Page 37 of Hostile

Naturally, the only seat left at the table was the one to Wyatt’s right.

I took it without breaking stride, set my portfolio on the table, and smiled at the chairman, with the full radiant setting dialed up. “Good morning, gentlemen. I apologize for keeping you waiting.”

“Not at all, Miss Hale.” The chairman rose to shake my hand—elderly, kind-eyed, the sort of man who had been doing this long enough to find most things mildly amusing. “We’re glad you could join us.”

I didn’t look at Wyatt. But I felt him looking at me.

The meeting proceeded as these things always did—formal, deliberate, the careful language of people discussing large sums of money in polite company. The chairman laid out the current state of the Aldridge Group’s share structure, acknowledged the unnamed investor’s position, which had been quietly growing for weeks, and then turned the floor over to Marcus Webb to walk through the financial implications.

I sat with my hands folded over the portfolio and listened with the focused attention of someone hearing information they already knew, waiting to see how accurately it had been summarized.

Reasonably accurately, as it turned out. Marcus was good.

“Miss Hale.” The chairman turned to me after Marcus finished. “Given the size of your current position, the board felt it was important to open a direct dialogue. We’d like to understand your intentions regarding Aldridge Commercial.”

Every head at the table turned toward me.

Every head except one, which was already turned and had been since I sat down.

“Of course,” I said pleasantly. “My intentions are straightforward. Hale Capital has been building a position in Aldridge Commercial because we believe in the portfolio’s long-term value. We intend to be active, engaged investors.”

Active and engaged was the corporate equivalent of we are inside your house, and we’ve changed the locks, and everyone in the room who knew anything about anything understood that perfectly well.

The chairman nodded slowly. “And the stake in the Charleston development? The disclosure was somewhat… unexpected.”

“Timing is everything in acquisitions,” I smiled. “I’m sure Mr. Aldridge would agree.”

The silence that followed had a very specific texture.

Wyatt broke it. “Miss Hale.” His voice was steady, a detail I noted with a mix of respect and irritation. “Perhaps you and I could step outside for a moment. I think a direct conversation might be more productive than a boardroom discussion.”

I looked at him for the first time since I’d sat down.

He met my gaze with the infuriating calm of a man who had spent the last forty-eight hours deciding exactly how he would handle this and had reached a conclusion I hadn’t anticipated. Which, frankly, was becoming a pattern I needed to address.

“Of course,” I said.

The hallway outside the boardroom was empty, carpeted, and very quiet—the engineered hush of a space meant for serious conversations. Wyatt closed the door behind us and turned to face me, his hands in his pockets, a sign he was thinking rather than acting.

I’d always been able to read that.

Stop reading him, I reminded myself.

“How long have you been planning this?” he asked.

“I answered that question in the conference room yesterday.”

“Six years.” He said it as if he were still turning it over, still finding new surfaces on it. “You were buying pieces of my company for six years before I even took over.”

“Your family’s company,” I corrected. “There’s a difference.”

Something shifted in his jaw. Not anger—something more careful than anger. “Megan⁠—”

“Miss Hale,” I said. “In a professional context.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “You really going to do that?”

“I really am.”