Chapter 20
ALEX
Jane’s office was barely big enough for both of us, and the second I stepped fully inside, it confirmed something I’d suspected from the moment I’d met her. The board hadn’t given her the COO position out of respect or faith.
They’d done it because they’d wanted to keep what they deemed to be an enemy close. Close enough to watch but also to bury. This wasn’t an executive suite. It was containment.
Fury bubbled up in my chest as I looked around the windowless shoebox with just enough room for a desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet that had seen better decades.
Jane Thayer could have worked anywhere. She could have taken one executive bonus and invested her way into a majority vote on this board if she’d wanted to.
Instead, she’d come back to Thayer based on nothing but loyalty and a promise. It made me want to rip her board’s goddamn heads off, but she turned on me, snarling like she wanted to rip my head clean off, her hands braced on the edge of her desk.
“What did you do?” she asked, her voice shaking with fury that matched the aggression swirling around my insides. “What right did you have to corner my board members, Alex?”
I cut her off before she could really get going.
“This is what I’m entitled to as your husband.
” Her eyes flashed, but I didn’t back up even an inch.
“I have a stake in this now. I came here to introduce myself, but the meeting dissolved into a dick-measuring contest so fast, I’m honestly shocked I didn’t have one of them pinned against one of those walls of windows, threatening to push him through it by the time you arrived. ”
She scoffed. “This is about ego?”
“No,” I said. “It’s about power.”
I didn’t tell her this, but it was more about the power they didn’t want her to have. Those men despised Jane. They were the typical board member type, too rich, too sexist, and too set in their ways to see her as more than just a pretty face.
At least, that was what I’d thought. I’d realized since that I hadn’t been entirely right. Partially, sure, but not completely. In reality, they saw her as a threat to the system they had in place and they hated that she had any power whatsoever to destroy it.
“The power to do what?” she snapped. “If you all want a dick-measuring contest so bad, then call them back in and I’ll grab a ruler.”
I snorted. “You wouldn’t need one to know the truth.”
“And what truth is that, Alex? What truth do you think you’ve uncovered by ambushing my board?”
I ignored the jab, though I was tempted to act like a child and just whip it out so she could see for herself. I knew she’d probably chop it off if I tried. More importantly, I knew this reaction was mostly born from fear, confusion, and perhaps a sense of betrayal.
Right now, all she needed from me was to be upfront, not a glimpse of my dick—no matter how much it turned me on when she got like this, so fiery and real. So I leveled with her.
“All they want is to keep Thayer functioning just well enough to pad their own pockets while giving themselves the opportunity to fish for a buyer. An acquisition. Piecing the company out altogether instead of putting a functional CEO in place.”
Her expression shifted into a mask of shock, but I kept going anyway. “Their current choice of CEO is allowing them to do exactly that, but now, I’m involved and they’re scared.”
She straightened, folding her arms tightly over her chest as her chin lifted in defiance. “Of course, you’re only interested in Thayer’s well-being now because you’ll do exactly what they want. Sell out.”
I scoffed before I could stop myself, a harsh sound that bounced off the walls. Then I laughed, but it was bitter and humorless. Nothing about this exchange was going at all the way I’d thought it might. “Is that what you think of me?”
She didn’t answer and I stepped closer, crowding her space until her back brushed the edge of her desk. I didn’t touch her, but I might as well have.
“Look around if you don’t believe me about their intentions,” I said. “This is what they think you’re worth, yet you’re the only reason Thayer is worth a single dime as it stands. They won’t even give you one fucking window in a building made of glass.”
Her throat bobbed as she glanced around almost reluctantly, like she didn’t want to, but also couldn’t help just checking if something had changed since we’d walked in, but nope.
It was the same cramped, dark space filled with secondhand furniture it’d probably been since the day she’d first started here.
Her gaze snapped back to mine and I narrowed my own, still not giving her an inch of space. It was time she opened her eyes to what was really going on here. “You’ve spent the last year trying to dig this company out of a hole while the board buries you alive.”
She opened her mouth, but I went on. “I’ve seen your projections. The contracts lost during your father’s trial that you’re trying to revive. The long game you’ve gotten caught up in. It’s child’s play and you know it.”
Her lips parted in outrage. “Excuse me?”
“You know better,” I said. “But you haven’t had the resources or the connections to make the moves I know you can make.”
“That’s incredibly arrogant,” she shot back.
“It’s also accurate, and you hate that, don’t you?”
She pushed off the desk, trying to create space. “You don’t get to rewrite the course of my career just because you married me. You don’t have the answers to everything, Alex.”
“No, but I think you do. Insofar as this company is concerned, anyway. I’m just sick of watching you fight with one hand tied behind your back.”
Her eyes flashed with indignant rage. “You don’t know what it’s like to build something when everyone is waiting for you to fail.”
“Do you want to know why they’re scared now?” I asked. “It’s because they thought they had you cornered and now there’s me.”
She let out a bark of laughter. “Oh, please. This is about control for you.”
“If it were, I’d be backing their acquisition plan.”
She stiffened. “What?”
“I told you, Jane. They’re keen on an acquisition. Selling Thayer off piece by piece. Steel here. IP there. Legacy gone.”
Her face drained of color, so I kept going before she fainted. “I’ve already shut it down, Killer. Hard.”
She stared at me, searching for the lie. “Do you think that means I should trust you?”
“No,” I said. “I think you should use me. You already know how this world works, Jane. Stop wasting time pretending you don’t.”
She glared at me. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Trent.”
Her sneer was instant. “Trent Shepard is a rancher—”
“Trent Shepard is the son and heir of an oil baron worth five hundred billion dollars. That’ll be his one day.
Regardless of whether he wants it or not.
” I watched her go completely still, my eyes moving from one of those gorgeous grays to the other.
“Do you know what Thayer could fetch if you sign a contract with his family?”
When she didn’t answer me, I did it for her, even if it was bullshit.
She knew this. She just didn’t think she could have it.
“Billions. At least a billion dollars in steel over the course of forty-eight months, but you know that already, don’t you?
I’ve seen your projections, Jane. I know you know. ”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said tightly. “I don’t have the connections or the right to approach—”
“I do,” I cut in. “And you will.”
She let out another snort of humorless laughter. “Excuse me?”
“You will,” I repeated, my voice flat and unyielding. “Because if your board doesn’t play the game by my rules, I’ll take everything. I’ll pull the rug out from under each and every one of them, and I made that crystal clear to them today.”
“While you sent me to a day spa!”
I laughed, too, but it came out wrong. It was much too rough and much too angry beneath the surface. “You don’t take care of yourself.”
She opened her mouth to argue, already bristling, but I didn’t let her, doubling down on my argument instead.
“You don’t, Jane. You wear yourself thin keeping the lights on at home and at Thayer.
You work until your fingers bleed, then you go home and play mom to your youngest brother and your own mother.
You haven’t stopped since the day your father blew everything up. ”
Her face hardened. “That’s not—”
“No one is taking care of you, Jane,” I said quietly. “Not even you.”
That did it. I saw it the second my words landed with an unmistakable ring of truth. The weight of them cracked clean through her composure, her shoulders hitching and her eyes suddenly going bright and glassy, the ice queen mask shattering right in front of me.
“Don’t,” she said, but her voice wobbled.
I stepped closer even closer. “Your steel could be everywhere. Part of every high rise both here and overseas. Built into every ship, every oil well, and every car and truck rolling off a line.”
She shook her head faintly. “You’re not listening. I don’t have—”
“You will be worth more than me,” I said bluntly. “That’s all I want.”
Her chin lifted, her eyes flashing once more, even through the tears. “Because you benefit.”
“Because you’re my wife,” I said simply.
She rolled her eyes, tears welling on her lids. “God, you’re impossible. Do you ever listen?”
“Do you not believe me?” I countered instead.
She laughed weakly. “I barely know you.”
“Then know this,” I said, looking intently into her eyes so she knew none of this was even almost a lie.
“I was born into this world. I didn’t have to fight for a thing, not my right to run Westwood and Sons, not my money, not the clothes on my back or my tower at the St. Regis. I was bred, born, and raised for it.”
I reached up, sliding my thumb across her cheek to catch a tear before it could fall. “You fought for everything you have, Killer, but what you have isn’t nearly enough for how hard you’ve fought.”
She tried to pull away, probably overwhelmed, but I didn’t let her. I closed the last bit of distance between us and gathered her in a hug before she could retreat into herself again. It was innocent, simple comradery, and I hated the way she crumbled because she’d never even had that before.
Right now, she felt to me like the same steel her company produced, strong, forged under impossible pressure, but left out in the elements too long. Rusted. Beaten. Ready to crack if someone hit it just right.
“I’m stepping in now,” I murmured against her hair. “I’m going to feed you, because you eat like you’re starving. I’m buying you a fucking car. I’m going to keep scheduling mornings at the spa so you have an hour just to breathe.”
She let out a broken laugh against my chest before I pulled back, took her face into my hands, and looked directly into her eyes. “And then, I’m making you CEO and you’re going to make us a billion dollars.”
Her eyes searched mine, her expression raw and unguarded, her voice barely above a whisper when she spoke again. “You don’t get to decide my life.”
“No, but I get to stand beside you while you do what you were always meant to do with it.”
She exhaled, long and shaky, and for a moment neither of us moved, but then I took her hand in a firm grip and finally stepped away from her.
“But before we get to any of that, we’re going to lunch.
Let’s go, Killer. I can’t wait to hear all about your morning at the spa.
Then I’ll tell you about the plans we have to get you everywhere you could ever want to go. ”