The conference table stretched between us like a battlefield — contracts, legal pads, untouched coffee cups growing cold. The Grantstone merger had been frozen for six months, ever since Julian Grant had collapsed during a closed-door board meeting in Zurich. No warning. No diagnosis the doctors could agree on. Just silence where the heir to one of the country’s largest biomedical conglomerates had once been.
Alive, but not awake.
A son in a bed and a billion-dollar empire with no legal hand to steer it.
The Grant family charter required a married heir before majority voting rights transferred to the next generation. Julian had signed it himself at twenty-five, back when he still strode into rooms like he owned the oxygen.
A clause meant to preserve stability.
Now it was strangling it.
Serena had been selected as his bride two years ago. She was perfect on paper — younger daughter of a respected industrialist, well-educated, photogenic, emotionally pliable. The kind of woman investors trusted to look sincere in public while letting other people make the real decisions.
Until reality arrived.