Chương 7
Adrian closed the door but left the glass walls transparent.
Eve noticed that immediately.
So did he.
“My assistant usually sits outside.”
“That wasn’t what I was thinking.”
“It probably should be.”
She looked at him.
He nodded toward the chair.
“For your sake more than mine.”
Marianne’s warning returned.
The rules will be different for you.
Eve sat.
Adrian took the chair across from her instead of moving behind the desk.
“I need an outside assessment.”
“Of what?”
“Our communications department.”
Eve blinked.
“You have a communications director.”
“I know.”
“She was in the meeting.”
“I also know.”
“I like her.”
“So do I.”
“Then I’m confused.”
“Lena is very good at her job.”
Adrian leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.
“But I think the job we’ve asked her to do may be the problem.”
Eve waited.
He seemed to choose his next words carefully.
“Six months ago, Sterling Capital acquired a controlling interest in a manufacturing company in western Massachusetts.”
“I saw it in the briefing.”
“Westbridge Components.”
Eve nodded.
The acquisition had appeared in three slides of the background materials.
Industrial sensors.
About twelve hundred employees.
A restructuring announcement expected later that year.
Adrian’s jaw tightened slightly.
“Someone inside Westbridge believes we’re preparing to eliminate nearly half the workforce.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Eve watched him.
“How many?”
“We haven’t decided.”
“That sounds different from no.”
“It is.”
She sat back.
Adrian did not appear offended.
That made her more suspicious, not less.
He continued.
“We’re reviewing operations.”
“Which is what companies say before layoffs.”
“Sometimes.”
“And you want better messaging.”
“No.”
His expression hardened.
“I want to know why people inside Westbridge don’t believe us.”
Eve studied him.
“Maybe because you haven’t told them what’s actually happening.”
“That was your argument this morning.”
“It’s still my argument.”
“It’s why you’re here.”
She frowned.
“You could ask Lena.”
“I have.”
“And?”
“She thinks we have an information problem.”
“You disagree.”
“I think we may have a trust problem.”
The phrase landed between them.
Eve looked toward the photographs on the shelf.
One showed Adrian beside an older man on a sailboat.
Another showed a dark-haired woman laughing at something outside the frame.
Eve saw the platinum ring on Adrian’s hand again and looked away.
“What exactly do you want from me?”
“I want you to go to Westbridge.”
She laughed because the request seemed absurd.
Adrian did not.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t employ me.”
“Not yet.”
“My agency hasn’t even won the account.”
“No decision has been made.”
“Then this is highly inappropriate.”
“Probably.”
Eve stared at him.
“That is not reassuring.”
“I’m not trying to reassure you.”
“Apparently that’s another department.”
This time he smiled briefly.
Then it vanished.
“I want someone who will tell me what people are actually saying before the board meets next week.”
“Why not hire investigators?”
“Because employees talk differently when they think someone is investigating them.”
“Why me?”
“You challenged six executives in a room where every incentive told you not to.”
“That could just mean I have poor survival instincts.”
“It might.”
He paused.
“And you didn’t know who I was when you met me.”
Eve felt heat rise in her face.
“So this is because I cried on you?”
“No.”
“Because that would be an insane hiring process.”
“It is because you were honest before you had any reason to think honesty would benefit you.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“That sounds like a dangerous quality in your line of work.”
“It can be.”
His voice changed on the final words.
Something heavier lived underneath them.
Eve remembered his grip tightening at JFK.
She remembered the woman in the photograph.
Before she could stop herself, her eyes dropped to his ring.
Adrian followed her gaze.
This time he did not close his hand.
“My wife died two years ago.”
Eve’s breath caught.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked toward the photograph.
“So am I.”
The answer was almost inaudible.
Then he turned back to her.
“And that is the second reason I asked you here.”
Eve went still.
Outside the glass office, Simon crossed the corridor carrying a stack of folders.
Inside, Adrian’s expression had lost every trace of humor.
“Westbridge was hers.”
Eve stared at him.
For a moment, the sentence refused to fit inside anything she already knew.
“Westbridge was your wife’s company?”
“Her family’s.”
Adrian leaned back, but the movement looked less like relaxation than distance.
“Claire’s father founded it in 1989.”
Eve glanced toward the photograph again.
The woman laughing outside the frame had one hand lifted near her face, a silver bracelet loose around her wrist.
“She worked there?”
“From the time she was twenty-three.”
“What did she do?”
“Everything, according to her.”
A faint smile appeared and disappeared.
“She started in procurement because her father believed being related to him should make her life harder, not easier.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“It was infuriating.”
“You admired him.”
“Sometimes.”
Eve waited.
Adrian looked down at his hands.
“Claire eventually ran operations.”
The platinum ring caught the light.
“She knew the plant better than anyone.”
“And after she died?”
“Her father’s health deteriorated.”
Adrian’s voice had become flatter, more controlled.
“He sold a controlling interest to us last summer.”
“To you personally?”
“To Sterling Capital.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
Something in his expression suggested he had expected her to notice.
Eve shifted in the chair.
“Did he want to sell?”
“He wanted Westbridge to survive.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Adrian looked at her.
“No.”
The office felt quieter.
Eve could hear the faint hum of ventilation and, farther away, someone laughing in the corridor.
“So your father-in-law sold you control of a company he didn’t want to sell because he thought it was the only way to save it.”
“Yes.”
“And now employees think you’re going to dismantle it.”
“Yes.”
“Are they wrong?”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“Not entirely.”
May you like
Eve felt irritation rise again.
“You keep answering questions in installments.”
