Chapter 4 Cornered

~Ethan's POV~

The elevator ride to the executive floor felt longer than it had any right to be. I kept staring at my own reflection in the steel doors, and I barely recognized the man staring back. My tie was crooked. My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

I didn't wait for my assistant. I walked straight past her desk, into my office, and locked the door behind me before I even took off my coat.

Then I called Griffin.

"Marcus, I need you to tell me there's a way out of this," I said the second he picked up. "The Ashford stipulation. There has to be a clause, a loophole, anything."

"Ethan, slow down."

"I don't have time to slow down! Selene just sent me a photo of my wife through a hospital window. She's threatening Victoria's life, Marcus. Tell me I signed something with an exit."

There was a pause on the line. Not a good pause.

"I drafted contingencies into that contract myself," he said carefully. "But so did Ashford's legal team. This wasn't a rushed document, Ethan. It was built specifically to survive exactly this moment. The moment you'd want out."

"So there's nothing."

"There's nothing clean."

I pressed my palm flat against my desk, trying to stop the tremor running through my arm. "What if I just refuse to sign the final paperwork. What happens then?"

"Then the default clause triggers automatically," Marcus said. "Within seventy-two hours, every creditor with a claim against Cole Technologies gets first access to what's left of the company. Not renegotiation. Liquidation. And that's not a threat, that's what's written into the fine print you already signed weeks ago."

"Seventy-two hours."

"Your employees find out by Friday morning that they don't have jobs anymore. All of them. Every department."

I sat down slowly, because standing suddenly felt impossible.

"There's no version of this where I just walk away," I said, more to myself than to him.

"Not one I can find yet," Marcus admitted. "Give me a few days. I'll keep looking."

I hung up without saying goodbye. I don't even remember if I said thank you.

—------------

I was still sitting there, staring at nothing, when someone knocked.

"Come in."

Rachel stepped inside, and one look at her face told me this wasn't about the merger schedule.

"Sir, I need to tell you something before you hear it from someone else."

"Tell me what."

She swallowed hard. "Victoria called my desk line this afternoon. She asked me directly who Selene Ashford is."

My whole body went cold. "And what did you tell her?"

"I didn't tell her anything about the contract," Rachel said quickly. "I swear to you, I didn't. But she was crying, and she kept saying she was your wife and she deserved the truth, and I…" She stopped herself. "I told her she needed to get the answer from you. Directly. Before the merger closes."

"You told her there's a merger."

"I told her there's something to ask you about. That's all."

"That's not all, Rachel!" My voice came out louder than I meant it to, and she flinched. "Do you understand what you just did? You confirmed there's something to find. You basically handed her the first thread."

"I know," she said, and her eyes were wet now. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do. She sounded like she was falling apart, and I couldn't just lie to her face."

I wanted to be furious. Some part of me was furious. But another part of me, the part that still remembered who I used to be before all of this, understood exactly why she'd said it.

"I'm not firing you," I said finally, "But I need you to sign an amendment to your NDA. Effective immediately. No contact with Victoria regarding company matters, none, until this merger closes."

Rachel nodded, blinking back tears, and I slid the paper across my desk toward her. I hated myself the entire time she signed it. I hated the man I was becoming more with every hour that passed.

—--------------

By the time I got home, the house was dark except for the foyer light, and Mother was standing under it with her arms crossed like she'd been carved out of the same marble as the staircase behind her.

"Why is Victoria asking questions about the Ashford business?" she said, before I even had my coat off.

"How do you already know about that?"

"Because I make it my business to know things, Ethan, unlike you apparently, who lets his own wife find out about a merger by herself."

Something in me snapped. Four years of swallowing my anger around her, and it just snapped.

"This is your fault mother, You're the one who kept pushing me toward Selene. You're the one who told me over and over that Victoria was bringing nothing but bad luck into this family. I signed that stipulation because you wouldn't stop reminding me every single day that the company was dying and it was my duty to save it."

Mother didn't even blink. "And I would remind you again tomorrow if I have to."

"She almost died today, Mother! On an operating table, trying to give me a child, and I wasn't even in the room because I was in a car with Selene Ashford being threatened!"

"She cannot give you an heir. Six failed cycles, Ethan. I watched you almost lose everything you built once already for a woman who cannot even do the one thing a wife is supposed to do. I will not watch you lose it a second time."

"Don't," my voice shaking now for a different reason. "Don't you dare talk about her like that."

"I'm only saying what's true."

"Get out of my way."

She didn't move for a second, just studied my face like she was trying to find the son she used to be able to control. Then she stepped aside, silent, and I walked past her toward the door.

I grabbed my coat off the hook. I decided right there, standing in my own foyer, that I was done letting other people control what Victoria knew and didn't know. I was going back to that hospital tonight, and I was going to tell her everything myself. The contract. Selene. All of it. Before anyone else got the chance to twist it first.

My hand was already on the door handle when my phone rang.

Not my regular line. My private line. The one almost nobody had.

I frowned at the unfamiliar number on the screen, figured it was a wrong number, and answered anyway.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Cole." The voice on the other end was smooth, unhurried. "Harold Ashford would like a word. Now would be best."

My blood went still in my veins.

"Who is this?"

"Look outside, Mr. Cole."

I turned toward the window beside the door, and there it was. A black car, idling just past my gate, headlights cutting through the darkness like it had been sitting there for a long time already.

Waiting for me.