Chapter 6 #3
The conference room freezes into a goddamn cemetery.
Not a breath, not a shuffle. Every suit around this table knows what I know - when Granddad gets that look in his eye, that fucking gleam, we're all about to get dragged into his madness.
But Jesus Christ, the man's insanity has built empires.
While Harvard MBAs were calculating risk assessments, Granddad was setting fire to the rulebook and pissing on the ashes.
His instincts weren't just good - they were supernatural.
A fucking Scottish orphan kid tossed onto American shores at SEVEN, sleeping on his distant cousin's floor in Chicago's armpit, and by age 23 he's running a factory!
He did that with brass balls, and that terrifying Kensington conviction.
The board members sitting here? They'd follow him off a cliff.
Hell, I would too. Because when Granddad leaps, he doesn't fall - he fucking flies.
"Who is this woman?" I finally ask, my jaw clenched so tight I can feel a vein throbbing in my temple.
My fists ball at my sides. Some random nobody is going to hijack my life?
Fuck that. I'll play the part in public—the Instagram announcement dripping with fake adoration, the engagement party where I'll smile until my face cracks, the wedding where I'll say vows that mean absolutely nothing—but behind closed doors?
Ice. Cold. Silence. She'll be sleeping in another wing of the house.
I'll make sure she feels like the intruder she is.
And the second—the very second—that merger paperwork hits my desk and I still have “CEO" on my business cards, I'm cutting her loose with whatever cash it takes to make her disappear.
Granddad thinks he's got me cornered? Watch me.
I'll have every major shareholder eating from my hand before the ink on our marriage license dries.
I'll find their weaknesses, their vices, their secrets—I don't care if I have to spend nights digging through their trash.
When I'm done, they'll be so firmly in my pocket that Granddad won't be able to touch me when I divorce this woman.
I love the old man, but I'll burn this whole company to the ground before I let him or anyone puppet-master my life.
When this is over, he'll never try to fuck with me again.
Granddad's smug smile makes my blood boil.
The old man has no fucking clue what hurricane I'm about to unleash.
God help this woman—whoever the hell she is—because I'm going to make every single day of her existence a waking nightmare.
A year from now, that self-satisfied grin will be wiped clean off his face.
He'll be drowning in guilt for dragging some innocent woman into the toxic wasteland of our family drama. And I'll make damn sure of it.
"She's a lovely girl I met a few months ago when I was visiting the UCLA hospital.
" Granddad's voice trembles with conviction.
His name is etched in gold on half the wings at UCLA—the place where his first wife, Gracie, fought and lost to cancer at just twenty-one.
The memory still burns in him like a live coal.
They treated her like royalty in those final days, and he's bled money into their coffers ever since, a debt he can never fully repay.
When he walks those sterile corridors now, doctors practically genuflect.
"She was visiting her mother—cancer too—and the moment our eyes met, something seized me.
She's ancient inside, Max. Pure. I haven't slept right thinking about her, and three nights ago, I woke up drenched in sweat with absolute certainty.
She belongs with you. I'd stake my life on it. "
Well, this just keeps getting batshittier by the moment.
She's a complete rando. To both of us, apparently.
"Granddad," I say, my voice steadier than I expected.
The fury that had been boiling inside me has burned itself out, leaving nothing but exhaustion in its wake.
"Most grandparents slip a number into their grandson's pocket at Thanksgiving.
They don't arrange marriages like we're living in some medieval kingdom. Couldn’t you arrange a coffee date like a normal grandparent?”
He shakes his head. "No. You've never given women like her a chance, Max.
Your dating history speaks for itself—actresses with magazine covers, models with billboards on Sunset.
You see a woman without a glam squad and your eyes slide right past her.
" He leans forward, his weathered hands clasped together.
"This time, you can't walk away after one dinner.
My gut says you need to be forced to see beyond the surface, and that's exactly what this marriage will do.
Sometimes the right path isn't the one we'd choose for ourselves. "
I scan the boardroom and catch the knowing glances.
They've seen the Instagram posts—me with Alessandra at Cannes, Vivienne at the Met Gala, Sophia on that yacht in Santorini.
Perfect bodies, perfect smiles, perfect bank accounts.
And me, perfect at walking away when they inevitably start planning our futures.
The tabloids have branded me "Hollywood's Most Eligible Commitment-Phobe" for a reason.
These board members have deleted more of my PR disasters than I can count, so watching Granddad manipulate me into matrimony like some sixteenth-century royal merger hardly shocks them.
If anything, the old man's heavy-handed tactics make him the villain in this particular boardroom drama, not me.
I finally sigh. “Okay. What is this mystery woman’s name?”
“Celeste Jenkins.”
Oh. fuck.