บททั้งหมดของ I Hired My Neighbor to Be My Girlfriend, Then Fell in Love: บทที่ 41 - บทที่ 50

They met with Robert the following morning at the company offices, and Everly could see immediately from his expression that whatever the auditors had raised carried weight beyond a simple procedural question."Explain it to me plainly," Nathaniel said, settling into the chair across from his father's desk with Everly beside him. "What exactly is the concern?"Robert slid a document across the desk, dense with legal language that made Everly's eyes glaze over on first read. "The shareholder agreement from your grandfather's era includes a clause restricting significant equity transfers or personal fund allocations above a certain threshold without unanimous board approval, not just majority consent. It was designed originally to prevent any single family member from unilaterally weakening the company's ownership structure.""And the ethics office funding qualifies as exceeding that threshold?""According to the auditors, yes. Barely, but yes." Robert's expression carried genuine frust

They called Robert immediately, and within the hour, a securities lawyer named David Feldman was seated at their kitchen table, reading through the joint contribution structure with the kind of intense, methodical focus that made Everly's stomach twist tighter with every passing minute of silence, his pen occasionally tapping against the paper as he cross-referenced something in a thick binder of regulations he'd brought with him."Well?" Nathaniel finally asked, unable to bear the wait any longer, his knee bouncing under the table in a way Everly recognized from every previous crisis they'd weathered together."It's not illegal," Feldman said, looking up from his notes. "But it's not entirely clean, either. The structure itself is legitimate; multiple board members contributing personal funds toward an institutional initiative happens regularly, and I've seen similar arrangements pass regulatory scrutiny without issue at other companies. The concern here is disclosure timing. Securit

With the board crisis finally resolved and the ethics office position secured, Everly found herself navigating an unfamiliar problem over the following weeks: figuring out how to work alongside Nathaniel's company without either of them accidentally undermining the careful boundaries they'd established during the hiring process."This is strange," she admitted one evening, reviewing her first assignment from Farrah Whitmore, a review of the company's existing disclosure protocols in light of the recent securities scare. "I keep second-guessing whether I should mention certain details to you, or whether that crosses some line I haven't fully mapped out yet.""What kind of details?" Nathaniel asked, looking up from his own work spread across the kitchen table."Nothing confidential, exactly. Just general observations about how the company handles crisis communication. But I don't want it to look like I'm feeding you insider commentary on office politics through our personal relationship

The uninterrupted calm Everly had hoped for lasted almost two full weeks before wedding planning itself began generating its own peculiar brand of stress, considerably gentler than corporate espionage or hostile press coverage, but exhausting in its own accumulating way."Your mother wants final approval on the flower arrangements by Friday," Everly said, scrolling through yet another lengthy email chain that had ballooned to include seventeen people, none of whom she'd actually invited into the conversation. "She's also cc'd three florists, apparently soliciting competing bids without mentioning it to either of us first.""That sounds like her," Nathaniel said, not looking up from his own laptop. "Do you want me to intervene, or would that undermine whatever ground you've already staked out with her directly?""I think I need to handle this one myself, actually." Everly considered the message for a moment longer before typing a firm but warm reply, thanking Diane for her enthusiasm w

With two weeks remaining before the wedding, Everly found herself swept into the final logistical push, dress fittings, seating chart revisions, and an increasingly urgent stream of vendor confirmations that made the earlier corporate crises feel, oddly, more manageable by comparison."I never thought I'd say this," she told Priya during a final dress fitting, standing on a small platform while a tailor pinned the hem of her gown, "but negotiating with a board of directors was somehow less stressful than confirming the exact shade of ivory for the table linens.""Wait until you're planning your own wedding," Priya said, laughing from her seat nearby, her own engagement ring catching the light as she gestured. "Marcus and I haven't even set a date yet, and I'm already dreading the linen conversations.""At least you have the advantage of watching mine implode first, so you know what to avoid.""Small mercies." Priya's expression turned more thoughtful. "Can I ask you something, actuall