Sign the Papers Mr. Langford novel Chapter 352

But Jude did not nod.

He closed the complaint log and pushed it to the center of the table.

"I think the only thing that needs rearranging right now is our priorities, not our credits."

The smile slipped entirely from Willow's face.

"Those three complaints are still unresolved," Jude continued. "And Thorne Corp's regulatory framework demands raw tracking logs. The focus of this meeting should be figuring out our official reporting narrative."

"The complaints have already been neutralized," she snapped.

"The families haven't withdrawn their grievances."

"They're just suffering from emotional instability."

Jude's voice went dead flat. "Those 'emotionally unstable' people happen to be the exact demographic this project is meant to serve."

The words hung in the air like an executioner's axe. No one in the project team dared to breathe.

Willow glared at him, every ounce of feigned sweetness vanishing from her eyes.

"You're starting to sound more and more like Wren every single day."

Jude's brow furrowed.

"This has absolutely nothing to do with her."

"Doesn't it?" Willow slammed her folder shut. Her voice was quiet, but laced with venom. "All of you have been copying her lately. Preaching about boundaries, evidence, and prioritizing children's feelings. It's as if none of you knew how to run a project before she showed up."

Jude stared back, an inexplicable weight settling over his chest.

He had known Willow for years.

In the beginning, he saw her as the neglected outcast at a Whitaker family banquet, hiding in a corner clutching a cup of cold tea. She had told him she was starved for validation, that she had to bleed and scrape just to earn a fraction of the respect others were handed for free. And he had believed her.

Later, when she joined Langford Medical, she would run to him clutching files she couldn't understand, her eyes brimming with tears as she begged, "Jude, I just don't want people saying I got here by riding my sister's coattails."

He had gone soft on her back then. He rewrote her proposals, shielded her from corporate vultures, and built a staircase to a throne she had no business sitting on.

But he had laid those steps down for so long that she eventually convinced herself the world was meant to be beneath her feet.

"Willow," Jude said, softening his tone slightly. "There's nothing wrong with wanting recognition. But you cannot strip away the credit from everyone else just to build yourself up."

Willow blanched as though she had been physically struck.

"So you think I'm a thief now?"

Jude did not look away.

"I will not authorize a version of this report that places your name above the people who actually did the work."

She stood in the suffocatingly tight space, her chest heaving violently. Her phone screen was lit up, Lawrence's contact card glowing at the very top of her recent calls list.

She desperately wanted to hit dial.

She wanted him to unleash his fury on her behalf, to swoop in and rescue her from the sheer humiliation just like he always did.

But her thumb hovered over the call button, paralyzed.

Lawrence was currently occupied with the charity gala.

He was occupied with rolling out the red carpet to crown Wren as Mrs. Langford.

If she called him, what exactly could she complain about?

That Jude refused to plaster her name at the top of a report?

That the team was finally sick of indulging her tantrums?

Or that she was terrified of being ruthlessly discarded before she even managed to secure a permanent seat?

Willow clutched her phone in a death grip.

Reflected in the restroom mirror, her makeup remained immaculate. Her eyes weren't red, and her lipstick hadn't smudged. She still looked devastatingly gorgeous, painfully fragile, and flawlessly designed to invoke a man's protective instincts.