The board meeting was supposed to be routine.
Aurora had attended enough joint sessions with Liam's team to know the texture of routine—the specific productive friction of two legal departments aligning on language, Patricia Hale moving through objections with the efficient precision of someone who had already anticipated them, Liam managing the room with the particular authority of a man who had learned to lead without appearing to push. She knew what routine looked like in this room.
This wasn't that.
She noticed it twenty minutes in.
Reeves had been hostile since the beginning—that was established, expected, a variable she'd factored into every joint session since the alliance was formalized. His objections were usually broad. Structural. The generalized resistance of a board member who had decided the alliance was a liability and was looking for language to prove it.
Today his objections were specific.
