Chapter 5. Prepared By Trevor Finch

Trevor’s name was already on Diana’s presentation.

She saw it before she had even taken the chair in Helena’s office on Wednesday morning. A printed cover page lay beside her manager’s laptop: her project title, her opening image, and a line she had never put there.

Prepared by Trevor Finch, Senior Account Manager.

“Why is that on your desk?”

Helena closed the door. “I was going to talk to you.”

“About my work?”

“About Gabriel Valenti.”

Diana sat down, although she suddenly wanted to remain standing. Helena hadn’t asked whether there was anything to Trevor’s message. Someone had already changed the file.

“Trevor tells me you were having dinner with Gabriel Valenti on Monday night.”

“Coffee,” Diana said. “At Sal’s. Trevor was very thorough.”

“Is it personal?”

Diana could have lied. Trevor had no photos. But she had walked out of a wedding on Saturday because she was done playing the roles other people found convenient.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s new, and it’s personal. I didn’t know who he was when we met. I found out on Monday.”

Helena exhaled through her nose. “If we win this contract, the first thing anyone says, in this building or in theirs, will be that we won it in his bed.” Her voice was flat, and to Diana’s surprise, not unkind. “I’ve spent eleven years making sure nobody can say that about this team. I won’t let it start with you.”

Diana could hear the rumor already. She also knew that Trevor’s name on a file would do nothing to stop it. Her work was being taken from her, and she was supposed to be grateful for the discretion.

“So what happens?”

“Trevor presents. You sit in the room in case they have technical questions. The deck goes out under his name.”

Diana’s stomach turned over. “It’s my deck. I built every slide.”

“Diana—”

“And I caught Trevor’s budget error.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“I know what the point is.” She stopped, frustrated because she actually didn’t know what the clean solution was. “Disclose it. Put someone else on their side in charge of scoring us. I don’t know. But giving Trevor my work doesn’t remove the conflict. It just removes me.”

Helena studied her.

Diana wished she had phrased that better.

Unfortunately, there was no taking it back now.

***

Diana fixed the slides anyway, because the work deserved to be right even if her name wasn’t on it.

At ten that night her phone lit up.

Gabriel: I said I’d call. This is me not calling, because it’s late and you have a pitch tomorrow. Sleep well, Diana.

Diana: Technically that’s a text.

Gabriel: Technically you didn’t say no.

She put the phone face down on the pillow and smiled into the dark like an idiot.

She listened for the other voice. Nothing. She tried thinking his name as deliberately as she could, then felt foolish when the only answer was a car outside her window.

Diana: Can you tell what I’m thinking right now?

Gabriel: No.

Diana: Good.

Gabriel: Should I be worried?

Diana: Possibly.

She put the phone beyond her reach. For the first time that day, she fell asleep thinking about something other than Trevor’s name on the cover.

***

Thursday morning, the lobby of Valenti Development was all pale stone and silence. Diana arrived twenty minutes early, because early was the only thing she still controlled.

She was double-checking her notes by the elevators when a man beside her said, “Please tell me you know which of these goes to fourteen.”

He was somewhere past forty, with gray at his temples, a rumpled linen jacket, and a battered leather portfolio under one arm. He was frowning at the elevators as if they had insulted him.

“The left two,” Diana said. “The right ones skip ten through twenty. There’s a whole sign about it.”

He found the sign. “I’m an architect, and I just failed to read a building. Please don’t tell anyone.”

She laughed despite her nerves.

“Theo Marlow. I’m consulting on the façade, so they let me sit in on the interiors pitches and ask annoying questions.” His glance fell on the notes in her hand, on the supplier names circled in red.

“You’ve got Castellane Stone circled. Did they hit you with the spring increase too?”

“About eleven percent.” Diana flipped through her notes. “Ten-point-eight. Sorry. I’ve stared at so many supplier sheets this week they’ve started merging together.”

Theo laughed. “Bryce?”

“Seven, I think.”

She checked again.

“Seven. Yes.”

“Good,” he said.

“What?”

“You check before pretending you remember.”

Diana smiled. “Occupational survival instinct.”

The elevator chimed. He held the door for her, and they rode up in comfortable silence.

***

The conference room on fourteen looked out over the river. Kate and Nathan from Valenti’s development team sat at one end of the long table. Theo had taken a seat by the window with his portfolio open. Helena sat beside Trevor, who had printed copies of the deck. The cover read Prepared by Trevor Finch, Senior Account Manager.

Diana took the chair against the wall, where junior people sat when they were there to fetch files.

Trevor began. He was smooth and confident, and he was presenting her slides in her order, using her phrases. He even paused for effect where she had marked pauses in her speaker notes.

Halfway through slide four, the door opened.

Gabriel Valenti walked in. Diana forgot what Trevor was saying. For one stupid second, she thought he had come to find her.

Then Gabriel nodded once to Kate and took the empty chair at the head of the table.

He hadn’t told her.

Monday night, he had sat across from her while she told him exactly what she was pitching on Thursday, and he had never once mentioned that he would be sitting on the other side of the table.

Gabriel folded his hands and watched the screen with an expression of complete, polite indifference.

Diana.

The small pressure returned behind her left ear. She looked at Gabriel’s mouth. It hadn’t moved.

His fingers tightened once against each other. Then he was still again, his eyes on the screen. He gave her nothing she could point to, nothing she could ask him about in front of these people.

Diana lowered her gaze to her notes. Was she going crazy? Well, she wasn’t going to answer a voice in her head while Trevor was being paid to use her voice aloud.

Diana’s shock hardened into anger.

Of course. Apparently stalking her for six months had been information he felt obligated to disclose.

His place on the selection panel had not.

Trevor faltered, then continued.

Diana stared at the side of Gabriel’s face. He still didn’t look at her.

And, infuriatingly, that bothered her almost as much as the fact that he was there.

Trevor reached the budget section and clicked to the corrected stone and glass costs, the numbers Diana had rebuilt on Sunday night.

Kate leaned forward. “Your materials line is about nine percent higher than two other bids we’ve seen. Walk us through why.”

“Of course.” Trevor smiled. “We believe in quality. Our supplier relationships allow us to—”

“No no,” Kate said. “I asked about math.”

Trevor’s eyes flicked to his notes. They didn’t have the answer. Diana had put it in her spreadsheet, and he had never opened the spreadsheet.

“There were adjustments to certain supplier rates,” he said.

Theo looked up. “Which suppliers? And when did their rates change?” His voice was mild and very precise. “If your competitors are using old rates, they’ll be back in six months asking for more money. If you’re padding, I’d like to know that too. Who built this cost model?”

There was a short, terrible silence.

Trevor squared his shoulders. “I did.”

At the head of the table, Gabriel turned toward Diana.

He knew she had built the pitch. She had told him at Sal’s, sitting close enough to reach across the table and touch him. Now he watched her from the other end of a conference room while Trevor took the credit.

For a moment she wanted Gabriel to correct him. The thought embarrassed her. She had been angry with him for keeping his place on the panel a secret, and here she was hoping he would use it for her.

Trevor reached for the remote.

“Actually,” Diana said.

He stopped. Every face turned toward the chair against the wall.

She stood, keeping one hand on its back until she was sure her knees would hold.

“I built the cost model. I have the supplier quotes and the dates the rates changed. I can show you.”

“Diana,” Helena said quietly.

Diana looked at her manager, then at the cover page in front of Kate. Even now, she could sit down. Let Helena explain. Hope someone would put her name back later.

She turned to Kate.

“Before you assess my work, there’s something else you should know.”

Gabriel’s hands went still on the table.

“I spent Saturday night with Mr. Valenti.”