Xan Lyon had just made the biggest mistake of his life. He had kept the enemy close. And Elara Vance was a very, very dangerous enemy.
Chapter 2:
A Ghost from the Past
The weekend was a blur of rage and strategic planning. Elara’s penthouse, usually a sanctuary of minimalist calm, looked like a war room. Legal documents were strewn across her coffee table, and her laptop screen was filled with financial models predicting Kronos’s next moves. But her mind kept circling back to one, infuriatingly constant image: Xan Lyon’s smug, handsome face.
There was something about him, a flicker of familiarity that had nagged at her during their confrontation. It was in the way he held himself, the precise, almost arrogant cadence of his speech. She’d dealt with plenty of arrogant men, but this felt… personal.
Driven by a hunch, she dove into the digital archives, bypassing the polished corporate biographies and digging deeper. She searched old university alumni databases, yearbooks from over a decade ago. And then she found it.
A photograph from a long-defunct student economics journal at Stanford. A younger, slightly less polished Xan Lyon, his hair longer, his expression intense but lacking the icy polish. And standing next to him in the group photo was a girl with long, dark hair and a bright, ambitious smile.
Herself.
Elara’s breath hitched. Stanford. She’d been there for a single, whirlwind semester on an elite exchange program before transferring back to MIT. It was a lifetime ago. She’d been Elara Vance, the scholarship kid from nowhere, trying to prove shebelonged among the legacy students and the future titans of industry.
And he had been there. Alexander Lyon. Even then, he’d been a known entity—the heir to the Lyon fortune, brilliant, driven, and utterly unapproachable.
The memory crashed over her with the force of a tidal wave. The Advanced Economic Theory seminar. Their professor had pitted them against each other in a semester-long debate project. They were the two top students, and their clashes had been legendary. He was cold, logical, and dismissive of her more intuitive, human-centric arguments. She was passionate, disruptive, and refused to back down.
The final debate had been about corporate ethics versus profit maximization. She had argued for a triple-bottom-line approach, her voice ringing with a conviction she hadn’t known she possessed. He had systematically dismantled her argument, citing precedent and shareholder value, his delivery so coldly efficient it felt like a surgical strike. He’d won. The professor had praised his“flawless logic.” Xan had accepted the praise with a slight, condescending nod in her direction.
After class, he’d cornered her in the hallway.“Sentimentality has no place in business, Vance,” he’d said, his grey eyes devoid of any warmth.“You’ll never win if you lead with your heart.”
Humiliated and furious, she’d shot back,“And you’ll never build anything that matters if you don’t have one.”
She had put the entire, frustrating semester behind her, burying the memory of the arrogant, infuriating boy who had seemed to take such pleasure in her defeat.
Now, he was back. Not as a rival student, but as the king of the mountain, and he had just thrown her off the cliff.
It wasn’t just business. It was a grudge. He remembered her. This takeover, this“trial period”—it was a continuation of that debate from a decade ago. He was proving his point all over again.
The realization turned her cold. This was personal for him, which meant it was now deeply, profoundly personal for her.
Monday morning arrived with a leaden sky that matched her mood. Dressed in her most formidable black power suit—her armor—she walked into the gleaming Kronos tower. The lobby was a cathedral of cold marble and glass, a monument to everything she despised. Employees moved with hushed efficiency, casting her furtive, curious glances. The news of the“merger” and her new, subservient role had clearly spread.
She was shown to her new“office”—a glass-walled fishbowl directly outside Xan’s cavernous corner suite. It was a deliberate humiliation, placing her in a position of very public subordination.
At exactly 8:00 a.m., the door to his office opened. Xan stood there, leaning against the frame, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand. He looked her over, from her stiletto heels to the tight line of her mouth.
“Punctual. I appreciate that,” he said, his tone implying he’d expected less.“My coffee. Black. And then we’ll begin your orientation.” He gestured to a state-of-the-art espresso machine on a sideboard in his office.
Elara stared at him, the memory of their student rivalry burning in her chest. He was treating her like an intern. Like he had won, and she was now part of the spoils.
She walked past him into his office, ignoring the coffee machine. She stopped in the center of the room, turning to face him.
“Let’s get one thing perfectly clear, Alexander,” she said, his name a deliberate, familiar weapon.“I remember Stanford. I remember the debates. I know this little power trip of yours is about more than balance sheets.”
A flicker of surprise, quickly masked, crossed his face. So he hadn’t been sure she remembered. Good.
“This isn’t an orientation,” she continued, her voice low and steady.“And I am not your barista. You forced this partnership because you know Aethel has value you can’t create on your own. You need me. So, we will work together. As equals. Or I will walk out that door, and you can explain to your board why the brilliant mind behind the asset you just spent billions to acquire is now your most formidable competitor.”
She held his gaze, her heart hammering against her ribs. It was a bluff. Walking away would mean financial ruin for her and the end of Aura. But she would be damned if she let him see that.
Xan was silent for a long moment, his grey eyes studying her with a new, calculating intensity. The air crackled between them, thick with a decade of unresolved conflict.
A slow, appreciative smile—devoid of warmth but full of a predator’s respect—touched his lips.
