The blue ink from my fountain pen bled slightly into the thick bond paper of the merger draft, leaving a small, dark stain shaped like a bruised finger.
My assistant, Sarah, stood by the corner of the mahogany desk, holding three more folders against her chest.
“The final schedules from Meridian arrived at eight,” she said.
I adjusted my silver wristwatch, pulling the leather strap one notch tighter against my wrist. Inside the folders of older financial disclosures from the preliminary filing, a line item from four years ago caught my eye. It was a charge of fifteen thousand dollars for a diamond bracelet, billed to a joint account I had closed only weeks after my husband walked out.
“Is there an issue with the transition schedule?” Sarah asked.
“No,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Just a ghost in the ledger.”
I closed the folder and handed it back to her. The question of whether we had uncovered every hidden liability in Meridian’s books was still unanswered.
At half past eleven, the lobby of the Meridian Tower was cold, filled with the hum of the heating vents trying to fight the autumn wind off the lake.
Arthur Bennett, the sixty-eight-year-old chairman of the corporation, met me near the security desk. He carried a heavy leather folder and spoke in his slow, gravelly baritone.
“The board is ready for the December twelfth meeting,” Arthur said, tapping his heavy gold pen against his folder as we walked toward the private elevators.
“We need to ensure the transition is seamless before the public announcement,” I said.
“Most of the division heads are aligned,” Arthur said, his voice dropping. “But we have an aggressive vice president in sales who is already lobbying the board for the top job after the merger.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
Arthur stopped near the glass doors of the executive suite, looking out at the gray Chicago skyline.
“Everything is locked in place, Evelyn, but keep your eyes on the sales division,” Arthur said, dodging the name.
His silence on the identity of the vice president left a cold weight in my chest.
