For one full second he didn’t understand what he was seeing. That was the most human he had looked in months. Confused, sleep-deprived, still arranging the world around his assumptions and finding it slow to obey. Then his eyes fixed on me and all the blood drained out of his face.
“Elle?” he said.
I did not answer that name.
Maris did. “Mr. Collins,” she said in a tone so neutral it bordered on surgical, “this emergency meeting was called by Ms. Eleanor Hart Vale, controlling principal of Hart Vale Holdings and majority owner of Vertex Dynamics.”
Ryan laughed.
Not because he found anything funny. Because disbelief was the only bridge his mind could build fast enough. He looked around the room for someone to correct the joke, someone to lean back and say relax, she’s emotional, this is a misunderstanding. No one moved.
He turned back to me slowly.
“What the hell is this?” he asked.
I opened the folder.
“This,” I said, “is the first morning of your real career review.”