Jerome's shoulders stiffened. "I can do that," he said. Darien thanked him and asked whether he had been asked for identification or accused of threatening anyone. Jerome admitted that neither had happened. Darien gave a small, tired smile. "Then the record should be simple."
Priya called while he waited for a car. "Jenny says Ms. Ashford told her the meeting ended early," she said. "Did she even hear your proposal?" Darien looked back through the glass doors.
Victoria was walking toward the elevators, apparently unaware that the morning had changed the future of her company. "No," he answered. "She wouldn't let me tell her who I was."
Priya was quiet long enough that he knew she understood. "What would you like me to do?" she asked. "Cancel Los Angeles. Book a return flight to New York.
Tell James and Maya we're ending the discussions." Priya hesitated because she knew how much effort had gone into the transaction. "The five hundred million commitment?" Darien watched a hotel employee help an elderly guest into a taxi. "The number doesn't change what happened."
At the office that morning, Jenny received a curt message from Victoria instructing her to remove the investor's information from the schedule. She stared at the name and reopened the original invitation. There was a signed acceptance from Cole Ventures, a link to Darien's official biography, and a summary indicating that he controlled a firm with billions under management. Jenny felt the cold beginning of dread before she even opened a search engine.
She enlarged a photograph from a financial magazine. The man in the picture wore a navy shirt with no tie and stood beside a group of founders at a technology conference. It was unmistakably the man Victoria had just described as an opportunist in a hotel lobby. Jenny clicked another article and found the same face speaking at an investor conference. She wondered whether her employer had read any of the materials she had prepared.
Jenny considered calling Marcus first. She decided that would be wrong, not because she feared him but because Victoria needed to hear the facts directly from the person she had instructed to delete them. Carrying the tablet in both hands, she crossed the executive floor and knocked on the door. Victoria was typing a message to a marketing consultant and did not look up until Jenny spoke the name Darien Cole.
"What about him?" Victoria asked. "Before I remove the appointment, I need you to look at something," Jenny said. She placed the tablet on the desk and rotated it so the photograph filled the screen. "This is the investor who was scheduled to discuss a five-hundred-million-dollar financing package."
Victoria stared at the picture. Her first reaction was not guilt. It was disbelief that the man from the hotel could occupy a prominent place in a serious business magazine. Then she read the name beneath the photograph and recognized the company name, the assets under management, the previous acquisition, and the record of investments. She searched for a second image, a third, and a fourth, as if one of them might somehow identify a different man.