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8: The Woman I Can’t Have

last update Last Updated: 2025-11-08 23:45:52

|| Slade ||

"Carissa has thirty-five percent of the company," Cale said, setting the laptop in front of me. The screen displayed a detailed, real-time breakdown of the company’s equity distribution—just what I'd asked him to dig into.

Damn it. My mother had transferred a large portion of her shares to Carissa, leaving herself with only five percent. Beatrice had not only defied me, she had done it in a way that jeopardized my control.

I still had more shares than Carissa, but thirty-five percent was enough to sway the board if she allied with other minority shareholders. That could give her effective control over key decisions. I couldn’t allow that. I had saved this company from the ground up, and I wasn’t going to be a puppet in my own empire.

I had to find a way to get those shares back, but Carissa wouldn’t part with them willingly. She was too calculated, too aware of the leverage she now held over the Pierce family. And her insistence that I marry her daughter made it clear she
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