Chapter 6 The Shredded Truth

# Chapter 6: The Shredded Truth

Wynne arrived at Perry Group headquarters at precisely 8 AM, the competitor's offer letter tucked into her bag like contraband. She'd spent a restless night weighing her options, torn between professional advancement and the complicated entanglement she'd developed with Magnus.

His office door stood open, but he wasn't behind his immaculate desk. Instead, she found him by the window, silhouetted against the morning light, his posture uncharacteristically tense.

"Magnus?"

He turned, and Wynne was struck by the shadows beneath his eyes. "Thank you for coming early," he said, gesturing toward the chairs. "Coffee?"

"I'm fine. You wanted to discuss the Tokyo announcement?"

"Yes." He sat across from her, sliding a folder between them. "The board wants to emphasize technological innovation rather than market expansion."

For thirty minutes, they worked through the press strategy with their usual efficiency, the unspoken tension in the room belied by their professional facade. When they finished, Wynne gathered her notes and took a breath.

"I received an offer yesterday," she said, pulling out the letter. "From Archer & Bell. Chief Communications Officer."

Magnus went completely still, his expression unreadable. "I see."

"It's a significant increase in compensation. And a chance to build their communications division from the ground up."

"When would you start?" His voice was carefully neutral.

"They want an answer by Friday. I'd begin next month."

Magnus stood abruptly and walked to the window again, hands clasped behind his back. "Which means our arrangement would end prematurely."

"Yes."

"The contract has provisions for early termination. There would be no financial penalty to you." He spoke as if reciting from a document, not looking at her. "I assume you're planning to accept?"

Wynne studied his rigid posture, searching for some indication of his true reaction. "I'm considering it."

"Of course. It's an excellent opportunity." He turned finally, his business mask firmly in place. "I'll need to inform the board. They'll want to prepare a transition strategy."

"Magnus, I haven't decided yet—"

"It's the logical choice, Wynne." Something flickered briefly behind his composed expression—a flash of something raw before it disappeared. "Your talent deserves recognition beyond what our... arrangement has allowed."

She stood, frustrated by his detachment. "That's it? Just 'logical choice' and 'transition strategy'?"

"What would you prefer I say?" A hint of tension crept into his voice.

"I don't know. Something real, maybe? Something that isn't wrapped in corporate speak?"

"Real?" The word seemed to trigger something in him. "You want reality, Wynne? The reality is that you should take the job. You should walk away from this company, this arrangement, and me. That's the smart decision."

"Why?"

"Because I can't—" He stopped, jaw clenched. "The parameters we established are no longer sustainable."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you should go." He turned away again. "Please close the door on your way out."

Wynne stood frozen, the dismissal hitting like a physical blow. After everything—the chocolates, the roses, the words she'd overheard—he was simply letting her leave?

"Fine," she said finally, anger rising to mask the hurt. "I'll have my decision by Friday. In the meantime, I'm taking a few days off. I've been thinking about opening a bookstore back home. Maybe it's time to explore that option."

She walked out without looking back, missing the way Magnus's hands gripped the windowsill until his knuckles turned white.

---

Three hours later, Lydia's call interrupted Wynne's aggressive apartment cleaning—her typical stress response.

"You need to come back," Lydia said without preamble. "Now."

"I'm taking personal days. Whatever it is can wait."

"It really can't." Lydia's normally composed voice held an edge of panic. "He's... I've never seen him like this."

"What happened?"

"After you left, he canceled all meetings. Locked himself in his office for hours. Then the shouting started."

Wynne's stomach tightened. "Shouting?"

"At the board on a conference call. I couldn't hear everything, but phrases like 'personal autonomy' and 'contractual overreach' featured prominently." Lydia lowered her voice. "Then came the breaking."

"Breaking?"

"Glass. Lots of it. The Nakamura sculpture from Tokyo is definitely in pieces. Security is outside his door, but no one dares go in. The board chairman is on his way from Connecticut, but—"

"I'll be there in twenty minutes," Wynne said, already reaching for her coat.

---

The executive floor was eerily quiet when Wynne stepped off the elevator. A small crowd of assistants and executives hovered near Magnus's office, where two security guards stood uncertainly.

"He's been quiet for the last ten minutes," Lydia reported, hurrying toward her. "But he's still in there."

Wynne approached the door, waving off the security team. "Let me handle this."

"Ms. Valdez, he explicitly said no interruptions," one guard began.

"I'm not an interruption," she replied, knocking firmly. "Magnus? It's Wynne. I'm coming in."

She didn't wait for permission before opening the door and stepping inside, closing it quickly behind her.

The office looked like a war zone. The glass coffee table lay shattered, papers scattered across the floor. The prized sculpture—a gift from their Japanese partners—lay in fragments near the wall. A bookshelf had been upended, leather-bound volumes splayed open like wounded birds.

Magnus stood behind his desk, knuckles bleeding slightly, his perfect suit rumpled and his tie discarded. He looked up, surprise replacing anger when he saw her.

"You shouldn't be here," he said, voice rough.

"Apparently I should." Wynne surveyed the destruction. "What happened?"

"Board politics. Nothing that concerns you."

"The office destruction suggests otherwise." She moved closer, careful to avoid the glass. "Talk to me, Magnus."

"Why? So you can include it in your transition notes for your replacement?" Bitterness laced his words.

"That's unfair."

"Is it?" He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. "You're leaving. You've made your decision."

"I told you I was still considering—"

"Don't." He cut her off sharply. "Don't pretend this is a difficult choice. We both know what makes sense."

Wynne's patience snapped. "Stop telling me what I know! You've spent months sending mixed signals—professional distance one moment, personal gestures the next. Ninety-nine paper roses, Magnus? Practicing speeches in stairwells? What am I supposed to make of that?"

He stared at her, color draining from his face. "You heard me. In the stairwell."

"Yes."

"Then you know." He looked away. "You know why you should leave."

Before she could respond, a knock interrupted them. "Mr. Perry?" Lydia called through the door. "The board chairman has arrived. He's insisting on seeing you immediately."

"Tell him ten minutes," Magnus replied, not taking his eyes off Wynne.

"And there's... someone else here. Mrs. Chen from evening cleaning staff? She says it's urgent."

Magnus frowned. "Send her in."

The door opened to reveal an elderly woman clutching a plastic bag, looking terrified to be entering the CEO's domain, especially in its current state.

"I'm so sorry to disturb you," she said, bowing slightly. "But I made a terrible mistake last night."

"What mistake, Mrs. Chen?" Wynne asked gently.

The woman held out the plastic bag. "I was emptying the shredder bin in your office, Mr. Perry, and I accidentally mixed the contents with some important papers. I took everything home to sort it out, and then I realized..." She trailed off, looking increasingly nervous.

"Realized what?" Magnus prompted.

"The shredded papers seemed important. They had your handwriting, sir. I—I tried to put them back together." She pulled out several sheets of paper from the bag, crudely taped together like puzzles. "My grandson helped. He's good at puzzles."

Wynne took the reconstructed pages, scanning their contents. Her breath caught as she realized what she was holding—a meticulously detailed proposal plan. Version 99, according to the header. Not a business proposal, but a marriage proposal. To her.

The document included location options (ranked by significance to their relationship), timing considerations (statistical analysis of optimal proposal moments), and even weather contingency plans. But what made her hands tremble was the personal section—pages of handwritten notes about why he had fallen in love with her, specific moments when he had realized his feelings, fears about her reaction.

She looked up to find Magnus watching her, all pretense gone from his expression.

"Thank you, Mrs. Chen," he said quietly, not taking his eyes from Wynne's face. "You can go now."

After the cleaning woman left, silence filled the destroyed office.

"Version 99," Wynne finally said, her voice unsteady.

"I've been working on it for months," he admitted. "It's never quite right."

"This isn't in the contract."

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Quite the opposite. It explicitly violates Clause 13."

"The heart-shaped notes in your trash..."

"Discarded drafts." He moved around the desk toward her. "I've never done this before—allowed myself to feel this way. I don't have the right vocabulary for it."

Wynne held up the pieced-together papers. "This seems pretty eloquent to me."

"It's still not perfect." His voice softened. "Nothing I write captures what I need to say."

Before she could respond, her phone buzzed with a news alert. Then Magnus's phone chimed, followed by sounds of commotion outside the office door.

Wynne glanced at her screen and froze. The headline read: "PERRY GROUP UNVEILS DRAMATIC REBRANDING: All Global Locations to Feature New 'WV' Logo."

"What is this?" she asked, turning the phone toward him.

Magnus looked as shocked as she felt. "I didn't authorize this."

The door burst open as the board chairman stormed in, waving a tablet. "What the hell have you done, Magnus? The marketing team just rolled out a complete corporate rebranding to every Perry location worldwide! Our logo for twenty years, changed overnight to—to this!"

He thrust the tablet forward, displaying the new design—an elegant intertwining of the letters W and V, the same pattern from the water bottles, now prominently featured on Perry Group storefronts around the world.

"I didn't approve this," Magnus said, looking genuinely confused.

"It came from your office! The system logs show the final authorization used your executive code at 3 AM!" The chairman noticed the office destruction for the first time. "What happened here? Have you completely lost your mind?"

Wynne stared at the new logo—her initials writ large across the global company—then back at the proposal draft in her hands. Pieces clicked together in her mind: Magnus's erratic behavior, the late-night system authorization, the dramatic corporate change.

"You did do this," she said softly to Magnus. "Not consciously, perhaps. But this is your doing."

Magnus looked from the tablet to the proposal pages, realization dawning in his eyes. "I was working late last night. After our conversation about the offer... I must have—"

"Approved the logo change while thinking about me," Wynne finished for him. "You literally rebranded your entire global company with my initials."

The chairman looked between them, comprehension and horror dawning simultaneously. "Do you mean to tell me that our new corporate identity, now displayed on 347 locations worldwide, is because you—" he pointed at Magnus "—are having feelings for her?" He swung toward Wynne.

"It appears so," Magnus replied, a strange calm settling over him as he looked at Wynne. "And based on the evidence, those feelings run considerably deeper than I've been willing to acknowledge."

The chairman sank into the only unbroken chair. "The board will have your head for this."

"Perhaps." Magnus hadn't taken his eyes off Wynne. "But at the moment, I find I don't particularly care."

Wynne held the fragmented proposal pages, standing amid the physical destruction that mirrored the breaking of their carefully constructed boundaries. Everything was suddenly, irrevocably changed—their professional arrangement, Magnus's carefully maintained control, the very identity of the company bearing his family name.

All shattered like the glass around them, revealing a truth neither had fully admitted until now: Clause 13 had been violated beyond repair, not just by Magnus, but by both of them.