The Wife He Forgot to Marry (Winona and Yule) novel Chapter 554

"But you shouldn't have gone after the general manager seat at Cirrus Beverages, and you definitely shouldn't have teamed up with Uncle Kade and the Shepherds. Look at you now. They used you to take me off the board temporarily, and then immediately backstabbed you, blocking your appointment.

"You should be counting your lucky stars you only used a sedative to knock me out for three days. If I had actually died, do you honestly think you could hold the Goddard Group together? You'd be eaten alive. Within a month, Uncle Kade and the Shepherds would carve the company into pieces. Did you even think about that?"

Cold sweat drenched Orion's back. Stefan was right. He knew his own limits; he could never outmaneuver the others in a real boardroom war.

His original plan had been simple: knock Stefan out, force his way into the GM seat before Stefan woke up, and then use the position's massive kickbacks to pay off his co-conspirators. He had intended to give them three hundred million.

But they got greedy. They demanded an equal split of the eight hundred million in kickbacks, plus they wanted Cirrus's six manufacturing plants to provide free OEM services for their personal clients.

Cirrus Beverages itself wasn't highly profitable, but the previous GM, Mr. Harrison, had quietly used the factories to manufacture for other brands, raking in a billion a year in illicit profits. Because Mr. Harrison was an old friend of Stefan's grandfather, the family had always turned a blind eye.

Orion had wanted the seat entirely for that slush fund. When the others tried to extort him, he balked. Consequently, not only did he lose the GM seat, but his co-conspirators reported him to the ethics committee, dragging him through the mud.

Stefan was his only lifeline now.

"I don't care about your three-month suspension," Stefan said flatly. "As for the GM position at Cirrus, I never intended to give it to anyone from the Goddard or Shepherd families. It's going to be an open, merit-based hiring process."

Though bitter, Orion felt a twisted sense of relief. If he couldn't have it, at least the others couldn't either.

"Stefan, I really am sorry about drugging you," Orion pleaded. "You won't hold it against me, right? I can take the suspension, but my salary and dividends... those will still be paid, won't they?"

It was a massive sum, and the thought of losing it physically pained him.

"Uncle Orion," Stefan replied smoothly, "whoever reported you is the one you need to go after. If they could find dirt on you, surely you know where their skeletons are buried? Bring me hard evidence on them. Get them investigated, and I'll suspend them, too."

Orion's eyes lit up. He knew exactly how dirty their hands were. If they were going to throw him under the bus, he was going to drag them down with him.

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