Chapter 6
SUTTON
“Sutton?” Erica Christopher’s head appeared in the doorway before the rest of her. She’d been my assistant for the last few years and I wasn’t sure how I could do anything without her. “Just wanted to give you a heads-up. Your father’s here.”
I fought every urge in my soul to appear surprised and won that battle. “Do we know why he’s here?”
“He didn’t say,” Erica replied, her voice dropping to a whisper. “But he looks… serious? I don’t know how else to describe it.”
My stomach dropped, but I kept my expression neutral even as my mind raced through possibilities, none of them good.
My father never came to the office unannounced.
In the time I’d been at Prescott Vantage, I could count on both hands the exceptions to that rule and every single one of them had been bad news.
Given the phone call we’d had several days ago, I was pretty certain I knew why he was here and, if he came to speak to me, where this eventual conversation was going to go.
“Do you want me to tell him you’re in a meeting?” Erica asked, her voice still low as if not to alert him. The protective instinct in her tone wasn’t lost on me.
“No,” I said, closing my laptop. “Send him in.”
I stood and smoothed down my skirt, a pointless gesture but one that gave me those few extra seconds to compose myself. My father’s unannounced visit confirmed what I’d suspected since our phone call: something was up and I was willing to bet it was about the future of Prescott Vantage.
This was not just a job to me. It had literally been the last ten years of my life I poured into this company that had my father’s name on the door, and my fingerprints on everything else because it was what I hoped to inherit.
He had founded it with a strong vision, and I had taken that foundation and built it into something neither of us had fully anticipated when I came on board fresh out of college, because I had more ambition than he knew what to do with.
And now I felt as if that might be slipping away.
Erica disappeared and moments later my father filled the doorway. I gestured to the chair across from my desk, and he took my cue and sat down.
“Sutton,” he began after a deep breath. “I appreciate you making time.”
“You didn’t give me much choice,” I replied, hoping my voice didn’t give away my nerves. I remained standing for a moment longer than necessary before taking my seat. A small power play, but I needed whatever edge I could get.
He cleared his throat. “I wanted you to hear this from me first. Before the announcement.”
My hands remained folded yet perfectly still on my desk. “Go ahead.”
“Ashcroft Group is acquiring Prescott Vantage.”
Six words. Just six simple words that dismantled everything I’d built.
I didn’t say a word and made sure to keep my expression blank.
I could see he was waiting for questions, for protest, for anything that would give him an opening to deliver what I assumed was his carefully rehearsed explanation for why he was doing this.
I gave him nothing.
He filled the void predictably. “The terms are favorable. The board voted unanimously. Our brand identity will be maintained, and operations will continue largely unchanged.”
“When?” I asked. I wanted to get straight to the point and not the other bullshit that I’m sure he was ready to throw at me.
“The papers were signed yesterday. Public announcement tomorrow at nine.”
Yesterday. While I’d been finalizing client proposals, my father had been signing away my future. Fucking excellent.
“Cain Ashcroft will be here personally for the announcement,” my father added, watching me carefully.
I felt something crack inside me. Not my composure and I was proud of myself for not showing how I felt in reality. But I felt as if I got hit in the gut because the news almost made me sick. Cain Ashcroft. Here. Tomorrow.
My father had sold us to Cain Ashcroft.
“How long have you known this was happening?” I asked.
“We’ve been in talks off and on for months.”
Of course he had. “Months,” I repeated, the word feeling like sandpaper on my tongue. “And you never thought to mention it to me outside of a phone call several days ago that was vague as hell?”
“Sutton, there are confidentiality agreements, legal considerations—”
“I’m your daughter,” I cut him off. “This was supposed to be my company.”
His expression hardened and I knew I’d touched a sore spot but that didn’t matter anymore. “Prescott Vantage is my company, Sutton. I founded it. I built it.”
“And I’ve spent the last decade transforming it,” I countered, feeling heat rise in my chest. “You hired me and I turned it into something that apparently Cain Ashcroft wants badly enough to make an offer.”
My father shifted in his seat and I saw his posture soften slightly because he knew I was right. “This is a good deal. The best outcome for everyone involved.”
“For everyone except me,” I said, standing up. I couldn’t sit still anymore. I moved to the window, needing the physical distance between him and me before I launched myself over the desk and did something I might regret. “You could have told me. You should have told me.”
“Would it have changed anything?” he asked.
I turned to face him. “Yes. I could have prepared. I could have—” I stopped myself. What exactly? Fought it? Found another buyer? Bought him out myself? The truth was that once my father and the board had made up their minds, my options were limited.
“Cain was very persuasive.” He paused and I watched as something crossed his face that I couldn’t quite name. “And I know Ashcroft Group has resources we need to compete at the next level. He has assured me that your position is secure.”
I nearly laughed at that. Cain Ashcroft’s assurances meant nothing. The man was infamous for restructuring companies until they were unrecognizable, keeping only what served his purposes.
“Did he tell you that before or after he had you sign the papers?” I asked.
“It was before anything was signed, if that means anything.”
“I see.” I let those two words hang between us because what was there left to say?
My father had sold my future without consulting me, and the man who was taking it was going to be here tomorrow.
I needed to process this, but not with the man I viewed as a traitor sitting across from me looking for me to forgive him for what he’d done.
“Sutton, I know this isn’t what you expected—”
“I need you to leave.” My voice was steady, but inside I was collapsing in on myself.
He looked surprised, as if he’d expected me to eventually nod along with his explanation or get angry. Anything but indifference. “We should discuss this further. The transition period—”
“Not now.” I held up my hand. “I can’t do this right now.”
My father stood slowly, hesitating like he wanted to say more. I turned back to the window, giving him my back instead of my full attention. I couldn’t look at him directly, not when I was this close to losing my shit.
“Tomorrow’s meeting is at eight-thirty with the announcement coming thirty minutes later,” he said to my back. “Conference Room A.”
I nodded once, but I didn’t give him the benefit of my full attention. I heard him sigh heavily just before he walked out of my office. When I heard the soft click of my door closing, it was then that everything snapped.
For sixty seconds, I allowed myself to feel everything.
Betrayal, rage, fear all crashed over me in waves.
My hands gripped the edge of the windowsill until my knuckles turned white.
Cain Ashcroft. The name repeated in my head like a warning bell.
The man was a corporate predator who dismantled companies in order to extract what he wanted and didn’t give a damn about the rest.
And tomorrow he would be here, in my building, announcing that Prescott Vantage, the company I’d put my blood, sweat, and tears into, was his latest acquisition.
I took a deep breath, then another to try to calm my racing heart. The moment of weakness passed, replaced by something harder and colder. I returned to my desk and opened my laptop. The client brief I’d been working on stared back at me; it suddenly meant nothing compared to what I was facing.
I pulled up our company’s financial reports instead, scanning through them while trying to make sense out of all of this. What had Ashcroft seen that made us valuable? What was his angle?
But nothing in our statements had changed, which meant Ashcroft saw something I was missing.
Was it our client list? Our intellectual property?
Or was it just another move in whatever elaborate chess game he was playing that I wanted no part of?
I needed to understand his strategy before I could formulate my own.
Because I would have a plan. I hadn’t spent a decade building this place into something remarkable only to watch it be carved up and distributed among Ashcroft’s existing holdings.
If Cain thought I would smile politely and accept whatever role he deigned to preserve for me, he was about to learn otherwise.