The Vote

Chapter Twelve

The Voss Holdings boardroom at nine in the morning looked nothing like the glass and marble Wren had walked through two days earlier. It looked like a courtroom. Ten board members seated around a long table, expressions ranging from grim to openly hostile, general counsel hovering near the door with a folder thick enough to be a verdict already written.

Wren wasn't allowed inside. Priya had been firm about that the night before — you cannot be in that room, Wren, not today, it hands them exactly the optics they want — so she waited instead in the reception area outside, watching the frosted glass doors and listening to nothing but the low, indistinct rhythm of voices she couldn't make out.

Alaric had left her with one instruction before he went in. Whatever happens in there, don't come in after me. Trust that I know how to fight this.

She trusted him. She hated how much she trusted him, given how little practice she'd had trusting anyone in the last eighteen months.

Forty minutes crawled by. Wren read the same paragraph of Theo's folder six times without absorbing a word of it. When the doors finally opened, it wasn't Alaric who came out first. It was Camille, dressed in the same soft gray she'd worn on television the night before, her expression unreadable as she walked past Wren without a glance, heels sharp against the marble.

Alaric came out a moment later, jaw tight, tie straight, every inch the composed executive Wren had first met in this building. But his eyes found hers immediately, and something in them told her the fight wasn't over yet.

"They didn't suspend me," he said quietly, once they were far enough down the corridor to speak freely. "Not yet. I bought us seventy-two hours to present evidence that clears both of us, or the vote goes forward regardless."

"Seventy-two hours," Wren repeated. "That's not much time to unravel a decade of someone covering her tracks."

"No," Alaric agreed. "It isn't. But it's what I could get them to agree to without Camille having enough support in the room to force an immediate vote." He exhaled, some of the tension leaving his shoulders now that they were alone. "She's good, Wren. I watched her stand in that room and make herself sound like the only reasonable person in it. If I hadn't spent the last week learning exactly what she's capable of, I might have believed her myself."

"What did she say?"

"That I've been unstable since the acquisition. That my judgment can't be trusted where the Ashby family is concerned. That bringing you into my personal life this quickly, this publicly, is proof of exactly the kind of erratic behavior the board should be worried about." His mouth twisted, something bitter underneath it. "She didn't lie about a single detail. She just left out every piece of context that would make any of it make sense."

Wren felt her stomach tighten. "That's the most dangerous kind of lying there is."

"I know," he said. "It's how she's survived this long without anyone catching her."

They were halfway to the elevator, Alaric's hand resting lightly at the small of her back in a gesture that had stopped feeling careful and started feeling automatic, when a voice called out from behind them that made Wren's whole body go still.

"Ms. Ashby. Mr. Voss. Interesting morning, I imagine."

Jonah Pruitt stood near the reception desk, hands in his pockets, wearing the same rumpled, deceptively harmless expression Wren remembered from every encounter she'd ever had with him. Beside him stood a man she didn't recognize, older, sharper-dressed, with the particular impatience of someone whose time was billed by the hour.

"Jonah," Wren said carefully. "This is a private building."

"I have a meeting," Jonah said easily. "With your board's outside counsel, actually, though I imagine that's not a coincidence you're thrilled about." He gestured to the man beside him. "Grant Whitfield. My editor. He wanted to see the building himself before we run anything else."

"Run anything else," Alaric repeated, voice gone flat and dangerous. "Meaning you have more than the photograph."

"I have a lot more than the photograph," Jonah said, and something in his easy tone sharpened into real menace. "I've been digging into your family's shipping company collapse for longer than you'd think, Mr. Voss. Long before Ms. Ashby ever walked into that club. And I found something interesting buried in an old filing that I don't think either of you has seen yet."

Wren's pulse spiked. "What filing?"

Jonah smiled, unhurried, clearly enjoying the moment more than he had any right to. "A confidentiality agreement," he said, "dated four years ago. Between Voss Holdings and Camille Renard. Standard language on the surface, except for one clause that isn't standard at all — a clause that pays her a very specific, very generous severance in the event her employment ever ends under circumstances involving, and I'm quoting here, matters predating her current role."

The blood drained from Wren's face. She looked at Alaric, whose expression had gone carefully, dangerously blank.

"You already knew," Wren said slowly, understanding hitting her like a physical blow. "Four years ago. You already suspected Camille was involved in the merger collapse, and instead of exposing her, you bought her silence with a contract."

"That's not—" Alaric started.

"Isn't it?" Jonah cut in, delighted. "Because that's exactly how it reads to me, and I'd imagine it's exactly how it's going to read to everyone else once this goes to print. Not a billionaire betrayed by his own executive. A billionaire who knew what she'd done for four years and decided keeping her secret was more useful than telling the truth."

He shrugged, already turning to walk toward his editor. "I'll give you both the professional courtesy of a comment request before we run it. Say, twenty-four hours?"

He walked away before either of them could answer, Grant Whitfield trailing behind him with a look of grim satisfaction, and Wren stood frozen in the middle of the corridor, staring at the man beside her with a question she wasn't sure she wanted answered.

"Is it true?" she asked quietly. "Did you know? Before any of this? Before me?"

Alaric didn't answer right away, and in the silence that followed, Wren felt something far more dangerous than anger settle into her chest — the cold, familiar creep of doubt she'd spent the last week trying to convince herself she'd finally outrun.