Chapter 5

Sienna POV

Five years later…

I sat at my desk on the top floor of Voss-Rock Renewables. 

No, that wasn’t  right anymore. It was now Solvane Energy. We rebranded two years ago, right after our valuation crossed the ten-billion mark. 

Now, sitting at twenty-five billion, “Solvane” was printed across half the skylines in southern Europe, our name synonymous with the very grid infrastructure Marcus had once described to me on a rooftop as “the kind of thing that takes years to turn in profits.”

It had taken three, but was never an easy task. It was a journey that was nothing short of a roller coaster. 

I still remember days I would work round the clock. Investors who laughed me out of meetings the moment they realized how inexperienced I was. 

Deals that collapsed the week before signings, more times than I could count. 

I’d failed enough times to lose track of the failures and kept going anyway.

All because I refused to give my son, Edson, a life below what I promised him on that hospital bed, five years ago. 

Marcus too was a huge force in making it possible. He believed in me before I could even believe in myself. 

Always pushing and motivating me even on the worst days. He was truly the kind of partner turned friend everyone should have. 

What started as an offer on a rooftop had become something neither of us had seen coming, built slowly across years of late nights and boardroom wins.  

Forty percent of Solvane Energy sat under my name now, not as a gift, but as the hard-earned proof of every sleepless night it had taken to get here.

My phone buzzed against the polished mahogany desk, pulling my eyes away from the glittering city’s skyline. 

A text from Marcus.

"Dinner at 6 PM. I booked that quiet table you always prefer. Wear something that breathes, you’ve been suffocating in that office all day."

I was smiling when another message  came in almost immediately. 

"Also, did you tell your aunt we’re ‘just business partners’ again? Because she called me directly this time."

I laughed softly, the sound fading into my large office, and typed back.

"I told her the truth. She just stubbornly refuses to believe it."

"Neither do I, if I’m honest," came his instant reply.

I set the phone face-down before I could think too much about the last one. 

It had become a running joke at this point. Investors, journalists, even our own executive staff were entirely convinced that five years of building an empire side-by-side simply had to end in marriage. 

Marcus never denied it when the media pushed. Neither did I. We simply let the narrative hang there. 

Sophia’s sharp knock pulled me back to the present. She stepped in, leaving a sleek black briefing folder on my desk.

"Ma’am, you’ll want to see this before you leave for dinner."

I opened the folder, and my breath abruptly caught in my lungs. 

Apex Industries stock had plummeted twenty-one percent in just thirty days. 

Their board is panicking, actively considering emergency liquidity measures.

I scanned the financial charts, my heart pounding softly against my ribs. 

Apex had been bleeding cash for two straight years. It wasn’t really surprising as they were still stubbornly clinging to outdated  infrastructure and an energy division that had never modernized past what I’d helped build back when I was nothing more than Damian’s naive secretary.

The addition on the bottom page turned a switch on in my head. 

Damian was preparing to put fifty percent of Apex industries shares up for option in a matter of days. 

He was desperately seeking outside investment just to keep the company afloat. 

I sat back slowly in my leather chair, letting everything settle into my bones.

I stared at the graphs, tracing downward mapping the ruins of Apex Industry. 

 The mighty Apex was suffocating. I spent a long time just looking at the pages, deliberately rolling the reality of his failure around in my mind.

Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the universe finally tilting its axis, handing me a perfectly leveled pitch to settle the scores I had carried like stones in my pocket for half a decade. 

The option was only days away, a golden, fleeting window to walk into his boardroom and take the very thing he loved most. 

I closed the folder sharply, deciding to let the vengeance breathe. I didn't have to decide immediately.

****

By six, Marcus and I were tucked into our usual corner table, the restaurant’s low light doing nothing to soften how wound up I felt. 

Marcus swirled the whiskey in his glass without drinking it, watching me the way he did when he already knew something was wrong.

"I take it you heard the news?" he asked, his voice a low, steady rumble over the soft jazz drifting through the dining room.

I met his gaze, my fingers tracing the rim of my wine glass. 

"I did. Sophia dropped the file on my desk before I left."

A heavy silence stretched between us. Marcus knew exactly the kind of demons that name resurrected. He had been the one to help me bury them.

"I'm flying back to Washington tomorrow," I said, my tone eerily calm, leaving absolutely no room for negotiation.

Marcus stopped swirling his drink. The glass stilled against the table as a rare flash of genuine shock crossed his face. 

"Tomorrow? Isn’t that too sudden? We have the European merger finalizations on Thursday. We need you there."

I leaned forward, the memory of the cold, sterile hospital bed flashing violently in my mind.

"Because," I whispered, the words tasting like sweet, long-awaited poison on my tongue. "It's time to settle the scores with Damian."