Chapter 33 #2
“Though I applaud you for getting such a good deal, sixty percent isn’t enough.
It should have been just the beginning. To take full control, you need to dilute the Mercers’ stake completely.
Issue new shares—they won’t have the capital to keep up.
Their 40% drops to 20, then to 5, until they’re nothing but minority shareholders with no board influence and negligible returns.
They can challenge it, but with sixty percent behind you, you win the vote every time.
Once their stake is worthless, you move to liquidate the remaining assets, and the company ceases to exist.”
She paused for a moment, her sharp eyes studying me. “And that was the original plan. You don’t want that anymore?”
“Grayson would have nothing left. Nothing at all. Worst of all, he would also take the blame and be hated by everyone who trusted him, the people he considered family. Protecting them was the one thing he asked me to honor. He would trust me completely, and I would be the one to betray him.”
“Yes, the employees will lose their jobs, and most of them will receive no severance pay, just as their contracts allow. But that’s part of the cost. Business isn’t charity, Ari.”
“Back then, I didn’t care. I would have done it without a second thought. But now, knowing what he had sacrificed, knowing the man he had become for my sake, I couldn’t.”
“You know our contract states that if you don’t achieve it, I will take everything, which means you’ll get nothing, and then I will do it myself.”
“Give me a chance, Sandra. Please. I have a plan. I can do this. I can bring you even more success, and I won’t let your investment go to waste.”
“What do you propose, Ari?”
“He can keep that forty percent, but it will belong only to Grayson, not his family. I will make sure of it. I’ll also make their restaurants thrive again under your name.
We are not destroying them anymore. We are reviving them.
And I’m fine if I don’t take the shares you promised me.
I can just be a regular employee. I can do this. You know I can.”
“So this is what you meant by ‘out of the deal,’” she mused. “The plan is changed, not to destroy them, but to save them.”
“I don’t want his sacrifices to be wasted, or to betray him that way. And those people…” I trailed off, shaking my head, feeling the guilt crushing my chest. “I know most of them. I couldn’t do it to them either.”
She smirked. “I bet you already agreed to that in the agreement, that you would save his employees instead of obliterating them.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry. But you’re right. I already agreed to that.”
Sandra let out a long sigh. “I had a feeling this would happen. I knew this wasn’t who you really are. I knew that someday, the real part of you would come back, and you would not be able to go through with it.”
I didn’t respond. I watched her turn it over in her head and waited.
“I still hate the Mercers,” she said finally. “They are the scum of the earth. But I also know it was his parents who did that, not him.”
She paused again, and my heart pounded loudly in my chest.
Sandra rose from her seat, and I followed quickly, studying her face for any sign of what she was thinking. There was nothing. She had spent decades perfecting that.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “There’s a lot to consider, Ari. My investments, for one. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. But regardless, congratulations on a job well done.”
She moved to leave, then paused. “My son is wallowing alone in his apartment. He doesn’t want to see anyone.
I think you broke his heart. I want to be angry about this, but I can’t.
Because you give your love not for the money, and I respect that.
Grayson didn’t have much left, and still, you chose him.
You defended him even after he broke you, so he must have done something right to redeem himself. ”
Then she walked away, and all I could do was stare at her back.
Sighing, I went to my office upstairs to finish some work before heading home. Grayson was waiting. I had called Roe this morning and asked her to look after him while I was gone. Because she loved Grayson so much, she didn’t hesitate for a second and said yes.
His people loved him, and he loved them back. That was a quality in a leader that deserved admiration.
On the way home, I sat quietly in the back of the taxi and thought about everything—how I had been so consumed by revenge that I devoted three years of my life to it.
About what Grayson did to me on our engagement day, and how I should be talking to him, telling him everything, even though the hurt was still raw and I knew I wouldn’t be able to fully accept it.
But I didn’t have to waste those years on revenge or lose myself in the process.
To agree with Sandra’s contract meant that I didn’t care about those people at all—the employees who had once been my friends and had done nothing wrong to me.
All I would have cared about was my revenge, letting my anger dictate every decision, every action.
I would have been blind to the consequences of my choices, willing to destroy lives to satisfy my own grudges.
It would have made me no better than the Mercers themselves, consumed entirely by bitterness and nothing else.
And then I thought about what Grayson had done. He put his people and me first, before himself.
I rubbed my face with both hands, feeling the weight of it all.
When I arrived home, I stood in front of my door for a long moment, still turning everything over in my mind.
But one thing I knew for sure: I had to tell him.
Especially since there was a good chance that Sandra would reject my proposal.
I had to tell him the truth.