TWENTY-FOUR
Levi
“Where the hell have you been?”
I smack the loudspeaker button with a huff, typing so furiously on my laptop that even my PA looks up, startled. Sitting timidly across my desk as she makes notes.
I’m waiting for my lawyers, desperately hoping they can find a way out of the mess this clause has created. But I’m not sure I’ll be winning this one.
Sebastian’s ominous words come crashing back to me…
‘…Levi, their votes default to you. Temporarily. Then… hopefully permanently. But that’s a problem for another day.’
Well, today is another day. And I’m not sure I can make the temporary move toward any kind of permanency.
I’m a joke of a president.
Fuck.
“I’m in LA,” he says, a rough hesitancy in his tone.
My fingers halt. “And pray tell, what are you doing there?”
“Levi—”
I fucking knew it. “This is not the time to rectify whatever the hell mistake you made, Taewon. I need you here.”
“I just… I needed to see her.”
Her. Iris.
“Why couldn’t you wait until this crisis was over?” I snap, knowing full well I’m being unreasonable.
“I’m sorry, man,” he says in a resigned voice. “She… she quit Miller-Moore. Grace said she had a standing offer from another firm and suspects she took it.”
“Then… hound her when she starts her new job! Come back and fucking help me with this.”
He ignores my petulance. But I hear his gears turning in the silence that follows. He knows my outburst isn’t from his absence.
“What happened, Levi? Is Noona okay?”
My gut clenches at the mention of Cece. “She’s… she’s okay.” It’s a lie. I know it the moment the words leave my mouth.
She’s absolutely not okay. But I can’t dwell on that just minutes before I’m needed by my lawyers to fix the mess my degenerate parents created.
“I’m meeting Jasper and Mr. Benson in less than…” I glance at my watch, “twelve minutes. I needed my fucking EA here to support me through this bullshit. You know you understand this legal jargon more than I do!”
“Listen, just… put me in via audio,” he says awfully calmly. “I’ll be there. What did they tell you already?
I drop my head down, trying to find the courage to tell him what I’d learned last night.
Jasper had called me right before the clock hit midnight.
“They…” my gaze snaps up to Janice, silently telling her to leave.
“Give me a second.” I continue once she’s out of my office.
“They told me how the clause was integrated into the decision-making protocol. The way they… God! Taewon, I’m not—I’m not technically President because of the clause.
According to the policy, I’m an Interim President.
On probation until the clause is fulfilled. ”
“Ssibal!” He curses through the speaker, his voice a mix of rage and disbelief. “So what—the board can simply remove you? Is it subject to a vote?”
I shake my head. “Not just that. I-I can’t even remove the fucking clause without stepping down first and then getting voted back in—”
“And that doesn’t work given the management is already unstable,” he finished for me. “Hounding the fucking board because of the stock price dropping. Are they already panic-selling?”
“You know it,” I grumble.
“Will we… will Astor survive this?”
I swallow hard. “Realistically, yes. We’ve already shed the weight of the four subsidiaries that were draining us. But we’d have to—I don’t know. We’d have to pause on any capital transfers. Including—”
“Including the Wentworth merger.”
I sigh. “When are you coming back?”
Silence.
“Taewon,” I grumble, exasperated.
“Can I be remote for a while?”
“How long?”
“A couple weeks?”
I snort. “What are you doing, man?”
“I kissed your ex-girlfriend, and now she’s reaming my ass. I’m just trying to… fix this.”
“I don’t get it. Why?” I ask before I give myself a moment to think. I’d always thought Taewon was against Iris. He never really liked her. Not even when we’d dated.
“Are you…”
“I’m fine with it as long as you come the fuck back,” I grit out.
“Oh, so the jealousy is the other way around,” he says, chuckling. “You won’t lose me, Levi. I promise, yeobo.”
“I know what that word means. Never fucking say that to me!”
The asshole simply snorts. “Mianhae, jagiya.”
I groan, rubbing my temples. “If you don’t shut it, I’ll… I’ll…”
“You will…”
“I’ll fucking remove you as my inheritor.”
He pauses for a moment before bursting out a laugh that irritates the hell out of me. “You sure can,” he says, still cackling. But then he sobers up quickly. “You can also simply name your kids as successors, you know.”
The thought instantly pulls me into a deep, blackened corner.
Kids.
I don’t even know if Cece still wants me after the scandal I’ve created. We’ve definitely pauses on any kid-making activities since I fucked up. She’s well within her rights to leave me in the dust.
I also know that Wentworth will survive without this merger. In fact, they’ll probably be better off without anchoring themselves to a sinking ship.
“I don’t even know if Cece wants that… with me,” I mumble.
I can’t seem to grasp my current reality. Our once healthy communication went out the window the moment I stopped sharing the most pertinent information with her.
And now, I can feel her slipping away from me. Agonizingly slowly.
“You want her back?” Taewon asks.
My entire body grows cold at his question, my knuckles paling against the edge of the desk as I grip it tight. “B-Back?” I stammer out. “You really think I’ve already lost her?”
“Haven’t you?”
My mind whirls back to last night, how her reserve felt strained. Her silence, painful. She wasn’t the same Cece I’d known. The one who took calculated risks. Who was admirably poised. Who would present a facet that worked best for the situation.
She definitely wasn’t the Cece I’d grown to understand in the world of Astors. But it didn’t matter what version of her took hold.
I didn’t fall in love with the boxes she checked. I’d always known this.
I fell in love with her despite them.
“I’m giving you a month,” I say finally, ignoring his prodding questions.
He sighs. “Fine. I’ll clock in remotely until then.”
I grunt in agreement, falling into a deep silence.
“Hey, is Mr. Benson… Hayes Benson?”
“Yeah,” I say, already knowing what he’s getting at. “Jasper said we needed a family lawyer to revise the marriage contract. Properly isolate it from the Astor’s presidential clause.”
“We can’t afford a single loophole,” he says firmly. “Glad you’re going with the biggest gun.”
I curse under my breath. “It’s so deeply embedded that even my kids can’t escape it. Benson is the only choice. I need it gone, Taewon.”
“And you will.” The conviction in his tone is supposed to be encouraging, but it still fails to lighten the weight of the stone wedging itself in my chest.
We hang up a few minutes later, my feet carrying me to the conference room. Dreading the meeting with Jasper and Hayes.
I pause at the threshold, my ears filling with the rough murmurs from inside the room. They’re already here.
Exhaling sharply, I close my eyes. I rub my hand against my chest, hoping I’d rid myself of the painful ache.
As always, I imagine her voice. ‘Calm, Levi.’
Only then do I turn the doorknob.
??????
“It wasn’t necessarily an Executive Employment Agreement,” Jasper says, eyes scanning the screen of his laptop.
He’s been scrolling, viciously staring at each and every line item of my President Agreement that I signed three years ago.
Chuckling bitterly, he moves on to another clause, with Hayes Benson following his actions on his own laptop.
“It’s certainly made to look like one,” Hayes says, frowning. “But it’s worded exactly like a typical prenup—minus the partner addendum.”
I swallow hard.
“Is it even valid?” Taewon’s voice fills the room, loud enough on the speakers.
Jasper sighs, giving me a pitying smile. “Yes, it is. Unfortunately.”
I drag both my hands over my face. “Let me get this straight. That joke of a document you’re staring at, is basically me accepting the position of Interim President.
If I don’t fulfill the sub clause 3.1.6, my five-year probation ends with me basically jobless.
And if I want to remove this marital clause, I’ll have to nullify this entire agreement and hand over my presidency to the VP? ”
Both Hayes and Jasper nod, gaze steadily on me, listening to my every frustrated word with a careful mask.
A hysterical laugh slips out of me. “And of course, if I do that, it’ll be weeks—maybe months—before I can get voted back in.”
“If you get voted back in,” Taewon’s gruff voice sounds. “The faith in the Astor family is run to the ground, Levi. With this wave of scandals, the inner management is already destabilizing. The monthly attrition rate is projected at 2.2% based on our last few weeks.”
“Not to mention the stocks tanking,” Hayes adds, and immediately shuts up under my glare.
“But we’ve gotten rid of those hive embezzlement companies,” I say, grasping at straws. “Wouldn’t that—”
“They were a draining asset, Levi, sure,” Taewon cuts in. “But they had at least some revenue to cover up the laundering.”
Fuck. And now we’ve lost that revenue as well.
“We’re still net positive, Levi,” he says, trying to reassure me.
Sure, but for how long?
“Listen,” Jasper says, voice firm but measured. “This isn’t a financial collapse. It’s a perception collapse of Astor Holdings. We can manage that.”
“As long as I stay on, you mean?” I ask wearily.
Neither of them answers immediately. Which is answer enough.
“You’ve got two years left on probation, Mr. Astor,” Hayes finally says. “Marry Ms. Wentworth, fulfill the clause, and we can… reassess afterwards. Remove it from the generational protocol.”
For my hypothetical children.
Not for me.
Not for Cece.
But for the next generation of Astor kids.
My stomach twists violently. Talk about being trapped.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I need this fucking thing gone.
Because no matter how calm Cece’s being—no matter how detached or composed she tries to seem—I know this is painful for her. Especially after the fucking article that exposed the clause in all its disgusting glory.
Then there’s that damn photo of me and Iris.
Fucking hell.
This has to be hurting Cece.
Humiliating her.
Humiliating us.
As long as this clause exists, she will never fully believe me. Never fully believe that I love her because I choose her.
Not because the contract cornered me into it. Or because I wanted the presidency that desperately.
Every part of our relationship is poisoned by this clause now.
Every kiss. Every touch. Every damn promise we made must ring hollow to her.
Because somewhere in the back of her mind, there’ll always be that question—
Would he still choose me without the clause?
And the fucked-up part is… I don’t even blame her for asking it. I’ve given her the doubts with my own two hands.
I squeeze my eyes shut and lean back in the chair, exhaustion pressing into my skull. “I want it removed now,” I say flatly. “Not in two years.”
Jasper sighs through his nose. Hayes’s expression tightens slightly.
“That’s not realistically possible, Levi. Not to mention extremely risky,” Jasper says carefully. “It’s highly unlikely that the board would vote you back in under current circumstances.”
Meaning the scandal tainting the Astor name.
The headlines.
The public unraveling of Cece.
My jaw clenches so hard it hurts. Because somehow the woman I love has become a liability on paper.
And I fucking hate myself for allowing it to get this far. Allowing my family to leash my love for her.
Silence settles heavily across the room.
Then Jasper softens slightly. “Levi… right now, stability is your strongest play.”
Stability.
The word nearly makes me laugh.
Because Cece is slipping through my fingers by the second, and I’m sitting here discussing optics like that’s somehow more urgent than the look in her eyes when she had asked what happens next.
I push back from the table abruptly.
Both men look up.
“I’m done for today,” I mutter.
“Mr. Astor—”
“I said I’m done.” My voice comes out sharp and borderline rude, but I can’t bring myself to care.
I grab my blazer, disconnect Taewon from the line, and head for the door before either of them can stop me.
The thought of being anywhere except beside her feels unbearable, unreasonable.
And for the first time in my life, Astor Holdings doesn’t feel like the thing I’m terrified of losing.
Cece does.