The following week was a blur of closed-door meetings, careful statements, and the particular exhaustion of managing a crisis that threatened everything both families had spent generations building.
Elena and Adrian presented a united front to the board, the press, and Elena's own increasingly anxious parents — not the performance they'd once staged for the Osei gala, but something realer, forged from months of learning to trust each other properly.
"The restructuring plan is solid," Elena told her father, spreading the documents across his kitchen table, the same table where her mother had once laid out the marriage contract that started everything. "Your company's routes are protected independently now, regardless of what happens to Cole Industries.
Adrian made sure of that months ag
