In the Billionaire's Kitchen

"You have three days to find a husband."

I almost choked on my coffee when my sister decided it's fine to casually drop a bomb like that. Amelia chuckled on the other line and I couldn’t help but think about how cruel she is for finding this amusing.

“What?” I asked, annoyed, “You do realize you’re not any better than me, yes? Or is your very special friend, Samantha, coming to the ball with you?”

Silence. Then fake coughs. Amelia is not Amelia if she’s not dramatic.

“Point is,” she cleared her throat like her coughs were real, making me shake my head, “You would need to talk to that Lambrecht guy again. Did you hear that they just closed that long-awaited deal to expand to Asia today? Under him? Imagine what the fool’s mouth can do at the ball.”

“Well, shit.”

“Exactly.”

“I am not going to find someone in three days, Mel. Even our parents had a week before they got married.”

I massaged my temple. My head ached at the thought of dealing with Lambrecht’s loud mouth the entire party.

“You're not being easy, Miss Ashford.”

“You should listen to the experts around you, Miss Ashford.”

“Keep your stockholders happy or I might just steal them from you, Miss Ashford.”

As if. It had only taken me three months to realize that responding with results and revenue instead of retorts worked best.

“You need to try. It's better for it to be on your own terms than theirs.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Wonderful. The Patron Saint of Loveless Marriages and Rushed Contracts should drop a man by my porch in the morning.”

“You know dad would try and arrange you at the party, El. Like he always does. The problem is, I've heard him and mom talking about it and it might just get harder for you to push them away this time now that you’re… older.”

“Ouch.”

“You’ll say far more than that when you’re suddenly served with a contract at the party.”

The worst thing is, she’s right. We’ve seen that happen in person, right before our eyes, and it’s not something I want to experience for myself. I’ve seen helpless daughters at parties, the twinkle in their eyes suddenly getting stolen by the reality that it’s more important to marry than be happy.

My assistant knocked gently on the glass wall of my office, getting my attention as she pointed to her wristwatch, signalling my scheduled visit for a meeting at the Yorkford Bank in an hour. I nodded at her and she threw me a thumbs up before standing straighter, her papers and infamous color-coded notes with their color-coded tabs tucked in her arm. Those color-coded tabs had probably saved me millions of dollars in efficiency.

“I need to go, Mels. Meeting in an hour,” I took a long sigh, “Maybe I can skip the ball. I have a flight to Estonia the next morning, if I can recall correctly.”

“You wouldn’t dare. Your mom and dad will lose their shit. They might just get you married without your knowledge. Next thing you know, you have landed back here with a different legal last name.”

I almost let out a bitter laugh at the way that she said ‘your’ instead of ‘our’ when she reminded me about our parents.

“Your mom and dad lost their shit a long time ago. Another disadvantage to marriage.”

Amelia laughed and I can just picture her shaking her head, “Silly me. Bye, El. Take care and see you at the ball. Preferably with a husband by your side because I am not ready for the alternative shit to go down.”

I snorted before hanging up. I slipped my phone into my blazer pocket before pushing myself out of my chair.

“Call my lawyer today. Please ask her to draft a Marital Agreement form,” I told my assistant as soon as I stepped out of my office.

Without looking up from her tablet, I saw her face scrunch up.

“Consider it done,” she said after a few clicks, her face now emotionlessly professional, “Should I have her consider your draft from 2024?”

Of course she remembers to ask me that. I scoffed in amusement, “I mentioned that to you once.”

Georgia looked up now, giving me a small smile as she seemed to be flattered by my comment about her memory.

“Miss, it's not everyday that my boss would tell me to keep a copy of a marriage contract just in case.” 

Fair enough.

She grinned and fell into step beside me, clutching one of her infamous color-coded binders.

We rode the elevator down in comfortable silence. We were greeted with nods and smiles on the ground floor, some noticeably new employees straightening up their ties as they looked away. That instantly made me frown slightly. It made me wonder if someone oriented them about the crazy, monster female CEO who eats newbies for breakfast. So far from what I had, I only had cereal this morning.

Gerald was already waiting outside. He stepped out of the car the moment he saw us.

"Good afternoon, Miss Eleanor."

“Good afternoon, Gerald. How’s the family?” I asked as he opened the door for me.

“Very good, Miss Eleanor. All very healthy.”

I smiled at him, the door to the car slammed gently. Manhattan rolled past the window in a blur of glass and steel.

Georgia handed me a tablet without a word.

Quarterly lending reports. I skimmed the numbers once before stopping.

“Approval times increased.”

Georgia blinked before nodding.

“Yes, by three business days it seems.”

“Which means holiday businesses are receiving funding after they've already missed their busiest weeks.”

She looked down at the report again. I fixed the sleeves of my blazer as I watched her face carefully.

“...That wasn't in the summary.”

“It didn't need to be. It shouldn't have to be.”

Yorkford Bank looked exactly how banks liked to look. Marble floors. Polished brass. Expensive enough to make customers trust them with their money.

The branch manager nearly sprinted across the lobby. He crossed half the lobby in under ten seconds. Either someone had warned him I was coming, or Yorkford rewarded cardio.

“Miss Ashford. It's an honor.”

I offered a polite smile.

“They're waiting for you upstairs.”

Forty-five minutes later, three executives had suggested reducing holiday loan approvals. A fourth suggested raising interest rates. Yet none of them addressed the actual problem. I closed the report with a slow breath.

“You're trying to solve defaults.” The room nodded at that. I nodded once too before asking the most important question of this meeting, “Then why are we discussing approvals?”

Silence. Then one executive cleared his throat.

“Less lending means less risk.”

I shook my head, “Less lending also means fewer customers.”

Another silence. I continued.

"How many applicants default because their businesses fail? And how many fail because we approved them too late?"

Papers shuffled around the room. Someone searched for the number. Nobody had it.

"Exactly."

I stood and walked toward the large screen displaying the quarterly figures.

"Risk doesn't disappear because we reject people. It simply becomes someone else's opportunity."

Nobody spoke.

Good.

They were listening now. If they started with that, we could’ve saved at least 20 minutes and my sanity. By the time the meeting ended, the proposal had been rewritten. The room had been filled with heavy tension because of certain disagreements but no one else argued with my proposal after seeing the statistics on screen.

Mr. James Vowles, one of the stockholders, approached me as we all exited the boardroom.

“Your solution is not aggressive enough. Your father would’ve doubled the interest rates to filter through applicants, giving less loans for the same amount of revenue we’ll acquire.”

I almost laughed out loud. Georgia noticed, her tablet now the most interesting thing to ever exist in the universe.

“Are we going to forget what happened with the trust rating of Ashford Links in 2017 then? When your philosophy became my father’s policy because you were his advisor? What happened to that?” I asked, stopping in front of the elevator as me and Georgia waited for it to open. Mr. Vowles opened his mouth slightly, then closed it again. I shook my head slightly, stepping inside the elevator that just opened, “Calm resolutions with aggressive results, Mr. Vowles. Both shall prove to be the best as usual.”

Mr. Vowles just scoffed with a slight amusement in his eyes, “The things they teach in business school these days,” he muttered under his breath, enough for me to hear, as he walked away while shaking his head.

That’s funny coming from someone who went to business school at the time the pyramids of Giza were still getting built.

The elevator closed and Georgia snorted beside me. I watched her reflection from the elevator mirrors and I raised my eyebrow at her. She shook her head with disbelief in her face.

My father will surely hear about this. The elevator opened and I took a deep breath before stepping outside. I solved one business problem in one meeting. Now I have to think how I’m going to walk to a party with a husband beside me in a span of three days or I’m married off to a rich bastard who thinks he’s above me. That might just be the hardest problem I will ever have to face.

I'm screwed.