Nine seats. Ten votes—mine counted twice. Founder’s privilege. The only piece of the original stake I’d refused to let go.
And it still wasn’t enough.
Eight others sat on that board, and Nathan had been patient. That was the worst of it.
He’d made pets of four of them—drinks, jokes, late-night calls that blurred into shared secrets and lazy loyalties. Strangers who’d once sat across from me now laughed at his stories and nodded when he spoke. He’d slid himself into their trust like a hand into a glove. They were his now.
I let that truth settle between us. Let the fury cool into something sharper.
“Board majority or not,” I said finally, voice low enough to scrape, “you pull a stunt like that again, and I will end you.”
His face turned poisonous. “We’ll see how the board feels about that,” he said.
The threat hung there, quiet and real.
A knock cracked the air. Sharp, efficient. Both our heads turned to the door.
Nathan’s attention came back to mine, still lit with that slick satisfaction.
He adjusted his tie, oozing satisfaction. “Now, if that’s everything you wanted to discuss… my next meeting just arrived.”
The dismissal was clear.Get out.
I didn’t move at first. A dozen things crowded my tongue. None of them would’ve made it past the legal team.
So I stepped back instead, every muscle coiled.
“Enjoy your meeting.” Cool enough to frost glass. It wasn’t a courtesy. It was a promise.
Then I opened the door and walked out, shutting it behind me with just enough force to make the wall shiver.
Chapter 24
***
Emma
Jennifer stared at me, eyes wide across the conference table. “What just happened?”
The question hung there—heavy, vibrating through the Elion conference room like someone had struck a fault line. The silence afterward made the walls feel closer, the glass too thin.
David shook his head, wearing the expression of a man who’d just watched gravity stop working. “I… I honestly have no idea.”
I sank into my chair, the last threads of adrenaline slipping out of my body, leaving something hollow in their wake. “Bell is an ass.”
Kevin—who had leaned so far back in his chair he looked half-exiled from the table—nodded once. “On that, we can all agree.”
No one added anything. The static from Falkirk followed us like fog, clinging to the corners of the room, humming against the glass and the faint city noise beyond.
My pen rolled across the table, and I watched it go—mind skipping through every frame of the meeting. Nathan’s interruptions. Damien’s jaw locked hard enough to crack teeth. And the quiet, electric pull when our gazes met seconds before the whole thing detonated.
Tense didn’t begin to cover it.
“Did Holt seem… off to anyone else?” Jennifer asked carefully. “He looked tense.”
“I think Holt’s just sick of Bell’s shit,” Kevin said, tone dry enough to flake.
I nodded, small and controlled, even as my fingers twitched toward my phone. Every part of me wanted to hear his voice—right now—to ask what was going on beneath the surface. But instead, I inhaled through my nose and forced the CEO back into place.
