"Then what is it about?"
Mason lowered his voice even further. "That man, Joshua Archer, do you know where he was 6 hours ago?"
Venus blinked, thrown by the question. "What are you talking about?"
"He was on a plane," Mason said. "The plane you were on. The one you had him removed from."
The color that had already drained from Venus's face somehow drained further. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
"You didn't just embarrass some passenger today," Mason said, quiet and flat. "You had security remove the majority owner of your company from a first class cabin in front of dozens of witnesses hours before he walked into that ballroom and announced it to your entire board. You didn't just embarrass a stranger, Venus. You humiliated the most powerful man in this company. Publicly, on camera, probably knowing how many phones were out."
"I didn't know who he was," Venus said, her voice climbing, defensive now. "How was I supposed to know?"
"It doesn't matter if you knew," Mason said. "It matters what he knows now. It matters what the board thinks when this story gets out. It matters what happens to this company, to your position in it, if the man who just took majority control decides he wants payback for how you treated him."
Venus pressed a hand to her forehead, her carefully composed evening unraveling thread by thread. "We fix this. We fix this right now, Preston. Tonight, I want an apology drafted. I want—"
"No." Mason's voice was firm enough to stop her cold. "No apology. Not yet. Not until we understand exactly what we're dealing with."
"Then what do we do?"
Mason glanced back toward the ballroom one more time, where the murmur of the crowd was still audible even through the closed doors, still buzzing with the shock of what they just witnessed. When he looked back at Venus, something in his expression had settled into something colder, more calculating.
"You let me handle this," he said. "This is exactly what I'm here for."
"Handle it how?"
"There's more at stake here than your pride, Venus." The words came out fast, almost slipping past him before he caught them. He recovered quickly, smoothing his tone back into something reassuring. "I mean, there's the company's stability, the shareholders. If this turns into a public fight between you and Archer, it could destabilize everything your grandfather built. I'm not going to let that happen."
Venus searched his face, too rattled to notice the flicker of something else behind his eyes. Something that had nothing to do with protecting her family's legacy and everything to do with protecting himself. "How can you possibly undo what just happened in there?"
Mason allowed himself the smallest, calmest smile, the kind that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You let me worry about the paperwork," he said. "That's what I'm for."
Venus wanted to press him further. Wanted specifics, a plan, something solid to hold on to. But exhaustion and humiliation were pulling at her now, and Mason's confidence, however hollow it might have been, was the only steady thing in the room.
"Fine," she said finally, quietly. "Fix it."
"I will," Mason said. "By morning, you'll have options."
He turned and walked back toward the ballroom, already pulling his phone from his pocket, already dialing someone Venus didn't recognize. She stood alone in the hallway a moment longer, staring at the closed doors behind which her entire company had just changed hands, with no idea that the man she'd just trusted to fix everything was about to make things far, far worse.
Morning light cut through the blinds of Preston Mason's office, striping the carpet in thin gold lines. Venus sat across from his desk, a cup of coffee going cold in her hands, dark circles under her eyes from a night she'd spent mostly awake, replaying the ballroom over and over in her mind.
"Tell me you have something," she said.
Mason slid a folder across the desk toward her. "I have something better than something."
Venus opened it. Inside was a printout, a short profile on a man named Walker Gallon, 78 years old, the previous minority shareholder of Holstead Beauty Group. Attached to it was a summary of the stock sale, dated 3 months earlier, transferring his shares to Ridgeline Capital.
"He sold fast," Mason said, tapping the page. "Look at the timeline. Gallon held that stake for over a decade, barely touched it, and then suddenly, in the space of three weeks, he sells the entire thing to a fund most people have never heard of."