Page 82 of Conspiracies and Chemistry

And that was exactly what we did. Oliver and I sat at the table where people sometimes playedSettlers of Catanand reached out to every contact we had, trying to rescue the project.

Half an hour later, my phone buzzed. I didn’t have to look to know what it meant. “It’s time for my weekly meeting with Maya. Come with me. She’s pissed, but we’ll show her we’re professionals. That we have ideas to fix this. We’ll figure it out together.”

I didn’t think it was possible for him to get paler, but he managed it. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you need a snack?”

“I think we should devise a more concrete strategy before we take this to Dr. Perrell,” he said. “Otherwise?—”

“Who founded this company? You or her?”

“I did. Well, Simon and I did.”

“Don’t give away your power. I wish someone had told me that when I was your age.” I squeezed his hand, then released it. “Come on.”

Upstairs in Maya’s office, she greeted us with a furrowed brow. “I didn’t realize we were meeting with Oliver today. Or do you two go everywhere together now?”

Okay.She was still pissed. I shut the door. “We’ve encountered a complication with the clinical trials and wanted you to be aware.”

“A complication?” Her eyebrows rose.

I sat in the chair on the other side of her desk and waited for Oliver to take his seat beside me. “The clinical trial ran into a snag, but we have a solution. You’re the expert, Oliver. Why don’t you tell her what happened?”

Haltingly, he explained the mix-up with the samples. Maya immediately understood the implications, and she scowled. Her intelligent eyes went unfocused, like she was calculating whether this year’s bonus would cover her daughters’ weddings. And I regretted that it might not, even if we did our best.

“But we have a solution,” I said. I told her about the Indian supplier we’d reached out to. They could ship us samples that would allow us to complete the trial.

“Unfortunately,” Oliver said, “it’s possible they’ll be delayed in customs for up to a week, maybe longer if we’re unlucky, so we won’t meet our end-of-month goal.” He watched Maya’s expression. It went from angry to resigned.

“It’ll be close enough,” I added.

Maya’s jaw tightened. “There’s no such thing as ‘close enough.’ This will delay the regulatory approvals, which, as you know, are public information. Greenwich will find out.”

“Greenwich?” I repeated. “Greenwich Biomedical? Why the hell do we care about them?”

“The company will be worth less to them if we don’t have a product on track to release to the market.”

My heart stopped, then skipped. “Worth…less? What are you talking about?” I glanced at Oliver. He sucked in a breath and grasped my hand, despite our boss’s judgmental gaze.

“We’re in talks for a merger with Greenwich,” she said. “The board is very enthusiastic about the potential return on investment, but we need the ovarian cancer test to be on track for approvals to maximize the company’s value.”

I knew what all those words meant, but together, they didn’t make sense. “You’re selling the company?” When the CEO didn’t deny it, I turned to Oliver. “Did you know this?”

“I did.” He stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “But I thought we could avoid it.”

I ripped my hand away. Of course he knew. He’d get a significant payout for his founder’s shares.

“You’ve been sleeping together,” Maya said, leaning forward, “and he didn’t tell you?”

“You made me promise not to!” he yelped.

Ice washed through me.

“Tessa.” He turned pleading eyes on me. “I wanted to, but?—”

“Shit!” I rocketed to my feet. How had I let this happenagain? How had I not seen what was happening? “Shit!”

“Calm down, Tessa,” Maya said. “It’s simply business. You’ll get your equity share as outlined in your contract.”

“Fuck my contract.” My blood turned to lava, and my face burned with it. “And fuck you.”

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