"Yeah."
Nancy exhaled hard, and for a second, neither of them said anything. Then, in a voice that had gone flat and business-like, the sound of a woman already moving into action, she said, "Stay where you are. I'm coming to get you. We are not missing this gala tonight."
"I wasn't planning on it," Joshua said.
He hung up and looked out through the terminal window at the tarmac, at his old flight already backing away from the gate, carrying Venus Holstead toward a city where in a few short hours she was going to learn exactly who she'd just humiliated in front of a plane full of witnesses.
He wasn't going to storm into that gala and announce it in anger. He wasn't going to raise his voice, point a finger, or demand an apology. He didn't need to. All he had to do was walk in, take the stage, and let the truth do what humiliation alone never could.
He picked his bag back up off the floor, and headed for the exit doors, calm as ever, already thinking three steps ahead the way he always did.
Nancy Dio was already waiting at the curb when Joshua pushed through the terminal doors, her car idling in the loading zone with its hazard lights blinking. She leaned across and pushed the passenger door open before he even reached it.
"Get in," she said. "Tell me everything on the way."
"Wait, she said it."
Joshua slid into the seat and shut the door. Nancy pulled out into traffic fast. The kind of driving that said she'd already decided they didn't have time to waste. "Start from the beginning," she said. "Every detail."
So he did. He told her about sitting down in 2A, about Venus walking through the curtain and looking at him like he was something spilled on the carpet. He told her about the boarding pass, about the flight attendant's nervous smile, about Venus's voice climbing louder and louder until half the cabin was watching. He told her what Venus said: "I don't care what the ticket shows."
And Nancy's knuckles went a little whiter on the wheel. "She didn't even check your ticket first," Nancy said. "It wasn't a question."
"Not once."
"Of course she didn't." Nancy shook her head, eyes on the road. "That's not how people like her operate. They don't check. They just decide. And then they expect the world to rearrange itself around what they've decided."
"Remind me why I let you talk me into flying commercial for this," Joshua muttered half to himself. "I own a company that owns a jet."
"Because that was the whole point," Nancy said. "You wanted to walk into Holstead Beauty Group as a stranger, not as a headline. If Ridgeline's plane lands at a private terminal 3 hours before your own acquisition announcement, someone snaps a photo and the surprise is gone before you've said a word. Flying commercial, sitting in a regular seat, showing up like anybody else. That was your idea, not mine. You wanted to see how this company treats people who don't look like money."
Joshua exhaled, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders. "Well, I got my answer."
"You got more than an answer," Nancy said. "You got proof."
Joshua looked out the window at the city sliding past, still turning the whole thing over in his mind. "She's going to be at the gala tonight. She's the host of the gala tonight," Nancy said. "Or she thinks she is."
That settled between them for a moment, heavy and satisfying all at once. Nancy merged onto the highway, checking the dashboard clock. "We're cutting it close. The board wants to make the announcement right at the top of the evening before the shareholders get too deep into their champagne."
"Good," Joshua said. "I don't want to give her time to relax."
Nancy glanced sideways at him. "You know this changes everything, right? The moment you walk into that room, there's no going back to being quiet about this. Three months of keeping Ridgeline's stake under wraps. Gone in one announcement. I know you built this whole plan around watching Holstead Beauty Group from the ground up before anyone knew who you were. Sitting in meetings nobody thought mattered. Reading reports nobody thought you'd actually read." Nancy's voice had an edge of disbelief in it now, like she still couldn't quite believe the timing. "And the one time you finally step into the light, it's because the CEO had you thrown off a plane."
"Some things you can't plan for," Joshua said.
Nancy almost laughed, but it came out tighter than that, more like disbelief chased by anger. "51%, Joshua. You own more of that company than her whole family combined, and she just had you dragged off in front of 40 strangers because she didn't like the way you looked sitting in her section."
Joshua didn't answer right away. He was thinking about the phrase Nancy had used weeks ago back when they were still finalizing the paperwork on the acquisition. Something about the company's bylaws that had barely registered with him at the time. "Remind me of something," he said. "That supermajority rule, the 2/3 thing you mentioned for board actions."
Nancy glanced at him, surprised by the sudden shift. "Any major action, bylaw changes, removing a board member, restructuring control, needs two-thirds of the board to approve it, not just a simple majority. It's an old rule written in when the company first went public, so no single family faction could push through a decision on a slim vote."
"Good to know," Joshua said.