Chapter 15 - The Alliance with an EnemyBy midnight, the penthouse was dead silent.
Elena and the boys were asleep in the master suite, the door locked firmly from the inside. I sat in my dark home office, nursing a glass of single-malt scotch, watching the distant lights of Manhattan twinkle through the glass.
I had screwed up. Again.
My obsession with control and suspicion had driven a wedge into the fragile trust we had spent months rebuilding. If I wanted to keep my family, I needed to fix this—not with money, not with lawyers, but with absolute transparency.
And that meant dealing with Julian Vance on his own turf.
At 6:00 AM, my private Gulfstream touched down at London Luton Airport. By 8:30 AM, I was walking into the sleek, glass-walled London headquarters of Vance Capital in the heart of Mayfair.
The receptionist didn't even have time to announce me. I bypassed her desk, pushed open the double doors of Julian’s executive office, and walked straight inside.
Julian was sitting behind a massive mahogany desk, sipping espresso. He didn't look surprised to see me. In fact, a slow, knowing smirk spread across his face as he set his cup down.
"Tobias," Julian greeted smoothly, leaning back in his leather chair. "I wondered how many hours it would take you to look at the London portfolio and lose your mind."
I walked up to his desk, placed both hands flat on the polished wood, and looked him dead in the eye.
"Let's drop the corporate games, Julian," I said evenly. "You funded her company. You backed her patent. Why?"
Julian’s smirk faded, replaced by a cold, hard seriousness that matched my own.
"Because she's brilliant," Julian answered without hesitation. "And unlike you, Tobias, I didn't see her as an extension of my corporate brand. I saw a brilliant woman who was left to die by a man too obsessed with his own reflection to notice her heart was failing."
His words stung, but I didn't flinch. I deserved every single syllable.
"I want to buy into the venture," I said quietly.
Julian blinked, genuinely caught off guard for the first time. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me," I straightened up, adjusting my cuffs. "Marrow Holdings will inject fifty million dollars into her cardiology firm as an unrestricted, non-controlling grant. No corporate oversight. No board interference. Just backing her vision."
Julian stared at me for a long, silent moment, searching my face for trickery. Slowly, a respectful nod replaced his skepticism.
May you like
"You really do love her, don't you?" Julian murmured.
"With everything I have," I replied. "Now, help me convince her I'm not an idiot."
