Chapter 408

[ 1,008 words ]

Delia’s POV

“Thank you for meeting with me,” I said, sitting down across from him without waiting to be invited, the way I had watched Noah do a hundred times over the past week. “I am here on behalf of Vesper Group. We would like to invest in WEG p>

Julian was quiet for a moment, something shifting behind his eyes that I could not immediately read.

“Invest in WEG,” he repeated slowly. “In what aspect p>

I opened my mouth and found, for a long, humiliating second, that I did not actually have an answer ready.

“In the company,” I said finally. “As a partner. A stake in what WEG is building going forward p>

Julian leaned back in his chair, and something about the movement felt more dangerous than if he had simply raised his voice.

“Delia,” he said, “do you understand what WEG actually is p>

“An investment firm,” I said. “One of the largest in the country p>

“WEG does not need outside capital,” Julian said. “We are not a company looking for backing, Delia. We are the ones who provide it. Every year, hundreds of companies come to this building hoping we will decide to invest in them, because our capital is the thing that turns a promising idea into an empire. We are not short of money. We have never once been short of money. The entire premise of what you are asking me sits so far outside how this company functions that I am struggling to understand what Vesper Group actually believed they were offering p>

Heat crawled up my neck, sharp and humiliating.

“I was simply delivering the request,” I said. “I did not draft the proposal p>

“Then whoever drafted it should have understood the basic function of this company before sending you here to represent it,” Julian said. “You have walked into my office and offered WEG something it has no use for, structured as though we were the smaller, hungrier party in this conversation rather than the one holding all the leverage. Do you understand how that sounds, Delia? An unproven company, run by people who will not even attach their names to it publicly, offering to invest in one of the most established firms in this country, as though we were the ones in need of rescue p>

I did not have an answer for that.

“I am declining,” Julian said, sliding the folder back across the desk toward me, untouched. “Not because of anything personal between us, though I imagine that will be the story you tell yourself on the way out. I am declining because the offer itself makes no sense and because it tells me everything I need to know about how little Vesper Group actually understands about the company they are hoping to attach their name to p>

I picked up the folder, my hands trembling slightly despite my best effort to hold them still.

“That will be all,” Julian said, already turning back to whatever had been on his screen before I walked in, dismissing me with a finality that stung far more than I wanted to admit.

I walked out of his office with my spine straight, the same way I had walked out of Noah’s office days earlier, my face carefully arranged into something that gave nothing away, though inside I felt the full weight of exactly how badly I had just embarrassed myself in front of the one man whose opinion of me I had spent years unable to stop caring about.

I did not know how I was going to explain this to Noah.

I only knew that whatever happened next, it was going to be considerably worse than anything Julian Windsor had just said to me across that desk.

I sat in my car in the parking garage beneath WEG headquarters for nearly twenty minutes before I trusted myself enough to drive, replaying the conversation over and over, each time landing on some new detail that made the humiliation sharper than the last. In what aspect. Two words, delivered flatly, that had exposed exactly how little I actually understood about the proposal I had carried into that room with such confidence.

I had built two years of my life around being close enough to men like Julian Windsor to understand their world, or so I had told myself. I had hosted his dinners, attended his galas, and learned the names of his business partners well enough to make polite conversation at every event I had ever stood beside him at. I had believed, somewhere along the way, that proximity had taught me something real about how his world actually functioned.

It had taught me nothing. I understood that now, sitting alone in a parking garage with a rejected proposal folder on the passenger seat beside me.

My phone buzzed. Noah.

I stared at the screen for a long moment before answering, dread already settling into my chest before he had said a single word.

“Well,” Noah said when I finally picked up. “How did it go p>

“He declined,” I said, keeping my voice as level as I could manage.

“Declined how,” Noah said. “Politely. Enthusiastically. Tell me exactly what happened, Delia, because your tone is telling me this went considerably worse than a simple no p>

I closed my eyes.

“He asked in what aspect we wanted to invest,” I said. “I did not have a clear answer. He then explained that WEG does not need outside capital and that they are the ones who provide it, not the ones who receive it. He made it very clearhow the offer sounded, coming from a company nobody has heard of p>

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

“You went into that meeting without understanding the offer you were making,” Noah said finally, his voice carrying something I could not immediately identify, not quite anger, something colder and more assessing than that. “You represented this company without a clear answer to the most obvious question anyone in that position would have asked you p>

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