“Not wrong,” he said. “Just not yours.”
She considered that. “Not mine,” she agreed.
There was a quiet moment.
“I have a proposition,” he said. “You don’t have to say yes. I want you to know that sincerely—I’ve thought about this carefully and I’m not presenting it as an obligation.”
“Tell me.”
“Reed Financial has been trying to build a technology investment division for four years. We keep hiring people with the right credentials and the wrong instincts, and the division hasn’t found its direction. I’ve been thinking recently about what it would need.” He paused. “It would need someone who understands both the human side of building a company—the actual operational reality of it, the things that don’t show up in pitch decks—and the financial fundamentals. Someone who has sat on both sides of the table. Someone who knows what it looks like when a company is being held together by the genuine belief of the people inside it, versus when it’s being propped up by optics.”
Emily was quiet.