I FELL FOR MY DADDY'S BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND

The seat that was supposed to be hers was already occupied by someone else. Rena stood in the doorway of the boardroom, her heels rooted to the floor, staring at Raymond Levi sitting at the head of the long glass table. Her father's table, her father's seat. The same table she used to sit under as a little girl doing homework while her father finished his meetings, promising her ice cream on the drive home if she stayed quiet long enough. One month ago, she buried both her parents after a truck crushed their car against a guardrail outside the city. One month ago, she stopped being a daughter and became a headline. Twelve directors had sat through that funeral in black suits, shaking her hand, telling her how proud her father would be watching his daughter take over everything he built. Today was supposed to be the day. She had rehearsed it in her head more times than she wanted to admit — walking in, taking the seat, proving to everyone in that room that grief hadn't broken her. Instead she was standing in the doorway like a stranger, watching someone else already settled into the life that was supposed to be hers. “Rena” Raymond's voice was flat, controlled, the same voice he'd used since she was fifteen years old and sneaking glances at him across her father's dinner table. “Sit down, We need to talk before the board convenes.” She didn't move. “Why are you sitting there, Raymond?” “The board voted last night” He didn't blink, not even when she was seventeen and burst into tears in front of him because her father had missed her graduation for a business trip, and Raymond had been the one who stayed to make sure she got home safe. That was the version of him she used to trust. "I've been named acting CEO, effective today. The room went silent enough to hear the air conditioning hum. “That's my position” Rena said, her voice cracking despite every effort to keep it steady. My father spent four years training me for this chair. That was always the plan. Your father built a company that needs to survive, Raymond said. Not one handed to someone who's never run a department, three weeks after burying both her parents. I can learn, Rena said. You will learn, he said. “As an intern” Under my supervision. The statement landed like a slap in front of twelve people who had known her since she was a child. She scanned their faces, looking for one person willing to object, to look her in the eye. Nobody did. It was already decided, and she was the only one in the room who hadn't been told. You can't do this,“she said, voice rising now. I'm the majority shareholder. This company is mine. Your shares are held in trust until you turn twenty-five, the family lawyer said gently from the corner of the room. “Mr. Levi has been named trustee and acting CEO, per your father's will”. Her stomach dropped. Not the board, her own father had signed this decision before he died, and never once told her. She wondered, with a fresh wave of grief, what else he'd decided for her without asking. She turned back to Raymond, searching his face for something, anything — hesitation, guilt, even pity. She found nothing but that same unreadable calm he wore like a second skin. “You knew,” she said quietly. “You knew this whole time and you let me walk in here thinking I was about to take my seat.” “I let you bury your parents first," Raymond said’ That was the only mercy I could give you. “I don't want your mercy.” “You need a job you can actually do, " he said, and a company that's still standing in five years. Right now, you have neither.” The cruelty of it stole the air from her lungs. She had loved this man in secret since she was a teenager, building an entire private world around a crush she never told a single soul, not even Jena. And here he was, dismantling the last thing she had of her father, in front of a room full of strangers, without so much as a flicker of hesitation. “Fine” she said, lifting her chin, refusing to let a single tear fall in front of him. I'll take the internship. Something shifted behind his eyes — surprise, maybe, that she hadn't stormed out. But hear me clearly, She stepped close enough that only he could hear her. “I will earn that chair back. And when I do, I won't forget that you were the one who took it from me”. For half a second, something moved behind his cold brown eyes. Not guilt, something closer to warning. “Careful Rena” His voice dropped low enough that the room couldn't catch it. There are things about your father's death you don't know yet. Things I'm trying to protect you from. Fighting me right now is the last thing you should be doing. Her breath caught in her throat. “What things?” But Raymond had already straightened, turning back to the board, his voice sliding into the flat, commanding tone of a man closing a meeting. That's all for today, Rena starts Monday, in finance, under Mr. Cruise's team. Across the table, a man leaned back in his chair with an ease that didn't belong in that room. Lucas, her cousin, her father's nephew. He caught her eye and smiled, slow and warm, like this was somehow good news for her. Rena didn't smile back. There was something too easy about that smile, something she didn't have the energy to examine right now, not with her whole future rearranging itself in front of twelve strangers. She walked out of the boardroom that had just taken her future from her in under ten minutes, her heels echoing down a hallway that used to feel like home and now felt like enemy ground. Raymond's words repeated in her head like a door closing on something she wasn't ready to see. “There are things about your father's death you don't know yet” What was he protecting her from? And why did it feel like the only man keeping her safe from something was the very same man who had just torn everything else away?