Back at his apartnt, Stan ate his al at the dining room, he then showered, and collapsed into bed.
Vivian Reeves was becoming a genuine headache. Not a dangerous one, the chancellor’s call had already neutralized the expulsion threat, but an annoying one. The kind of persistent, low-grade irritation that consud energy without producing results. She couldn’t actually hurt him. She just kept trying, and the trying itself was exhausting.
He closed his eyes.
Sleep ca quickly.
It didn’t last.
His phone rang in the dark, sharp, insistent, dragging him out of unconsciousness with the gentle subtlety of a fire alarm.
Stan fumbled for the device, squinted at the screen. Unknown number. He almost declined it, then reconsidered. The chancellor had said to expect future calls. It might be important.
He picked up.
"Hello. Am I speaking with Mr. Stan Harrison?"
The voice on the other end was professional, polished, and Stan realized with a small jolt of recognition, oddly familiar.
"I’m calling from Star Entertainnt Company, Velaris City branch. My na is, well, I’m the branch manager. I’d like to request a eting with you at your earliest convenience to discuss so company matters related to your shareholding."
Stan lay very still in the dark, staring at the ceiling.
He knew that voice.
He’d heard it yesterday, screaming at him through a car window in the rain. He’d heard it today, demanding he kneel in a cafeteria. He’d heard it an hour ago, threatening to have him expelled from university.
’Vivian Reeves.’
She was calling him, the man she’d been trying to destroy for two days, to request a business eting. And she had no idea, not the faintest, most distant clue, that the shareholder in question was the sa person she’d been preparing to pour soup bowls on...
Stan lay in the darkness of his apartnt, phone pressed to his ear, and felt a smile spread across his face so wide it actually hurt his cheeks.
’She doesn’t know. She has absolutely no idea.’
The woman who had ransacked his dormitory, demanded he kneel in public, threatened his academic career, and called him a naless nobody to his face, was now on the phone, in her most professional voice, politely requesting an audience with her company’s largest individual shareholder.
Who was him.
Stan pressed his free hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
’Fate,’ he thought, ’you magnificent, sadistic codian.’
He composed himself. Cleared his throat. And when he spoke, his voice was perfectly calm, perfectly neutral, with absolutely no trace of the unholy delight currently radiating through every cell of his body.
"A eting? Yes, I think that could be arranged."
He paused, savoring the mont the way a somlier savors a rare vintage.
"When were you thinking?"
’I wonder,’ he thought, staring at the ceiling with a grin that could have powered a small city, ’what her face is going to look like when she walks into that eting and sees sitting in the chair.’
....
’I have to et him in person,’ Vivian thought as she set the phone down. ’This is too important to handle remotely.’
She’d spent the better part of the past week trying to secure this eting. The new major shareholder of Star Entertainnt Company had appeared out of nowhere, a na on a transfer docunt, thirty percent of the company’s equity acquired in a single transaction, no public profile, no industry connections anyone could identify. The entire executive team had been buzzing about it for days.
For Vivian, the stakes were personal.
Her position as branch manager of the Velaris City office was more precarious than she let anyone see. She’d gotten the role through family connections, she knew that, and so did everyone else. Half the senior staff resented her for it.
A few of them had been quietly lobbying to have her removed, arguing that a twenty-sothing heiress with no real track record had no business running a major branch of a global entertainnt company.
They weren’t entirely wrong.
What Vivian needed was an ally, soone powerful enough to silence the internal opposition and secure her position permanently. And a major shareholder with a thirty-percent stake was exactly that kind of ally.
She’d pulled strings, called in favors, and burned through two days of effort just to obtain the shareholder’s contact information. When she’d finally gotten the na, ’Stan Harrison’, she’d paused for half a second. The na was familiar. Uncomfortably familiar.
But she’d dismissed the coincidence almost imdiately. Stan Harrison wasn’t exactly a rare na. The idea that the broke, umbrella-clutching nobody she’d been feuding with on campus was also the largest individual shareholder of a global entertainnt conglorate was so absurd it didn’t even qualify as a possibility.
She’d made the call. He’d agreed to et. Tomorrow, Wanhai Hotel.
Everything was going to be fine.
Stan arrived at the HYTV Wanhai Hotel the next day in deliberately simple clothes, a plain jacket, dark jeans, no watch, no accessories. Nothing that would signal wealth or status to soone who didn’t already know.
He wanted the reveal to land clean.
The restaurant was on the hotel’s upper floor, the sa private dining room where Grayson Davies had first hosted him, the sa space where Kyle Jennings had kicked down a door and discovered, to his permanent regret, exactly who he was dealing with.
Stan walked in and imdiately spotted Vivian.
She was seated at the best table in the room, positioned centrally, with two bottles of expensive red wine arranged on either side of a carefully curated spread. Her outfit was corporate-polished, black stockings, structured blazer, hair swept up in her signature high bun. She looked every inch the ambitious young executive preparing to make the most important impression of her career.
She also looked, Stan noted with quiet amusent, like soone who had no idea what was about to happen to her.
The mont Vivian saw Stan walking toward her table, her expression curdled.
"Oh. It’s you."
She straightened in her chair, her professional composure instantly replaced by the cold disdain she reserved exclusively for him.
"Finally decided to apologize?" She let out a short, contemptuous laugh. "Too late. I don’t accept."
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