Page 5 of Neglected By Her CEO Husband

"Where do you think?" Damon's jaw set in that way I knew too well.

"Brighton?" Brandon asked knowingly.

Sterling Pharmaceuticals had few who could be classed as competitors, but Brighton was among them. And it was now helmed by one of Damon's college rivals. Edmond Brighton, the former lacrosse player who had incidentally asked me out on more than a few occasions. From time to time, I wondered if Damon remembered that. If he cared.

"Somebody's frightened of the launch numbers," Damon muttered, slicing into a piece of his steak. "You don't drop a study like that two weeks out by accident. It's a hit job, plain and simple, and the timing's so obvious it's almost insulting."

"The press won't see it that way."

"The press will see what we tell them to see. The Tribune piece runs Sunday and it'll bury this. I've got a handle on it." He finally drank his water, set the glass down with a click. "Trust me. I've got a handle on it."

Brandon held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded, and the conversation folded itself away as the senator stood to make a toast.

But I'd been married to Damon for eight years. I knew the difference between the voice he used when he believed a thing and the voice he used when he needed to. I've got a handle on it. He'd said it twice. He only ever said things twice when the first time hadn't convinced him either.

I watched my husband lift his glass and smile for the room, golden and certain in the amber light, and beneath the silk and the flowers and the perfect glowing evening I'd built with my own two hands, I felt a quiet dread building.

Damon had been chasing some undefined, ever changing goal from the beginning of our marriage, and even when times were good, his work consumed him. Now that there was actually trouble on the horizon, was he going to drift even further away from me?

3

DAMON

The file wasn't where it should have been.

I'd asked for the phase-three cardiac sub-analysis, the full dataset, not the summary, and what sat on my desk was a forty-page summary with half the appendices missing. I flipped through it twice. The numbers I needed weren't there. The numbers that would let me stand in front of a camera and dismantle that lab's hatchet job line by line simply weren't there.

"Patricia." I didn't shout. I never had to. The intercom carried fine. "The full sub-analysis. Not the summary. I asked for it this morning."

A pause followed that told me everything.

"I—that was what was sent up from R&D, Mr. Sterling. The summary. I can call down and⁠—"

My phone lit up on the desk. A number I didn't recognize, then a second, then a third, stacking like planes circling a runway. The Tribune woman had my cell, which meant somebody had given it to her, which meant the messaging I'd been trying for the better part of a week to control was spreading like wildfire.

The screen flashed again. Bloomberg. I declined it.

"Patricia, come in here."

She came. Mid-forties, cardigan, a coffee ring on the saucer she carried because she always carried coffee even when nobody asked. Eight years she'd sat outside my door. She knew the building's bones, knew which board members took calls before nine and which ones I could ignore until noon. I'd give her that. She knew things.

"The study broke into the financial press overnight," I said. "Bloomberg's calling. The Journal already ran it. The Tribune piece that was supposed to bury this comes out Sunday, which is three days too late, and right now what I need to fight back is sitting in a database that I cannot access because the one document I asked for didn't arrive." I set the summary down flat. "How many of those calls did you screen?"

"I—there were a great many, sir, I've been trying to triage⁠—"

"How many got patched to the floor?"

She didn't answer fast enough.

"Two," she said finally. "Mr. Park in IR took one before I could⁠—"

"So a journalist spoke to someone on my investor relations team about an active crisis without a single approved talking point in front of them." I stood. The window behind me showed the city flat and gray under a sky that hadn't decided whether to rain. "Patricia, I think we're done."

Her face moved through several things before it settled on understanding.

"Mr. Sterling⁠—"

"Clear your desk. HR will handle the package, and it'll be generous, you've earned that much. But I can't run a war from a fort that leaks." I was already looking past her to the doorway, where Adam Park's deputy, a sharp kid named Reese, hovered with a tablet clutched to his chest. "Reese. Come in. Patricia, thank you. Genuinely."