Chapter 3
Before we could even find Number Two, Jordan Evans, the heiress to Evans Corporation and Liam’s arranged match, she found us first.
And she told us she already knew about our plan.
Not only that, she didn’t mind escalating it.
She wanted to go big.
As it turned out, Carter Corporation, where Liam worked, was facing a financial crisis and urgently needed to merge with Evans Corporation.
Jordan had no intention of helping them.
Instead, she wanted to use this opportunity to absorb Carter Corporation entirely.
Honestly, I even suspected she had caused the crisis herself.
She wasn’t a shrew at all.
She was a terrifyingly competent businesswoman.
She was cool as hell.
“Will you help me?” she asked Lily and me sincerely. “If this works, I’ll give you each five million as payment.”
“Five… what?” I asked, swallowing hard.
“Five million.”
My eyes lit up.
“Really?”
“Of course,” Jordan said. “I’m sick of being a pawn in men’s power games. In ancient times, women were forced into political marriages. In modern times, they’re forced into business marriages. Who wants to be a tool? Why should women be tools? What I’ve always wanted is to stand at the top of the food chain. To be the one making the rules.”
Lily and I listened, stunned.
Then Lily grabbed my hand and said firmly, “Okay. Whatever you say, we’ll do.”
Right then, all three of our phones received messages from Liam at the same time.
We looked at each other.
The game had officially begun.
I looked down at my screen.
Finally away from the family circus. Exhausted. Thinking about my quiet, brilliant girl. Can I come over tonight?
I looked at Lily.
She flipped her screen around.
Just escaped family duty. Miss my little gamer. Streaming tonight, or do you have time for your favorite guy?
Then Jordan, sitting across from us with the posture of an absolute monarch, calmly pulled out her phone.
She tapped the screen once and pushed it toward us.
Just left. Mom loved the necklace. Thanks for showing up, Jay. See you at the board meeting tomorrow.
Silence stretched across the coffee shop patio for three whole seconds before Lily let out a sharp laugh.
“He’s literally copy-pasting his affection while sitting in traffic. The absolute laziness of this man.”
“It’s efficient,” Jordan said, taking a slow sip of espresso. Her cool, analytical gaze moved between us. “I’ll give him that. A good CEO knows how to streamline operations. Unfortunately for him, his risk management is garbage.”
I stared at the three phones lined up on the table.
The reality of the situation finally settled into my bones, replacing the lingering shock with a cold, electric thrill.
I was Summer Quinn, an introverted web novelist.
I spent my days writing about domineering CEOs and revenge plots, but I had never actually lived one.
Now, sitting next to a bubbly streamer and a terrifying corporate heiress, I felt like I had just been handed the greatest plotline of my life.
“So what’s the move?” I asked, looking at Jordan. “Do we just dump him? Expose him online?”
“Small thinking, Summer,” Jordan said softly. “Exposing him online gets him a week of bad PR. He goes to Europe, sleeps it off on a yacht, and comes back when the internet finds a new villain. No. We take his pride, and more importantly, we take his money.”
Then she laid it all out.
Carter Corporation was bleeding cash. They were overleveraged on a real estate development in Dubai that had stalled. Liam’s father was desperate for a merger with Evans Corporation to keep them from bankruptcy. Liam was the designated sacrificial lamb, assigned to charm Jordan into signing.
“Wait,” Lily interrupted, eyes narrowing. “If his family is broke, how is he buying me ten-thousand-dollar gaming setups and taking you to Hawaii?”
“He’s using the company’s emergency liquidity,” Jordan said with a predatory smile. “He’s embezzling from his own sinking ship to maintain his playboy lifestyle. If the board finds out, he’s done. But I don’t just want him fired. I want him to sign his voting shares over to me as collateral. I want to absorb his company, gut it, and leave him with nothing but a minimum-wage résumé.”
“And the five million you promised us?” I asked.
“Pocket change,” Jordan replied. “Consider it a consulting fee. But to do this, I need him desperate. I need his personal bank accounts drained so he’s forced to leverage his shares. I need both of you. And Sophie.”
I thought of Sophie running away in tears just twenty minutes earlier.
“Sophie wants no part of this.”
Jordan waved that away.
“Nobody tolerates being one of five because they like the arrangement. They tolerate it out of fear or necessity. Lily, you’re good with computers, right?”
Lily grinned.
“I can find a diamond ring in a sandbox using Google Earth.”
“Find out why Sophie Wells needs money,” Jordan said. “I’ll handle the financial backing. Summer, start drafting the scripts.”
“The scripts?”
“For the group chat we’re about to start,” Jordan said, standing up and tossing a hundred-dollar bill onto the table. “Welcome to the game, ladies. Don’t reply to him yet. Let him sweat for an hour.”
By midnight, Lily had cracked Sophie’s life wide open.
The three of us were huddled in my apartment. I had ordered a ridiculous amount of takeout, and we were sitting cross-legged on my living room rug. Lily’s laptop was hooked up to my TV, displaying court documents and medical bills she had somehow dug up from the depths of the internet.
“It’s her little brother,” Lily said around a mouthful of pad thai. “He was born with a severe congenital heart defect. The surgeries are highly experimental, not covered by basic insurance. Total out-of-pocket cost so far? Roughly four hundred grand. Her dad is gone. Her mom works two minimum-wage jobs. Sophie is paying for everything. And Liam is the cash source.”
“She’s eighteen,” I murmured, suddenly feeling awful. “She wasn’t being shallow today. She was trying to keep her brother alive.”
Jordan, seated elegantly on my cheap IKEA sofa, didn’t flinch.
She pulled out a sleek silver pen and a checkbook, wrote a number, signed it, and tore the check free.
“Lily, find me the exact routing number for the hospital billing department. Tomorrow morning, Sophie’s brother’s account will have a zero balance, with another two hundred thousand held in escrow for future care. Courtesy of an anonymous donor.”
I stared at her.
“You’re really just dropping that kind of money?”
“It’s an investment, Summer,” Jordan said, though I caught a flicker of warmth in her icy eyes. “Women shouldn’t have to sell their souls to scumbags just to keep their families alive. Let’s go get our Number Three back.”