Chapter 16
915 Words
Boardroom Battles
The war began with a single email at 6:47 a.m.
Subject: Tender Offer Voss Industries
Body: We are pleased to announce our intention to acquire a controlling interest in Blackwell Enterprises.
By 7:30 the executive floor was in chaos. Phones rang off the hook, analysts screamed numbers, the PR team drafted frantic statements. Lucian stood at the head of the war room in shirtsleeves, eyes bloodshot, voice lethal calm.
Voss is offering forty-two dollars a share, his CFO barked. That’s a thirty-one percent premium. The street’s going to eat it up.
Then we make them choke on it, Lucian said.
Ava watched from the doorway, coffee forgotten in her hand. She’d seen him in crisis mode before, but never like this, predator unleashed, every inch the ruthless bastard the tabloids loved to hate. And yet, when his gaze flicked to her, something softened for half a heartbeat.
She stepped inside, closed the door. I know how Damien’s doing it.
Every head swiveled.
She laid a slim flash drive on the table. Three years ago, when I was running logistics for a shipping startup in Miami, Voss tried to buy us out, our biggest client. Same playbook, quiet accumulation through offshore shells, poison pill rumor campaign, then a lightning tender offer. These are the exact Cayman entities he used then. Same law firm, same nominee directors. He hasn’t even bothered to change the names.
The room went still.
Lucian’s eyes locked on her. You’re sure?
I wrote the due diligence report that killed his deal last time. I still have nightmares about those shell companies. She met his stare. He’s over leveraged. If you hit the lead bank with proof of covenant breaches, the whole house of cards collapses.
A slow, feral smile spread across Lucian’s face. Do it.
The next forty-eight hours were a blur of lawyers, emergency filings and midnight strategy sessions. Ava sat at Lucian’s right leg, feeding him ammunition no one else had.Damien’s favorite shell games, the weak links in his financing, the one European regulator who owed Blackwell a favor. By Tuesday night the stock was swinging wildly, but the momentum had shifted.
Wednesday morning, the axe fell.
Voss’s lead lender pulled the facility. Two major shareholders flipped back to Blackwell. Damien’s tender offer died on the vine at 4:59 p.m., one minute before the deadline.
The war room erupted in cheers. Someone popped champagne. Lucian didn’t move, just stared at the final numbers scrolling across the screen, chest rising and falling like he’d run a marathon.
Then he looked at Ava.
The room emptied fast after that, people suddenly remembering urgent calls elsewhere.
The door clicked shut. Silence.
Lucian leaned back against the conference table, tie gone, shirt unbuttoned at the throat, eyes burning. You saved my company today.
We saved it, she corrected, stepping between his knees.
He caught her waist, pulled her flush against him. Say that again.
We.
The kiss was pure victory, champagne and relief and five years of almost losing each other. He lifted her onto the polished mahogany table, papers sliding to the floor in a white avalanche. Her skirt rode up, his hands were already there, pushing it higher, thumbs tracing the lace tops of her stockings.
Being hard for two days thinking about this, he growled against her throat. Every time you leaned over that table with your clever little mouth giving me weapons, I wanted to bend you over it and show the whole goddamn floor who you belong to.
Then do it, she breathed.
He didn’t need to be told twice.
Buttons scattered. Her blouse hit the floor, followed by his shirt. He spun her, bent her forward over the table, palms flat on the cool wood where hours ago they’d plotted corporate warfare. The city sparkled beyond the glass like a conquered kingdom.
He entered her in one deep thrust, groaning her name like a battle cry. She pushed back, meeting him stroke for stroke, the table creaking under them. Every slap of skin echoed in the empty room, raw and triumphant.
Look at them, he rasped, hand fisting in her hair, tilting her head toward the window. All those lights. They have no idea I just won the only war that ever mattered.
She came with a sharp cry, clenching around him, nails scraping the mahogany. He followed seconds later, hips stuttering, spilling inside her with a guttural sound that was half-sob, half-roar.
They stayed locked together, breathing hard, sweat cooling on their skin. Slowly he turned her, lifted her into his arms and sat back in the chairman’s leather chair with her straddling his lap.
Foreheads pressed together, he whispered, Marry me.
The words hung in the air, simple and devastating.
Ava’s heart stopped, then started again twice as fast. Ask me again when there’s no adrenaline and champagne in your bloodstream.
He laughed, shaky and real. I’ve got a ring in my safe. Been carrying the damn thing around for weeks like a lunatic. I’ll ask you sober, tomorrow, next year, every day for the rest of my life until you say yes.
She kissed him, soft and slow, tasting salt and future.
Outside, the city kept spinning, oblivious.
Inside the boardroom, on the table where empires rose and fell, two people who’d spent years trying to destroy each other finally admitted the only victory they’d ever really wanted was right here, tangled together, hearts racing, choosing, for the first time freely, to stay.
- Writer
