Page 118 of My Big, Fat, Hot Billionaire Enemy

He almost succeeded.

The meeting dissolves quickly, the members eager to escape the toxic atmosphere.

I remain seated, watching my father. His face is a mask of barely subdued rage.

He approaches my end of the table as the others file out.

“This isn’t over, Christopher,” he hisses. Only I can hear him.

“Actually, it is,” I reply calmly. “The board sided with me. The partnership proceeds.”

“The board can be… persuaded further,” he counters. “But this is bigger than one deal now. This is about your judgment. Your loyalty. If you choose this path, chooseherover everything I built, everything I taught you… then we aredone. Completely. Consider our relationship, personal and professional, severedforever.”

The ultimatum.

Choose Lucy, choose this new path, and lose the last remaining tie to my family. The poisoned chalice he represents, but familynonetheless.

The eight-year-old boy inside me, the one whose mother walked away, flinches at the finality of it.

But the man I am today looks him straight in the eye with no hesitation. No regret.

Just cold certainty.

“I made my choice weeks ago, Father,” I say quietly. “When I decided not to become you.”

His face contorts, a flash of pain perhaps, quickly masked by fury.

He turns without another word and strides out of the boardroom, leaving me alone in the empty room.

Severed.

The cost is high. Higher than I anticipated.

A hollowness echoes where that toxic paternal bond used to reside. But strangely… there’s also a sense of release. Liberation.

I stand up, move to the floor-to-ceiling windows. I stay there for a long moment, staring out at the city lights.

My path is clear now. Forged in defiance. Defined by choices he cannot comprehend.

But the threat remains. He lost this battle, but he won’t give up the war.

His presence on my board is a disease. A vulnerability I can no longer tolerate. He forced my hand today. Tried to cut me out using the very structure I allowed him into.

The thought crystallizes, cold and sharp. He needs to be removed. Not just countered. Removed from the Blackwell Innovations board. Completely.

It won’t be easy.

It will certainly be bloody.

But it’s necessary.

To protect the company.

To protect Lucy.

To protect the future I’m finally starting to believe might be possible.

The fight isn’t over.