Bound to the Billionaire Boss

Chapter 2

Her phone buzzed nonstop, messages from her coworker Chloe Reyes popping up one after another.

[Shared link: EXCLUSIVE SCOOP! Vantage Group President Weston Shaw Spotted Traveling with Mystery Woman! Manhattan's Elite Bachelorettes' Dreams Shattered...]

[Check this out! Huge news!]

[Reporters are literally camped outside the hotel waiting to ambush our CEO — who on earth landed the Diamond Bachelor?!]

Ivy's mouth twitched.

Ivy: [Doesn't matter who. Definitely not you or me.]

Chloe: ...

Chloe: Not gonna argue with a workaholic.

She snapped a photo of her own desk and sent it over.

Chloe: [Just here to remind you — two hours left till the proposal deadline. Don't trip at the finish line.]

Ivy zoomed in on the photo. Reflected in the glass behind Chloe's desk, she caught a glimpse of a figure at her own workstation.

Derek Vaughn. She knew him well. The kind who groveled up and bullied down — a thoroughly petty, opportunistic man. On her first day at the company, they'd been assigned to the same team; their mentor had given them an assignment, pairing them up to submit a joint proposal. Derek, riding on the fact that he had an uncle in HR, had brazenly done nothing at all, then swooped in to steal the credit when it came time to present. Ivy hadn't made a scene at the time — she'd simply gone in and quietly altered a few key figures in the proposal. The result had been predictable enough: Derek had made an utter fool of himself in front of the whole team, and management had made a few pointed remarks in front of everyone about how "the basics seem to be a struggle" and how "HR's hiring standards are really slipping." Ever since, he'd nursed a one-sided grudge against her.

What, hadn't he learned his lesson the first time? And he still had the nerve to try the same move again?

Ivy typed back to Chloe: [Thanks. I'll treat you to a big dinner next time.] She'd come into the office on a Sunday to prepare her proposal — turned out Chloe wasn't quite the slacker she made herself out to be.

Ivy opened her laptop at home and logged into the work system. Just as she'd expected — the status showed an active login, and the IP address traced right back to Vantage Group, the company she'd just joined.

Vantage Group had started out as Shaw Holdings. A few years back, when the economy took a downturn, New York's old-guard family businesses had been hit especially hard. A rigid, change-averse family firm like Shaw Holdings should have been just another casualty of that wave of bankruptcies. Its saving grace had been the arrival of Weston Shaw — nobody quite knew where he'd come from, but within five years of taking over as president, he'd transformed a company on the brink of collapse into an industry titan. He'd expanded aggressively, snapping up tech companies with core proprietary technology amid the bankruptcy wave, while cutting loose the old, underperforming divisions. What emerged from that consolidation was Vantage Group — a name that now carried something close to the reputation of "ruler of half the city" in New York's business circles.

As for Hale Industries, the company Ivy's parents had co-founded years ago, it had long since been left in the dust. Ivy's return, in the end, had come a little too late. Even though her mother's will legally entitled her to twenty percent of Hale Industries' shares, a single year had been more than enough time for a pack of wolves to pick the company apart from the inside out — and with Vantage Group closing in step by step on top of that... Ivy suspected that Hale Industries, as it stood now, was little more than poison dressed up in frosting. They were all just waiting for her to come home and swallow this already-rotting company whole, willingly, without a fight.

Fat chance. They wanted to play the game of the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it? She'd play right along, to the very end.

There was a shortcut available to her right now — borrowing Vantage Group's strength, or more precisely, borrowing Weston Shaw's: stoke his greed and use it to squeeze Hale Industries; earn his trust and use it to dig into Vantage's inner workings; then, once his guard was down completely, swallow Hale Industries whole and drive a knife straight into Vantage's back.

The first step in this whole plan was to become Weston Shaw's personal secretary.

Ivy had signed up for Vantage's management trainee program — the top scorer got to choose their own position freely, and this was her best shot.

Fortunately, she'd always come in first.

Ivy pulled up the proposal document and, without hurrying, slipped an extra page into the middle of it. The soft glow of the screen lit up her face, calm and composed. Once the dust settled, she'd come out on top again, same as always.

...

Meanwhile, at the hotel.

Weston Shaw was about ready to lose his mind. Was there anything more humiliating than getting slipped a drugged drink by an "old friend" at a reunion, only to wake up the next morning cuffed to a bed, completely unable to move? In his entire life, from birth to this very moment, he had never been taken advantage of like this.

For the first few dozen seconds after waking, his mind was completely blank — until his phone buzzed twice against the nightstand. A cold draft crept up from beneath the blankets, paired with the icy, rough sensation of restraints around his wrists.

He glanced down — and realized his first time was gone. Not only gone, but the culprit had gone and left a message scrawled across his own body, practically bragging about it: [Think twice before accepting champagne from strangers.]

After a few slow breaths, he forced himself back to composure. What was done was done — anger wouldn't solve anything. Two minutes later, he unlocked the cuffs and sat at the edge of the bed, sinking into thought.

Weston was a man who exercised considerable restraint, both emotionally and physically. He operated on the principle of "playing it safe," which made him something of an oddity in a New York upper-crust social scene practically overrun with affairs and lovers. His reputation for staying clean, combined with his good looks, had won him the hearts of plenty of society daughters — and made him plenty of enemies in the process.

So — who would go to the trouble of pulling something this purely, viciously humiliating?

Getting hold of his whereabouts, and then managing to drug his drink on top of that — that was no small feat. Was it the Bishop family, freshly bankrupt? The Lindqvists, who'd just lost a major contract to him? Or the Hales, in their steady decline?

Businesspeople, by nature, weighed risk against reward before acting. Sleeping with him, stripping him, and cuffing him to a bed — for a man in his position, the reward was minimal and the risk enormous. If someone had really wanted to hurt him, it would've made far more sense to just eliminate him outright. The president of a conglomerate assassinated — Vantage's stock would tank overnight.

Someone trying to kill him?

No, that wasn't it. Weston's chest tightened. There was another possibility, far more unsettling than dying in some engineered "accident"—

...

After a phone call, Weston climbed into his private car and headed straight for St. Miriam's, a private hospital on the outskirts of the city. St. Miriam's was one of Vantage Group's holdings, open exclusively to top-tier clients, its discretion and professionalism well regarded throughout elite circles. The hospital had already reserved a private entrance for him; the director, along with his attending physician, was waiting in the underground garage.

Weston had always valued his own life highly, and he had every inch of himself checked, inside and out. Just to be safe, his biological samples were sent anonymously to three different hospitals. With enough money behind it, all three results came back within half a day — everything normal.

Thank god. Once he ruled out anyone with a direct financial stake in his downfall, that left exactly one suspect among everyone he'd had contact with last night.

Poppy.

The girl he'd deliberately cultivated years in advance, to help expand his overseas business. The girl he'd spent seven years teaching — everything from daily life to schoolwork to career — never once failing to look out for her. The girl who called him "Big Brother Ash" every single day, his sister in name if nothing else.

In the end, the one person he'd trusted most had turned around and betrayed him.

Fine. Just fine.