Claimed by the Crown Heir novel Chapter 120

Vanessa stepped into the room slowly, her arms crossed as she leaned against the heavy oak desk. She looked at the fuming girl, her voice light and casual.

"Giselle, you've been picking fights with me since we were kids, and you've never won a single one. After all these years, how have you still not learned your lesson?"

"That's just because you get lucky!"

"Is it?"

Giselle glared at her with red-rimmed eyes. "Obviously."

"You're pretty good at lying to yourself," Vanessa brushed it off with a laugh. "Even if you had succeeded, do you really think you could marry into the Howard family and secure your place as a wife just by throwing yourself at a man with zero emotional connection?"

"What are you getting at?"

"If it were really that easy, countless women would have already climbed their way up using those exact trashy tactics!" Vanessa leaned in, meeting her gaze dead-on. "Do you honestly think no one else has tried, or do you think those women were just quietly disposed of?"

A jolt of pure terror hit Giselle.

She wasn't as smart as Vanessa, but she wasn't a total idiot.

With the sheer wealth and power the Howards wielded, even if she had managed to sleep with him, they had a million ways to force her into total silence.

But she just couldn't stand seeing Vanessa acting so high and mighty, lecturing her like a child.

"Vanessa, did you just come in here to gloat that the Howard family only acknowledges you?"

"It's the truth, isn't it? After all, I'm the one who saved Arthur."

Vanessa turned around, tossing one last remark over her shoulder as she reached the door. "I told you to actually study back then, but you insisted on messing around and partying. Starting to see the benefits of an education now?"

...

Lucas's gaze darkened, his voice ice-cold. "Investments carry risks. A fifteen million dollar fluctuation is well within the group's acceptable threshold."

"Acceptable to who? You?" Zachary let out a harsh bark of laughter. "Everyone in this damn company knows that you didn't even personally vet that fifteen million dollar investment. Your little secretary made the call all by herself! What kind of joke do you think this group is?"

A board member spoke up, his voice heavy. "We are all businessmen here, let's not beat around the bush. Your blatant infidelity at the wedding recently became the biggest scandal in the city! Our stocks plummeted and still haven't recovered. Now, with this disaster on top of it, we seriously doubt your fitness to sit in that chair."

Another board member chimed in immediately. "If you can't even manage your own household, how can you run a corporation? You lack basic morality and loyalty to your own marriage. Your chaotic private life and vile character are dragging this entire company through the mud!"

Lucas's face turned ashen as his sharp, dark eyes swept across the room.

The very shareholders who had fought alongside him to build this empire were turning on him at the most critical moment, stabbing him right in the back.

"I have been at the helm of this company since its inception, generating profits that dwarf fifteen million dollars," Lucas snapped, sitting up straight with his domineering aura fully intact. "And you're going to try and execute me over a single bad call?"