Page 49 of The CEO’s Assistant

"I'm restructuring instead. Remy, and Veronica Kepling, and Lauren Pike will take over."

"Cordelia, your daughter's twenty-eight."

"She won't be doing it on her own."

"And what about you? What will you do?"

"I'll take the board chair and get out of their way. There's a break fee, and I intend to trigger it. Etta will have your counsel on the phone first thing tomorrow, and whatever the number is, I'll pay it and I won't argue."

"You'll argue."

"I won't."

"Then you mean it," Jo said, "because I have watched you argue about a hundred and forty thousand dollars for six weeks."

"I remember."

"You won, is the part you're leaving out." Jo's chair creaked. "It isn't the money."

"I know it isn't."

"I have to stand up on Thursday in front of eleven people and tell them that the thing I've had two of my best women on since October has finished. And they'll want a reason." She paused. “She changed her mind is going to sound to them like I lost you."

"You didn't lose me."

"I know that. But they won't see it that way." The chair again. "So give me the reason and I'll decide how much of it to share."

Cordelia had had four days to find a sentence for it, but she still struggled to find her words in the moment. After a while, she eventually said, "I don't want to leave."

Jo waited for the rest of it.

"That's the reason," Cordelia said. "That's all of it."

"That won't hold up on Thursday’s meeting."

"No. I don't suppose it will."

Jo went quiet for long enough that Cordelia turned her chair toward the window. The harbor had gone flat and white in the six o'clock light, and one of the tour boats was coming in low in the water with everyone standing up too early.

"Nine days ago, you were about to be on the front page of the Pacific Ledger."

"They didn't print it."

"Because you spent ten hours on a Sunday making sure they didn't so you didn’t have to have it retracted. And it came out of my side of the table. Renwick and Sable are my lawyers." Jo said it evenly. "So tell me straight. Is this because you stopped trusting us?"

"No. It has nothing to do with you."

"All right." Another pause. "Then I'll tell you what I think, and you're not going to like it. I've been at this as long as you have. Four women have walked away from a signed deal on me, and three of them did it within two weeks of something going wrong." There was no edge in Jo's voice at all, which was worse. "Every one of them called it having a moment of clarity. Two of them came back before the year was out wanting the same terms and didn't get them."

"Jo—"

"I'm not saying you're one of them. I'm saying I can't see it from here, and I don't think you can either."

Cordelia didn't answer, because she wasn't sure Jo was wrong. Four days ago, she had been intent on selling the firm. What had happened since was Astoria letting herself into the kitchen and asking what she wanted, and Cordelia telling her she didn't know yet. There was no version of that she could say into a phone, though.

"Thursday's going to be unpleasant," she said. "I'm sorry about that."

"You're not, particularly."