Chapter 4
The ambient noise of the gala seemed to recede, leaving a tight pocket of suffocating pressure. A dozen nearby executives lowered their voices, their ears tuned to the imminent bloodbath.
Eamon didn't flinch. His expression remained a mask of imperious disdain. "Julian, if you listened to every whisper Arthur leaked into the ear of the *Wall Street Journal*, you’d have sold your fleet to the Saudis three years ago."
"It wasn't a whisper, Eamon," Sterling purred, taking a slow sip of his champagne. "It was a four-hundred-page deck that Miss Vance so graciously distributed. Tell me, my dear—did you finally figure out which column you transposed? Or did your alma mater forget to teach basic linear regression?"
The insult was designed to humiliate, to draw a defensive stammer from the junior employee and shatter the façade of unity.
Naomi felt the muscles in Eamon’s shoulder tense beneath his jacket. His fingers on her waist shifted, ready to step forward and crush Sterling with the full weight of his institutional authority.
She didn't let him.
Instead, Naomi tilted her head, her gaze wide, innocent, and deliberately hesitant. She took half a step forward, just clear of Eamon’s shoulder, looking up at Sterling with the deferential nervousness of an amateur.
"I didn't transpose a column, Mr. Sterling," she said, her voice soft enough that both men had to lean in slightly to hear her over the chamber orchestra. "The regression model on page eighty-nine was calculating against the European maritime fuel derivatives, not the domestic fleet."
Sterling frowned, his smug smile faltering. "Fuel derivatives? That’s irrelevant to the terminal value."
"Only if you assume the European Union’s maritime carbon tax stays grandfathered through the fourth quarter," Naomi replied softly, letting her eyes drop to her champagne glass as if embarrassed to correct a titan. "If the Strasbourg committee closes the exemption next month—as the preliminary regulatory memo suggested on Tuesday—Vane’s Antwerp logistics hub loses twenty-two percent of its operating margin overnight. My model didn't drop forty million into a void, Mr. Sterling. It pre-discounted the liability to protect Sutton Capital’s downside."
Silence descended on the small circle.
Julian Vane turned pale. His throat bobbed. He knew about the Strasbourg memo; it was the dirty little secret his board had tried to bury until after the acquisition closed.
Sterling’s champagne glass paused halfway to his mouth. He looked at Naomi not as a humiliated subordinate, but as a snake that had just struck from beneath a flower.
Behind her, Naomi felt the sudden, profound stillness of Eamon Sutton.
He had not fed her that line. In fact, in the original proposal he had shredded twenty-four hours earlier, the fuel derivative schedule had been buried inside Appendix C—the very appendix he had discarded as irrelevant junk.
Before Sterling could muster a counter, Eamon stepped into the vacuum Naomi had cracked open.
His hand slid from her waist to her elbow, pulling her firmly back against his side in an unmistakable gesture of dominance and unity. The cold arrogance in his hazel eyes was blinding.
"Did you really believe I would bring an unvetted valuation to my own board, Arthur?" Eamon said, his voice dropping into that smooth, lethal cadence that signaled the end of an argument. "Miss Vance was stress-testing Julian’s balance sheet under my explicit instructions. If you had spent less time looking for a reason to challenge my chairmanship and more time reading the footnotes, you wouldn't have walked into this room so completely exposed."
Eamon looked down at Julian Vane, his eyes narrowing into slits. "Tomorrow at two, Julian. The Carlyle, private salon three. Bring your chief financial officer and your maritime regulatory filings. We are recalculating the tender price. And you will take the discount, or I will let Arthur buy your rotting fleet on the open market."
Without waiting for an answer, Eamon turned, his arm firmly tucked through Naomi’s, and steered her through the crowd toward the grand staircase.
He didn't speak as they descended the marble steps. He didn't speak as they crossed the museum lobby, ignoring the flashbulbs of society photographers gathered outside the glass doors. He didn't speak until they were sealed inside the soundproof, leather-lined interior of his Maybach, gliding silently into the dark expanse of Fifth Avenue.
The partition between the passenger cabin and the chauffeur was raised. The only illumination came from the amber glow of the city streaking across the tinted glass.
Eamon reached up, unbuttoned his collar, and yanked his bowtie loose with a violent, controlled movement. He turned to face her, his hazel eyes burning through the shadows.
"The Strasbourg regulatory memo," he said, his voice dangerously low. "When did you read it?"
Naomi smoothed the midnight silk over her knees, keeping her breath shallow. "Three weeks ago, Mr. Sutton. In the secondary disclosures Vane filed with the SEC."
"And you buried it in Appendix C." He leaned across the leather seat, closing the space between them until she was entirely enveloped by his scent—sandalwood, rain, and the electric ozone of pure adrenaline. "You let me stand in front of my own executive committee, look at that forty-million-dollar variance, and think you were incompetent."
"I... I didn't think you would overlook it," she whispered, her voice trembling with just enough synthetic guilt to keep the illusion intact. "I thought you would see the derivative hedge immediately. You’re Eamon Sutton. Everyone knows you can read a debt covenant in your sleep."
The flattery was subtle, toxic, and tailored precisely for his ego.
Eamon stared at her. His gaze dropped from her wide, dark eyes to her bare throat, tracing the line of the platinum chain down to the sapphire resting between her collarbones. He was breathing harder than he had all evening.
"You think very highly of my intellect, Miss Vance," he murmured, his voice softening into something raw, rough around the edges, stripped of its corporate armor.
"I think you're the smartest man on Wall Street," she said, looking straight into his eyes, letting the lie sound like a confession of devotion. "That’s why I came to Sutton Capital. I didn't want to work for Arthur Sterling. I wanted to work for you."
Eamon’s eyes flared.
For a terrifying, exhilarating second, Naomi thought he was going to take her face in his hands. His right hand rose from the armrest, hovering inches from the bare curve of her shoulder, his fingers trembling with the violent restraint of a man fighting every impulse he possessed. The space between their lips shrank to a breath.
Then his phone vibrated against his ribs.
A harsh, rhythmic buzz shattered the air.
Eamon froze. The muscle in his jaw ticked. He slowly withdrew his hand, his eyes never leaving hers as he pulled the device from his tuxedo pocket.
He looked at the screen. A cold, sardonic smile touched the corner of his lips.
"Julian Vane’s CFO," Eamon said, his voice instantly sliding back into the chilled composure of a billionaire predator. "He’s asking for the Carlyle meeting to be moved up to noon."
He locked the phone and slid it back into his pocket, turning his gaze out the window toward the glittering monoliths of midtown. But his left hand reached across the leather console, his fingers closing firmly over Naomi’s bare knuckles.
