Chloe had little time to ponder it before Elias launched directly into business. There was no small talk, no easing into the role. He swiped on his screen, then slid a tablet across the vast desk toward her.
— «The Orion Group,» he stated. «Their CEO, Marcus Thorne, wants to push through a new manufacturing contract. It involves outsourcing the bulk of our domestic labor to overseas facilities. It means thousands of layoffs.»
Chloe quickly scanned the file, a knot forming in her stomach.
— «And you want me to do what, exactly?»
— «I want you to convince him not to.» Elias’s gaze was unblinking. «I want you to do what I hired you for. Read the person, not just the spreadsheet.»
She leaned back, crossing her arms.
— «Let me get this straight. You dragged me out of my life because you think I can just smile at a bunch of billionaires and convince them to suddenly develop a conscience?»
Elias didn’t react.
— «No,» he said, leaning forward slightly. «I brought you in because you understand a fundamental principle that they have forgotten.»
Chloe narrowed her eyes.
— «And what’s that?»
— «That people with nothing left to lose are the most dangerous opponents.»
The words resonated deep within her, an unspoken truth she had known her entire life. She stared at him for a long moment before shaking her head.
— «You know, for a guy who runs a tech empire, you speak in a lot of riddles.»
For the first time, she saw the corner of his mouth twitch, the barest hint of a smile that vanished as quickly as it appeared. The moment was over.
— «The meeting is at noon,» he said, rising from his chair. «Try to be on time.»
Chloe rolled her eyes but held her tongue. She had a job to do.
The boardroom on the 50th floor felt like a cryogenic chamber, all cold steel and unforgiving glass, a space designed to intimidate. Chloe sat at Elias’s side at the long, mahogany table, facing three men in impeccably tailored suits. Each of them exuded the effortless confidence that comes from a lifetime of knowing you can buy and sell people’s futures with the stroke of a pen.
The man leading their delegation, Marcus Thorne, was in his sixties, with silver hair slicked back in a style that screamed old money and an arrogance that was a birthright. He barely acknowledged her presence. Chloe knew his type intimately—men who only saw value in people who were reflections of themselves. She let none of her thoughts show on her face.
Elias began the meeting with his usual brutal efficiency.
— «You want to relocate production. You claim it will maximize profits and streamline operations.» He paused, letting the statement hang in the air. «I say it will gut the workforce that has been the backbone of this company for fifteen years.»
Thorne offered a slow, bloodless smile that never reached his cold eyes.
— «You take this far too personally, Elias. This isn’t about sentiment. It’s just business.»
Chloe’s hands curled into fists beneath the table. It’s just business. She had been hearing that excuse her whole life. It was just business when her landlord doubled the rent to make way for a new high-rise. It was just business when her mother’s textile plant closed down to find cheaper labor south of the border. It was just business when corporations like this hollowed out entire communities and had the audacity to call it a strategy.
She smiled, but it was a smile with edges of steel.
— «It’s funny,» she said, her voice calm and even. «It’s always ‘just business’ until it’s your own livelihood on the chopping block.»
Thorne’s eyes finally snapped to her, his focus sharp and irritated. Elias remained silent, watching.
Thorne let out a short, dismissive puff of air, as if swatting away a fly.
— «And you are?»
Chloe did not waver.
— «Chloe Davis. Vance Tower.»
His eyes swept over her, a quick, contemptuous appraisal, and she saw the precise moment he wrote her off. She didn’t care. Being underestimated was her secret weapon. Thorne leaned back, making a dismissive gesture with his hand.
— «Look, sweetheart, I appreciate the passion. But we’re talking about market realities. We are talking about numbers on a page.»
Sweetheart. The condescension was a physical thing. Chloe’s jaw tightened. She leaned forward, mirroring his posture.
— «Okay,» she said, her voice cool and dangerously soft. «Let’s talk about numbers.»
She slid a thin file across the polished table.
— «This is a five-year projection based on what happens after you offshore this kind of skilled labor. Yes, you see an initial drop in overhead. But within three years, as demand for that labor rises in the new market, your costs will skyrocket. You will then spend millions on restructuring, retraining, and mitigating the public relations nightmare when the media narrative becomes ‘Vance Tower Betrays American Workers for Foreign Profits.'» She tapped a perfectly manicured finger on the cover of the file. «That isn’t a guess. That is a statistical certainty based on the last ten companies that tried this exact move.»
Thorne stared at the file but didn’t touch it. Chloe held his gaze, refusing to be the first to look away.
— «You can make the strategic decision now,» she continued, her voice unwavering, «or you can try to explain to your shareholders in two years why your short-term savings just decimated their long-term growth.»
The silence in the room was absolute. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, Thorne picked up the file and began to read. Elias didn’t smile, but Chloe could feel the tectonic shift in the room’s power dynamic. She had just changed the entire equation.
Thorne set the document down, his face a mask.
— «We will re-evaluate our proposal.»
Elias nodded once.
— «See that you do.»
The meeting concluded soon after. As Thorne and his team filed out of the room, Chloe felt Elias’s intense gaze on her. She turned to face him.
— «Well?»
He studied her for a long moment before speaking.
— «I knew there was a reason I hired you.»
A small, genuine smirk touched her lips.
— «Damn right there was.»
And for the first time since she had walked through the doors of Vance Tower, she felt, deep in her bones, that she truly belonged there.
Two months at Vance Tower had forged a new kind of confidence in Chloe. She had learned to navigate its treacherous currents, to hold her own in a world that was designed to exclude her. She had gone head-to-head with men like Marcus Thorne and emerged not just unscathed, but victorious. She had proven to Elias, and more importantly, to herself, that her presence there was not some act of corporate charity. She had earned her place.
But in the rarefied air of the corporate stratosphere, victories are often fleeting. The company was now facing a crisis. Chloe was facing a crisis. And someone had just expertly set her up to be the scapegoat.
She was returning from a tense meeting with a new client when Ava intercepted her in the hallway.
— «We have a situation,» Ava said, her voice clipped and devoid of its usual professional calm.
Chloe frowned.
— «Define ‘situation.'»
Ava didn’t waste words. She simply handed Chloe a single sheet of paper—a printed email. Chloe’s blood ran cold as she read it. It contained a confidential company report, full of sensitive financial data, that had been leaked to a major news outlet. And the forwarding address at the bottom of the email chain was hers: cdavis@vancetower.com.
The words swam before her eyes. The air in the hallway seemed to grow thick and heavy, making it hard to breathe.
— «This isn’t me,» she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
— «I know,» Ava replied, her expression grim. «But it was designed to look like you.»
A frantic pulse began to hammer in Chloe’s ears. She knew exactly how this game was played. A black woman in a position of power in a predominantly white institution is never given the benefit of the doubt. Guilt is the default assumption. She gripped the paper, forcing herself to read it again.
— «Who’s seen this?»
— «Elias,» Ava said. «And the entire board of directors.»
Her breath caught in her throat. The board. She had fought tooth and nail to get here, and now they were preparing to eject her without a second thought.
Elias’s office felt colder than the boardroom had. Or perhaps it was just the icy stillness of his gaze. He sat at his desk, hands clasped, his face an unreadable mask. But his eyes—those piercing gray eyes—were dissecting her, weighing her, judging her.
— «Tell me I did not make a mistake,» he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
Chloe slapped the incriminating email down on his desk.
— «This was not me.»
Elias didn’t even glance at the paper. He already knew its contents.
— «I want to believe you,» he said, his voice dangerously even. «But this is a catastrophic breach, Chloe. It represents millions of dollars in market exposure. The stock is already falling. There will be federal investigations. Do you comprehend the severity of this?»
Chloe leaned forward, planting her hands on the polished surface of his desk.
— «I comprehend it perfectly. I also comprehend that I was the perfect target. The outsider. The charity case from the diner who got too big for her britches. Who is the board going to believe? Me, or one of their own who’s been playing the game for a decade?»
