Page 96 of True Colors

“I know she’s not presenting.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “But why isn’t she here?”

“She was uninvited from the meeting,” Pallavi grits out. From how she’s looking at me, it’s obvious I’m not her favorite person, either.

“She was first removed from presenting,” Dot adds flatly, “and then disinvited from a project review that would not exist without her. And this was done without consulting me, her direct supervisor.”

For a moment, my brain refuses to catch up.

Then it does.

I turn slowly to Erin. “Did you do that?”

She straightens, unbothered. “Let’s talk about it after the meeting.”

I nearly say, “No. We’re talking about this now.”

But the door opens.

My executive assistant steps in, followed by my father, Jacob Grant, and Martin Ericksen, CEO of Novagene.

Hands are shaken. Polite smiles are exchanged.

Dad pulls Dot into a brief hug. “Hannah and I are looking forward to having you and Neil for dinner this weekend.”

“Us, too,” Dot replies.

My father takes his seat at the head of the table, and Martin settles beside him, fingers steepled.

I should feel energized. This is the moment I’ve been training for—the six-month inflection point, the proof that I belong here.

Instead, I am off-balance.

I realize, with a jolt, how much I’ve relied on Anouk’s steady presence throughout this project. Her quiet competence. Her certainty.

I push those thoughts aside. She isn’t here. Period.

I stand. “Thank you for coming, Martin. Dad. We’re excited to walk you through the Novagene project and where we are.”

My father smiles. “We’re looking forward to it.”

The room narrows. I force myself into focus.

Erin begins.

The slides are Anouk’s—clean, elegant, deceptively simple. Every chart is doing the heavy lifting. Every assumption has been documented.

But Erin talks to them like she’s reading a language she learned phonetically. Essentially, she’s just reading whatever is on the slide, not telling the story as Anouk does.

My jaw tightens.

She’s not prepared.

She said she was, and she usually is—but not today.

The audience understands data. They’re not here for buzzwords. They’re here to interrogate the model.

“She’s not stuttering, though,” a traitorous part of my brain offers. “That’s a plus, right?”

Fuck!