“Your name.”
“All of it.”
“Because once I had treated you like you didn’t belong, recognizing you meant admitting what I had done.”
Naomi leaned back.
“That is probably the most accurate thing you’ve said.”
He nodded.
“I thought so.”
Silence.
Then Naomi asked:
“Why are you here?”
He looked surprised.
“To apologize.”
“You could have written.”
“I wanted to look at you.”
“Why?”
“Because I spent my career talking to people differently depending on what they could do for me.”
He swallowed.
“And I’m trying to say something when you no longer have anything I need.”
Naomi almost corrected him.
She still controlled whether his company received hundreds of millions of dollars.
But legally, the revised deal no longer depended on him personally.
His voting influence had been neutralized through the board.
He was selling much of his stake.
Perhaps this was as close as Preston Vale ever came to powerless.
Naomi asked:
“What happens after you leave Whitmore Vale?”
“I don’t know.”
“Retirement?”
“Maybe.”
“You’ll hate it.”
“I know.”
He smiled faintly.
Then:
“Do you forgive me?”
Naomi looked at him for a long time.
“No.”
His face fell slightly.
She continued.
“I also don’t hate you.”
He nodded.
“That’s fair.”
Naomi almost corrected the word again.
Instead she let it go.
Preston stood.
At the door, he turned.
“One thing.”
“Yes?”
“That night, when you canceled the transfer…”
Naomi waited.
“I thought you did it to punish me.”
“I know.”
“When did you actually decide?”
Naomi thought back.
The laugh.
The folder.
Mercer’s hand.
The kick.
The room.
“Before I made the call.”
“How much before?”
“About thirty seconds.”
“What happened?”
Naomi looked at him.
“You shoved me?”
“No.”
“Mercer did.”
“The folder?”
“No.”
Preston frowned.
“What?”
“The junior mechanic.”
“Luis?”
“Yes.”
“He looked afraid to disagree with you.”
Preston stared.
Naomi continued.
“That was when I knew I wasn’t buying the company I thought I was buying.”
Preston absorbed it.
Then nodded slowly.
“The seven hundred seventy million wasn’t lost because I insulted you.”
“No.”
“It was lost because everybody watched.”
Naomi’s voice softened.
“And knew how.”
He left without another word.
The revised closing took place forty-one days after the original.
No champagne.
No crowd.
No executives laughing beneath aircraft wings.