Garrett was warming to the attention now.
“What do you invest with?” he asked. “Food assistance? Or did some little nail salon convince you you’re an entrepreneur?”
The first founder smirked.
The second looked at the floor.
Willa’s chest tightened.
She had been called many things in twenty years of finance.
Aggressive when a white male colleague was described as decisive.
Intimidating when she asked the same questions male partners asked.
A diversity hire when she had already outperformed half the associates in her cohort.
An exception.
A quota.
Lucky.
Difficult.
Articulate, delivered with the faint surprise of someone complimenting a dog for opening a door.
She knew what insult looked like when it put on professional clothes.
“I have an invitation,” Willa said.
Garrett’s lip curled.
“Who knows where you got it?”
Willa looked at him.
There are moments in a person’s life when the body wants to react before the mind permits it.
Her heart accelerated.
Heat moved into her face.
Every private, exhausted memory of being required to prove she belonged arrived at once.
Yet her voice remained quiet.
“If you believe there’s a problem with my credential, you can ask event staff.”
Garrett smiled.
“That’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Willa held his gaze.
He had no idea who he was speaking to.
That fact did not make the insult less painful.
In some ways, it made the moment clearer.
Had Garrett known her title, he would never have behaved this way.
That meant he was not showing her who he was under pressure.
He was showing her who he was when he believed there could be no consequence.
And Willa Townsend had spent too much of her career evaluating founders to ignore information that valuable.
The Pacific Founders Investor Summit was designed to make ambition look elegant.
For nine years, the annual event had gathered venture capitalists, founders, private-equity executives, corporate investors, lawyers, bankers, and technology journalists inside the Meridian Grand Hotel.