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“I dealt with him as best as I could, Christian. Can you at least give me credit for that?”
“Yes.”
“What did he tell you that has you this angry?”
“Other than the fact that he tried to undermine you on the board for years? That he opposed you at every single turn?”
Priya tried to turn away but he didn’t let her. The tightness around her mouth, the wariness in her eyes... Suddenly he had a clue. “You’ve been acting weird ever since Constantine showed up at the house.”
“What does that even mean?” she said, trying to bluff her way out of it.
“This wariness creeps into your eyes every time I mention the company. It reminds me of all those years ago.” He ran a hand over his nape. “I don’t like it.”
“Why?”
“You used to look at me as if I was the last man you’d ever trust. As if you were constantly wondering what Jai saw in me. Somehow, you always managed to make me feel about two feet tall.”
“Was this yourI’ll sleep with every woman in the Northern Hemispherephase?”
Smiling, he tapped a finger over her temple. “What’s going in that head of yours, Pree?”
“I’ve just been waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Which shoe is that?”
“You’ve seen the numbers. You know by now that not everything Bastien complains about is untrue.”
“Are you talking about MMT?”
“What else? I had the R&D division dismantled. I increased the yearly bonuses across all the tiers. I cut the perks for the board members. I implemented a new program to bring in a bigger workforce from community colleges, not just Ivy League universities. I fought tooth and nail to increase the proportion of women and minorities, too. We’re renowned for being a great place to work, but there’s more than one financial report that says MMT has stagnated financially under my leadership. Our stock prices never really fully recovered after your...crash and disappearance. It’s not the future you, or even Jai, envisaged for MMT.”
Christian frowned. This was what had been bothering her? “Even if you’d run the company into the ground, I still wouldn’t blame you.”
She stepped away from him, agitation written into every line in her body. “But I didn’t. Can you at least appreciate that?”
“Of course I appreciate it. Hell, Pree, the minute you took the reins, the minute you sat in the chair, it became your company. The last thing I’m going to do after letting you down for eight years is criticize you for not making us another hundred million. MMT became something else with your vision at the helm. I’m proud of your accomplishments and I have no intention of mucking about with things that are already working perfectly.”
She was wearing such a stunned expression that her eyes went wide. “You’re not?”
“No. And since we’re on the topic, shall I drop another piece of big news in your lap?”
His expression made her swallow. “Yes.”
“I’m not coming back to MMT as the CEO. Not now, not ever.”
“What?”
“I know it’s a lot, but hear me out.” He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. “I already knew that I didn’t want to go back to the company. After everything that’s happened, the last thing I wanted was to be in the middle of all those boardroom politics. But I needed to understand how things stood before I made a final decision. I spent the whole of last week listening to Constantine and Bastien and Ben. Eight years later, nothing’s changed in terms of their working dynamic. Except me. I don’t want to spend the next twenty or thirty years constantly trying to get them to behave. I want to make a difference. I want to figure out how to make more impact on the world—a meaningful impact. The kind that Jai always wanted us to.”
Her eyes filled up, as they always did, when Jai’s name was mentioned. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Just say you’ll support me in this decision. That you’ll continue as the CEO. Unless you absolutely loathe it as much as I do, of course.”
“I love it. I love running the company. I love telling crusty old men what they’re allowed and not allowed to do with the company resources. I like being powerful because I can change things, from the inside.”
“That’s what I was hoping to hear.” When she’d have protested, he pressed a finger to her mouth. The sensation of her soft lips against his fingers felt like heaven. “Listen to me. If there’s one thing that stood out from every single report, it’s that you’ve really come into your own. You’ve made MMT stand for connecting communities everywhere. You’ve forced it to live up to the initial vision Jai had for it. So if you want to continue keeping those greedy jackals in line, you have my full support.”
She looked so taken aback—in a good way—that Christian smiled.
