Page 17 of His Secret Merger

Only this time, the stakes were higher. Vérité wasn’t just my reputation—it was my last shot at something that looked like legacy. Not a flashy exit or another quarterly win. Something thatmattered. Something I hadn’t inherited. Something I believed in.

And I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep the cracks from showing. I waited until the second drink arrived before I said anything.

Not because I needed liquid courage—I wasn’t that far gone yet—but because the silence between us had started to stretch.Anthony was too sharp not to notice the cracks forming beneath the surface. And I knew if I didn’t say it now, I’d spin another performance, deflect again, and walk out of here pretending I still had the upper hand.

I leaned back in my chair, angled just enough so I didn’t have to look directly at him.

“It’s done,” I said quietly.

Anthony glanced up from his drink. “What is?”

“The Cut of Her Jib. It’s bankrupt. The filings are already in motion.”

He stilled—not visibly, not dramatically—but the kind of pause that told me he understood exactly what I wasn’t saying.

“The investors are out,” I went on. “Margins collapsed six months ago. I tried to pivot—added a new production line, went heavier on direct-to-consumer—but it didn’t move the needle. Inventory choked the warehouse. The fragrance line flatlined. Nobody wants silk scarves right now, apparently.”

Anthony didn’t speak. Just let the silence do the cutting.

“I’m trying to keep it quiet,” I said. “The press hasn’t picked up on it yet. But it’s coming. And when it does…”

“It’ll bleed,” he finished for me. “Into Vérité.”

I nodded once. “I’m doing everything I can to firewall the foundation, but optics don’t care about intention. One bad headline, and donors start backing away like they smell smoke.”

Anthony turned his glass in slow circles on the table. “It’s not just your reputation anymore,” he said. “It’s tied to other people’s work. To history.”

The weight of that hit harder than I expected.

He wasn’t lecturing. He wasn’t even wrong.

He was just reminding me of the one thing I’d tried not to think about: Vérité wasn’t just my clean slate anymore. It was bigger than that now. Bigger than me.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve been watching the board tiptoe around Louisa’s exit like it’s a funeral. They want a replacement yesterday. And I don’t have one.”

“You haven’t even started looking?” he asked, brows drawing together.

“I’ve floated names. But no one feels like the right fit. Not for what we’re doing. Not for restitution. For legacy.”

I didn’t say what I was thinking—that one of the only people who might be the right fit was sipping wine with his wife and probably wearing something short enough to ruin my concentration for the rest of the day.

Juliette.

She had the credentials, the eye, the passion, and the right mix of skepticism and instinct that made her dangerous in the best way.

But the idea of putting her in that role?

I could already see the disaster unfolding—locked office doors, missed meetings, long hours turning into longer nights until we weren’t talking about Kandinsky anymore, we weretesting the desk’s structural integrity.

Hell, I’d already wasted half the morning coming up with reasons to text her. A shipping update from the gallery. Afoundation email she didn’t even need to see. A joke she probably wouldn’t laugh at—so I didn’t send it.

What kind of man got distracted by a woman he wasn’t even trying to impress?

What kind of mancouldn’tstop thinking about her, even in a busy place like this?

A stupid one. A teenager in a tailored shirt.

I shifted in my seat and forced the thought out of my head.

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