Chapter 6.

Adrian’s POV.

Five Years Later.

My grandfather’s voice filled the study before I had even stepped all the way inside.

He never shouted. Magnus Voss didn’t need volume, authority lived in his silence.

“So, this is what you’ve become?” he asked, eyes fixed on the papers spread across his oak desk. “A man who waits for things to happen instead of making them happen.”

I stopped just inside the doorway, keeping my hands at my sides.

“Grandfather, I—”

He raised one finger without looking at me, and I fell quiet.

“Five months,” he said. “It has been five months since Clara Everett appeared on the shareholder registry.”

Only then did he lift his head.

“And what do I have to show for it? Nothing.”

His gaze pinned me in place. I had stood before him countless times, but somehow the years never lessened the weight of his scrutiny.

“Meanwhile,” he continued slowly, “Donovan Cross is already sending her flowers.”

My jaw went tight. “I’ve tried to contact her. Her lawyers shut down every call, every email. I even offered twenty percent over market value for her shares. She sent the offer back unopened.”

Magnus leaned back in his chair. “Do you think I enjoy hearing excuses?”

The disappointment in his voice hit harder than anger. He rose, moving around the desk with the restless ease of a man who had built an empire brick by brick.

I straightened, fighting the automatic instinct to look smaller. Everyone who carried the Voss name carried it under Magnus’s shadow.

He stopped in front of me, hands clasped behind his back, and studied me the way a general studies a soldier who keeps missing his target.

“I used to believe you were ruthless, Adrian,” he said.

The words might have sounded like praise, but they carried the chill of a warning.

“Now I’m beginning to think you’re simply soft.”

The heat rose at the base of my neck. “I’m not soft.”

His blue eyes sharpened. “Then prove it.”

He walked back to the desk and tapped one of the documents lying open. “Clara Everett holds fifteen percent of Voss Industries. That single number gives her deciding power in every major vote this board takes.”

I didn’t need the reminder. I’d spent the past five months watching Dorian play politics around that missing percentage.

“She doesn’t want money,” Magnus said, his voice turning flinty. “If she did, she’d have sold already.”

His hand came down hard on the desk. The sound echoed off the marble floor.

“She wants power.”

I said nothing.

“And if we can’t buy the shares,” he went on, “then we acquire the owner.”

The meaning landed a second later. My pulse tightened. “You want me to negotiate with her?”

“No.” Magnus picked up one of his heavy black pens and rolled it between his fingers. “I want you to marry her.”

For a heartbeat, the world seemed to stop. “You’re serious.”

“Completely.” He looked directly at me. “Marry Clara Everett. Once she’s part of this family, we make sure her voting rights become ours. The threat disappears.”

I let out a slow, disbelieving breath. “You want me to marry a stranger just to secure her shares.”

“I want you to fix the mess you created five years ago.”

His words cut cleanly through the silence.

“You lost control of this company the moment that scandal exploded,” he said sharply. “While you were busy reeling from Isabel’s betrayal, Dorian moved in. He didn't just take your woman, he married her, secured the Warrington partnership, and used that alliance to take the CEO chair you were too distracted to hold.”

The name Dorian Voss made my jaw clench. My cousin had been waiting for that exact opening.

“Now he sits in that chair as if he was born to it,” Magnus continued. “The board loves his numbers. They love his composure. They’ve never loved you.”

He stepped closer, his presence filling the room until the air thinned. “This is your chance to remind the board that Dorian is merely a placeholder. Remind them who actually has the iron will to lead this empire, not just sit in the chair.”

I held his gaze. “And if I fail?”

Magnus’s expression didn’t flicker. “Then Dorian remains CEO permanently. You’ll forfeit your inheritance, and the board will never consider you again.”

I stared at him, trying to gauge if he meant it. Of course he did. Magnus Voss didn’t bluff.

“You’ll become another Voss with a famous name and no power at all,” he finished.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke. He had already dismissed me in his mind.

Finally, he turned away and waved toward the door. “Get out.”

“Grandfather—”

“I said get out. And don’t come back until you have a ring on her finger.”

His voice stayed calm, but the finality in it silenced any protest.

I left the estate minutes later.

Rain slicked the driveway and blurred the guards’ flashlights as I passed through the gates. The windshield wipers kept rhythm against the storm, steady and mechanical.

Five years ago, everything in my life had been certain.

I’d been the next CEO of Voss Industries. My engagement to Isabel Warrington had sealed the company’s partnership with her father’s shipping conglomerate. The press had called us a dynasty in the making.

Then one stormy week destroyed it.

The five-million-dollar payout to Richard Hartman. The broken engagement when I caught Isabel and Dorian together. The headlines. And then, the final twist of the knife: Isabel’s public clarification to the press, spinning a web of lies that our engagement had ended months before she and Dorian ever began.

She didn't just betray me; she erased the scandal with a web of lies, leaving me looking like a bitter, unstable ghost while Dorian married her. By securing the Warrington partnership through that ring, he didn't just take my fiancée—he officially dethroned me from my CEO seat.

Now my cousin ran the company I’d been groomed to inherit.

And the path back led directly through a woman I didn’t even know.

Clara Everett.

A ghost who had appeared on the registry with nearly a billion dollars' worth of voting stock and no traceable history. No photographs, no interviews, no family, only a law firm address.

I hit a red light and exhaled slowly, watching the water slide down the windshield like mirrored smoke.

How did you charm a woman who wouldn’t even take a phone call?

The phone on the console buzzed. I reached for it, expecting another meaningless message from the board.

The name glowing on the screen made me still. Henry Lawes.

I answered. “Mr. Lawes.”

“Good evening, Mr. Voss,” he said, his tone as composed as ever. “I’m calling on behalf of Miss Everett.”

My pulse jumped. “You’re representing her now?”

“I have for many years.” He cleared his throat softly. “She received your latest offer.”

I waited, every muscle wound tight.

“She has agreed to meet with you.”

I almost asked him to repeat it. “She agreed?”

“Yes. She’ll see you at the board meeting tomorrow. She’ll attend in person for the first time. I suggest you be ready.”

The call ended before I could respond.

For a few seconds, I just sat there listening to the rain drum across the roof. Then I started the car again and pulled into traffic.

After five months of silence, the door had finally opened. This was my chance to take back everything Dorian thought was his. I just had to convince a ghost to marry me.

*

The boardroom of Voss Industries was a cavern of glass and steel, suspended fifty floors above Los Angeles. The long mahogany table was empty except for me.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, adjusting my cuffs for the third time. My chest was tight. Every variable of this negotiation had been planned, calculated, and memorized. I was ready to offer Clara Everett the world just to get her name on a marriage certificate.

The heavy double doors at the end of the room clicked open.

I turned around, pasting my most practiced, charming smile onto my face to greet the mysterious billionaire who held my entire life in her hands.

The smile died instantly.

The air vanished from the room. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it physically hurt.

The woman walking through the doors was dripping in bespoke tailored silk, her posture radiating absolute, lethal power. But it wasn't the clothes that made the floor drop out from beneath my feet.

It was her face.

The dark eyes. The familiar curve of her jaw. The woman I had coldly paid five million dollars to erase from the earth half a decade ago.

"Hello, Adrian," Elena Hart said, her voice smooth as ice. "I believe we have a wedding to discuss."