. "Showed up applying for entry-level, no work history, Wharton degree gathering dust."
Colin stops chewing. He knows what I know about Reed Capital—the strategic fingerprints I've been tracing for years, the brilliance behind Jake's best moves that never matched the man. "You think she was the ghost."
"I think that I have no proof, only a hunch." My thumb traces the condensation on the glass. "And now she's formatting reports in a cubicle."
"Why didn't you push?" he asks, because he's known me long enough to recognize restraint as a warning sign.
"Because she flinched when I said Jake's name." My fingers tighten around the pint. "Whatever happened in that marriage, she's running from it—and pushing means losing her before I understand the picture."
Colin nods slowly, turning a pretzel piece over in his fingers. "Okay—so that explains the weird. What explains the dragon-cat?"
The bar noise swells around us—pool table argument, glasses clinking, a bad song playing too loud. I drain half my beer before I can make myself say it.
"Jake's been plastering that kid across every press photo for years—magazine covers, investor galas, the devoted-father act." My jaw works around the next part. "I've looked at those photos more than I should admit, and the girl doesn't look like him, Colin."
His glass stops midway to his mouth, and the pretzel joke dies somewhere behind his teeth. "Who does she look like?"
I don't answer, and the silence stretches long enough to become its own kind of confession. The humor drains out of Colin's expression one slow degree at a time.
"Theo—how sure are you?" His voice drops below the bar noise, and neither of us is reaching for pints anymore.
"I was three feet from her on Friday—same hair, same eyes, same jaw." I stare at the scarred wood of the table. "She looked at me and I saw my own baby pictures staring back. I asked Annie right then and there, but she didn’t reply. Just—balked, said ‘see you Monday’, and left without looking back."
Colin sets the pretzel down carefully, like it might detonate. "What are you going to do?"
"I have no idea." The admission tastes worse than the beer. "Annie's terrified—every careful answer, every flinch she tries to hide—and if I push now, she disappears."
"Have you told Caroline?" He leans forward, and every muscle in my back tightens against the booth.
I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself and not lash out at my subordinate (wouldn’t want to risk an HR call) while he’s asking perfectly valid questions. I do need to tell Caroline. However, that’s not at the top of my priorities for now.
"We're not talking about that." The words come out clipped, final—a conversation ending in five syllables.
Colin holds both hands up, palms out—but his eyes don't retreat. They hold mine, saying everything his mouth is smart enough not to. I finish my beer in silence, and he lets me have it.
* * *
Monday morning. Conference room B, eight AM, blinds drawn. I pull up a strategy deck and Annie walks in carrying coffee like a shield—both hands wrapped, eyes scanning for exits.
She sits across from me and I make the mistake of noticing her. One curl has escaped near her jaw, tracing the line of her neck—and my brain, which should be on European distribution, has other priorities entirely.
"Page fourteen—the growth thesis." I turn the monitor toward her. "Tell me what's wrong with it."
"What makes you think something's wrong?" Both hands tighten around the mug—the same careful posture she's worn since day one.
"Because I watched you during the divisional review—biting the inside of your cheek through the entire Europe section." I lean back. "Same tell you had at Wharton when someone's math was wrong."
Her lips part—a fraction, involuntary—and my gaze drops to her mouth before I can stop it. I redirect to the screen with the discipline that deserves a commendation.
"Your Germany timeline assumes BaFin compliance in eleven months." She sets the coffee down, voice shifting—lower, faster, qualifiers gone. "Average for foreign firms since the 2024 directive is nineteen—your rollout is built on a deadline you'll miss by two quarters."
"And if we restructure the sequencing?" I'm less interested in the answer than in watching her posture change—shoulders dropping, the careful smallness burning off.
"Lead with Austria and the Netherlands, where regulatory burden is lighter, use early revenue to fund the German entry." She pulls the laptop toward her, sleeve riding up over the inside of her wrist. "But your Zurich warehousing model collapses—it's priced for German volume from month four."
"So the margin structure is fiction." I push because every time I do she gives me more of the real Annie.
"Optimistic to the point of fiction—there's a difference." She looks up and our eyes catch—one beat too long, close enough to see the exact green of her irises. "Reprice the first eighteen months as a loss leader or the board kills it."
"Be blunter." My voice drops without permission, and something behind her expression shifts before the wall slides back. "It suits you better."
Her breath catches—barely, a quarter-second hitch—then she stands. "Revised projections by end of day."
No gratitude, no deference. She's at the door when I call after her. "Annie—stop delivering your best ideas like you're sorry for having them."
She stops, one hand on the frame, half-turned. "Stop testing me with decks you already know the answer to."
The door closes. I sit alone staring at slides she gutted in eight minutes that people I pay four times more missed. Down the hall, a dragon-cat is pinned to my desk lamp, and Caroline's name glows unanswered on my phone.