Nathaniel Vance looked at me in front of two hundred wedding guests and said the one thing I never imagined I would hear from the man who had spent five years telling me I was enough.

Downtown at the Vance Publishing corporate headquarters, the atmosphere inside the fourteenth-floor executive boardroom was nothing short of a war zone.

The heavy mahogany doors were locked from the inside, but the muffled shouts, flying papers, and furious arguments could be heard all the way down the hallway.

Charles Vance sat at the head of the long conference table, his usually immaculate gray hair disheveled, his expensive tie loosened around his collar. Surrounding him were six members of the board of directors, their faces flushed with rage and panic.

“Are you out of your mind, Charles?!” shouted Arthur Sterling, the senior board member and a primary stakeholder in the firm. “You stood up in front of the entire literary establishment last night and announced an exclusive partnership with an author who hasn't spoken to our acquisitions department in three years—an author who, as it turns out, your own son publicly humiliated at a wedding yesterday afternoon!”

“It was a misunderstanding,” Charles stammered, his hands shaking as he clutched a stack of plummeting stock reports. “Nate didn't know—none of us knew—she kept her identity completely hidden—”

“That’s your job!” another board member roared, slamming a fist onto the table. “To know! You spent millions trying to acquire Ren Callaway while the author was sitting at your own family dinner table asking you how your day went! You called her a bookstore clerk! You treated her like a charity case!”

“The stock is down thirty-four percent,” Sterling said, his voice dropping into a terrifying, icy calm. “Our institutional lenders are demanding an immediate audit. The board has received three separate buyout offers from rival conglomerates looking to feast on our carcass while we’re down.”

Charles swallowed hard, panic clawing at his throat. “We can issue a public apology. We can offer her a massive retroactive royalty bonus—we can—”

“She doesn't want your money, Charles,” the boardroom doors swung open.

Priscilla Yan walked into the room, uninvited, followed by two corporate attorneys carrying thick leather briefcases. She didn't wait for an invitation; she walked straight to the edge of the conference table and tossed a fresh stack of legal documents onto the polished wood.

Charles looked up, his eyes wide with horror. “What is this?”

“That,” Priscilla said smoothly, resting her hands on the table, “is an immediate termination notice for all existing distribution contracts between Vance Publishing and Crawford-Yan literary holdings. Effective immediately, every single backlist title, foreign translation right, and licensing agreement associated with our agency's top thirty authors is being pulled from your catalog.”

Gasps erupted around the table. Stripping thirty top-tier authors from Vance Publishing wouldn't just hurt their stock price—it would induce complete, systemic cardiac arrest.

“You can’t do that!” Charles shouted, stumbling to his feet. “That will destroy the company!”