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Chapter 22: The Blackwood Machine
Veröffentlichungsdatum:
15.09.2026 01:01:09
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Oops! I Had the CEO’s Quadruplets Chapter 27: The Notebook Fills
Aurora’s POVThe notebook was almost full, and I hadn't noticed it happening.It had started life as a ninety-nine-cent thing from the drugstore, with a cover that already wanted to curl. The first line I ever put in it I wrote at four in the morning with a newborn breathing against my chest and grief drying on my face. Build a life so good I never need him again.I turned the pages now at my desk, after the shop had gone dark, and watched myself become someone.The early pages were survival. Formula versus the electric bill. Which client actually paid on time. A budget in handwriting that shook. Then the handwriting steadied. Then it began to plan. The Meridian idea, sketched and crossed out and sketched again. Juniper. Cortez Street. Client names with checkmarks beside them.And then, somewhere in the last month, without ever deciding to, I had started writing something much larger than a list of things to do.A map.Not of buildings. Of ground. Which neighborhoods in which cities w
Oops! I Had the CEO’s Quadruplets Chapter 26: Cracks in the Fairy Tale
Vanessa’s POVPeople think being with Damien Blackwood is something that happens to a woman. A prize you win once, and then simply own for the rest of your life.They have no idea how much work it takes to make it look that easy.Tonight, for instance. Forty people in the east gallery, a foundation dinner the society pages would call intimate and I would call a battlefield with better flowers. I placed every name card myself. I knew which director was feuding with which, whose wife had just filed and could not be seated near the Hartleys, which of Margaret's friends needed to be told they looked well and which needed to be told they looked young.I moved through all of it in dark green silk and made it look like breathing."You've outdone yourself," Damien murmured, his hand at the small of my back for exactly the three seconds the photographer needed. "Aldrich came around over the soup. Whatever you said to his wife.""I told her the truth. That her garden committee is the only thing
Oops! I Had the CEO’s Quadruplets Chapter 25: The Long Shot
Aurora’s POVThere were nine firms in the room, and eight of them had been doing this longer than Meridian had been alive.I counted them from a folding chair at the back of the city annex, a converted courtroom with bad light and worse coffee, while a woman from the housing office read the rules one more time. One grant. One dead block on Cortez Street, four buildings the city had written off years ago. Whoever won the money got to decide what happened to it.The firms ahead of us had glossy display boards and teams in matching lanyards. We had me, Noah, a laptop with a cracked corner, and a scale model of Cortez Street that Grace and I had cut out of foam board at two in the morning while a baby monitor hissed on the counter."We're the smallest name on that list by a factor of ten," Noah murmured. "Possibly a hundred.""I know.""I'm not saying it to scare you. I'm saying it so that when they call someone else, you don't take it as a verdict on you."The firm before us went first,
Oops! I Had the CEO’s Quadruplets Chapter 24: The Rival’s Rival
Nathan’s POVYou can tell a great deal about a man by how he wins.I lost the Calder portfolio on Tuesday. I knew it the moment Ruth Ostrander, who ran the sale, stopped returning my calls at her usual speed. Twelve mid-market properties, tired but sound, the exact kind of unglamorous bones I like to buy and hold. We had been the front-runners for a month. Our offer was higher. Our terms were kinder. Her board had all but shaken my hand.Then Blackwood Group came in beneath us and took it anyway."How," Delia said, when the notice landed. She runs acquisitions, and she does not lose gracefully, which is one of the reasons I keep her. "We were up on price and up on terms. There's no version of the math where they win this clean.""There isn't," I agreed. "Which means they didn't win it clean."It took my people two days to reconstruct how.Damien hadn't beaten my offer. He'd poisoned it. Somewhere in the final week, the seller's board had been quietly, persuasively informed that Hale C
Oops! I Had the CEO’s Quadruplets Chapter 23: Growing Pains
Aurora’s POVThe wall had been lying to us.I stood in the gutted back room of our second project, a corner bakery on Ash Street a family had trusted us to save, and watched the contractor peel back a strip of plaster like he was skinning something.Behind it, the studs were black. Soft. Rot that had been drinking from a hidden leak for a decade while the previous owners painted over the symptoms."That's not a patch," Terrence said. He was honest to a fault, which was why I hired him and why I wanted to throw up. "That's the whole load-bearing run. Maybe the joists above it.""How much?""You want the number now, or you want to sit down first?""Now."He told me. I did not sit down, because if I sat down I wasn't sure I'd get back up, and my father's voice had a rule about that.By the time I got back to Meridian, Noah already had the spreadsheet open, which meant he already knew."We're forty percent over," he said, not looking up. "On a job that had a nine percent margin on a good
Oops! I Had the CEO’s Quadruplets Chapter 22: The Blackwood Machine
Damien’s POVI watched Vanessa run my board meeting, and I couldn't decide if I was proud or afraid.She didn't run it, technically. Technically I ran it. But Vanessa had a way of being three steps ahead of every man in the room, of handing me the conclusion she wanted like it was my own idea, of charming the oldest and coldest directors on my board into eating out of her hand while I sat at the head of the table and presided over a decision that had already been made without me."The Corveau integration's ahead of schedule," she was saying, standing, because she'd stopped asking permission to stand. "Margins up eleven percent. I've taken the liberty of accelerating the next three acquisitions on the same model.""You've taken the liberty," I repeated.She smiled at me, warm, public. "I know how you hate slow, darling."The board chuckled. They loved her. My father's oldest ally, a man who'd once told me Vanessa was "a decorative asset," now nodded along to her forecasts like scriptur
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