5

Tristan’s POV

The deal closed at 6:47 on a Saturday morning. I know the exact time because my assistant sent the confirmation while I was still in the car heading to the office and I read it once then put my phone face down on the seat.

Four billion dollars for Veltane Pharmaceuticals. We have had eighteen months of quiet maneuvering, three failed attempts by competitors to block the acquisition and one very expensive legal team that earned every cent this week.

By Monday morning every financial publication in America would be running the same headline and Rothschild Pharma would be the single most valuable private pharmaceutical company in the country.

This was the plan all along and plans either worked or they didn’t but this one did. There will be another one by Tuesday too. I looked out the window at the still quiet Manhattan streets in the early morning and felt nothing particular about it.

I have been winning for the past several years, it has lost all its allure.

Reid, my assistant was waiting when I stepped off the elevator. He fell into step beside me without greeting because he knew better on Saturday mornings.

“Veltane confirmation is filed.” He said matching my pace. “Legal is preparing the press release for Monday. Rothschild stock projections are —”

“Send it to my email.”

“Done.” He gave a small pause then continued “The Mortaine situation has developed.”

“Vance Mortaine met with three board members yesterday evening at a private dinner. Our source says he’s moving faster than projected. He’s planning a vote within two weeks.”

I pushed open my office door and went straight to the window. The city was waking up slowly below me and from up here it looked manageable.

“And the Hargrove gala?” I asked without turning around.

Reid paused. “Sir?”

“Who else noticed her at the gala?” There was A longer pause this time.

“Two people flagged an unregistered guest at the entrance. It didn’t go any further.”

Five years of complete silence and Morana Mortaine chose a pharmaceutical fundraiser crawling with Xavier Lancaster’s business contacts as her reentry point. No announcement or security or her cousin running interference beside her.

She just walked in alone wearing something that probably cost more than the gala’s entire catering budget and gave her real name at the door. It was reckless or intentional and with a Mortaine it was usually both.

I turned from the window and sat down. The Mortaine file was already on my desk where I’d left it Friday evening.

I opened it to the research division page. Her name appeared fourteen times in the first section alone with patents and awards.

That tracked with everything I’d built in my file on her. PhD at twenty two, industry awards before she was twenty five. She ran Mortaine’s research division so quietly that competitors didn’t realize she was the one dismantling them until the deals were already closed.

Then she had walked into Xavier Lancaster’s orbit and disappeared so completely that her own industry forgot she existed. I had not forgotten. The same way I had not forgotten that Beth Rothschild was eighteen years old when Xavier Lancaster decided she was useful and twenty when she stopped returning my calls entirely.

I thought about the look in her eyes when I told her Xavier was missing one thing. The way everything in her expression had gone sharp at exactly the same moment. I can see the businesswoman inside of her now. Not the wife.

She wasn’t here to survive Xavier Lancaster, she wanted to end him. That intent wasn’t learned but inherited. I’d seen it once before in my life in Ivo Mortaine.

She already knows I’m the only person in this city who wants Xavier Lancaster destroyed more than she does. And Morana Mortaine doesn’t waste time. I have my reasons, she has hers.

“Clear my afternoon.” I said.

Reid looked up from his tablet barely masking his shock. In three years he had never heard me clear an afternoon on a weekend.

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

He nodded and left without asking why.

I leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a moment. The Veltane deal had just made me the most powerful pharmaceutical voice in America.

I had the evidence to dismantle Xavier Lancaster’s entire operation. I had eight months of documentation, three whistleblowers and a legal team that hadn’t lost in four years. What I didn’t have was her.

Without Morana’s testimony, everything I had built against Xavier was circumstantial. Good enough to damage him but not finish him.

Xavier Lancaster’s latest trial results had been submitted to three international health boards under a falsified research identity. The compound he’d been using had a name in those filings. Greene’s Formula.

My expression didn’t change but something cold moved through my chest. He had the nerve to use her name as if she knew she was being used like this.

My phone buzzed on the desk and it was an unknown number. I looked at it for a second then picked it up knowing who it was. No new person has my personal number but I gave it to her yesterday

“You said three weeks.” Her voice was unhurried as though she hadn’t spent the night calculating whether to make this call. “I don’t have three weeks.”

I kept quiet though my hold on my phone had tightened.

“Xavier has scheduled another extraction for Tuesday. I need to move faster than your timeline.”

I leaned forward slowly. “Then come to my office. Now.”

Another silence but it was shorter this time as she calculated.

“Send me the address.”

The line went dead. I set the phone down and looked at the Manhattan skyline for a long moment.

Four billion dollars by 6:47 in the morning and somehow this felt like a more significant development. I picked up my phone and typed the address.

Then I waited.