The Billionaire's Revenge Fiancée

Chapter 2

Olive

The next morning, I woke up to my picture plastered across every news outlet and forum.

It wasn’t every day that a business tycoon was slapped in the middle of a ballroom, so everyone wanted to know what would befall the woman who had dared to hit Atlas Floyd.

I couldn’t deny that Atlas terrified me a little. After years of his torment, I’d developed a certain apprehension whenever it came to him, but this time, I didn’t care about the consequences.

What else could he possibly do to me that he hadn’t already done?

When I arrived at the company, Elowen, my assistant, came rushing toward me.

We’d weathered the storm together ever since I took over from my father, and our relationship had long since become more than professional. She was my friend.

“Olive, the shareholders called an emergency board meeting. They’re waiting for you.”

“What do they want now?”

Elowen gave me an ‘are you serious?’ look.

“You slapped Atlas Floyd,” she whisper-yelled, something she did whenever she was nervous and on the verge of panicking. “You might have just started a corporate war with one of the biggest CEOs in the state, so I think it’s pretty understandable that the board is pissed.”

I sighed and adjusted my suit. She was right. I did have some explaining to do.

I already knew the board was restless with me. That was why I’d been so desperate for the Beaumont deal. Now that I’d lost it, I had to answer for it.

I pushed open the boardroom doors and was welcomed by the faces of a dozen unhappy old men. Growing up, I’d called many of them Uncle. Now, I was disappointed in more than a handful of them.

Many hadn’t been pleased when my father insisted on leaving his seat to me — a woman.

They’d wanted him to call his stepbrother, a man who lived abroad and whom most of them barely knew. They’d rather hand the company to a stranger than trust me with my own father’s legacy.

But my father had insisted on me, and here I was.

“Good morning,” I greeted, taking my seat at the head of the table.

“There’s nothing good about this morning, Olive.” Mr. Harrison spoke first. He was the one who disliked me the most. “Not only did you lose the Beaumont deal you promised us, but you humiliated a very powerful man.”

“Atlas Floyd has been trying to sabotage us for months. My actions were justified.” I replied.

Harrison slammed his hand against the table.

“No, they weren’t! Do you know how many investors pulled out this morning? We’re already fighting to keep this company alive, and you went ahead and made everything worse.”

“Harrison, calm down,” Mr. Caldwell, another board member, interrupted.

“No. Someone has to put her in her place.” Harrison sneered. “This is the problem with putting women in positions meant for men. They don’t think. When it’s that time of the month, they lose all sense of reason.”

My eyes narrowed.

“Mr. Harrison, watch your words.”

“Or what?”

“That’s enough.” Caldwell’s voice cut through the room. “We aren’t here to start a fight.”

I kept my eyes on Harrison for another moment before finally looking away. I’d grown used to his misogynistic jabs.

Caldwell opened a file in front of him.

“Two investors have withdrawn their interest. Our primary distributor is reconsidering their contract. And three of our smaller investors have requested emergency meetings.”

My fingers tightened around the edge of the table.

“Why? That doesn’t make sense. This has to be Atlas messing with us again.”

Caldwell shrugged.

“Perhaps. You’re right that he’s been making a move against us for months. The problem is, we’re still too powerless to fight back and your actions last night only worsened things.”

I sighed into my palm. Perhaps I had overreacted. I hadn’t expected Atlas to take things this far. But none of that mattered now.

“We can fix this,” I said.

Harrison shook his head.

“No. ‘You’ need to fix this. Go on your knees and grovel for forgiveness before you ruin everything your father worked so hard for. This is the problem with having a young woman run a company this size.”

My eyes snapped toward him.

“Excuse me?” I leaned forward. “Are you questioning my ability to do my job because I’m a woman? You seem to be forgetting that if not for me, this company would have gone under two years ago. Every single person in this room had given up on my father and was ready to sell his legacy to the highest bidder.”

I looked around the table.

“I sold everything I had. I took loans. I did everything I could to keep this company standing. So if you want to judge me, judge me based on my performance, not one mistake.”

It was true. Two years ago, they had been ready to sell Bel Wines for a fraction of its worth. I’d been the one who fought to keep it alive.

And if Atlas hadn’t spent the past year meddling in my business, we wouldn’t have been in such a desperate position now.

Yet somehow, they wanted me to beg him? Hell no.

“Regardless of what you’ve done, it doesn’t change the fact that investors are leaving and our creditors are nervous,” another board member said. “If things don’t change soon, we’ll have no choice but to reconsider your position.”

The room went very still. I looked around the table in disbelief.

“You want to kick me out?”

Caldwell shook his head. “It’s not like that.”

I scoffed.

“Listen, Olive. Your father placed you here, and we respect his decision. But this company needs more than blind trust. We need results.”He closed the file. “We’ve discussed it, and there’s only one way for us to get through this unscathed.”

“And what is that?”

“Marriage.”

The word hung in the air. A few of the older men nodded as though he’d suggested a perfectly reasonable business strategy.

I stared at them.

“Ethan and I haven’t—”

“Ethan Thorne is rich, but he isn’t influential enough to save us from this,” Harrison interrupted. “Find someone better.”

I blinked. Ethan had stood beside me for years. Now they were asking me to dump him just like that?

“We’ll find another way.” I insisted.

“The company needs stability,” Caldwell said. “A marriage alliance will give us that. This is business. Investors need to feel safe.”

I leaned forward.

“I didn’t inherit this position because I wanted to play CEO. I earned it. And I’m not going to marry some man just to make a group of investors feel safer. I’ll find another way.”

Everyone went quiet and Caldwell nodded slowly.

“Okay, then. You have forty days. If the numbers don’t improve, we’ll vote on your removal.” He gathered his papers. “If I were you, I’d start looking for a better CEO boyfriend.”

With that, the meeting was adjourned. The board members filed out of the room as briskly as though they hadn’t just threatened to strip everything from me.

Get married or get out.

Those were my only options, but I couldn’t betray Ethan like that. Not after everything we’d been through together.

I walked out of the boardroom dazed, my mind racing for a way out of this mess. I was still deep in thought when my phone rang.

It was from the hospital and my heart skipped.

“Hello?”

“It’s your father. He collapsed.”