She Was Sipping Tequila Alone At 2:13 A.M.—Then She Realized The Mafia Boss Had Been There All Along Spotlight8

She sat on the edge of the leather sofa with her hands around a glass of water she had not drunk from, and listened to the thing that was supposed to save her life.

“As the registered CEO and the namesake of Hayes Holdings, you have the authority to issue new shares,” Declan said. “A block large enough to dilute the Volkovs’ holding to nothing. Ten thousand shares into a company that currently has one hundred. Their percentage goes to the floor. The policy becomes worthless paper — ten million dollars of insurance on a corporation they no longer control.”

She followed it. That was the problem. She followed it all the way.

“The insurance policy pays out to the primary shareholder,” she said. “If I dilute them out of majority, there’s no payout, so there’s no motive.”

“Correct.”

“It’s clean.”

“It’s better than clean. It’s legal. It survives a court challenge.” He drank his scotch. “Which matters, because there will be one.”

Meline set the glass down and stood up and walked to the window, because she needed to be standing.

“So what’s the catch?”

“The catch is that a share issuance done by a CEO whose company is being claimed as collateral by a foreign syndicate looks exactly like what it is — a woman trying to save her own life by voiding a contract. Any competent lawyer in this city could freeze it on a motion in forty-eight hours, and I do not have a lawyer who can outrun a motion, because nobody can.” He set his glass down too. “To be bulletproof — to be international-court bulletproof, to stand up in front of a tribunal where the Volkovs have friends — the controlling interest has to move to a partner. A spouse. Not a corporation, not a trust. A person they can’t attack without attacking something bigger.”

The rain hit the glass behind her.

“You want to marry me,” she said.

“I want to marry you,” Declan said.

“To save my life.”

“To make you untouchable.” He said it without a flicker. “The interest transfers to me the moment the license is signed. The Volkovs’ claim dies in the registry. The policy is voided because the beneficiary no longer exists. And Ivan Volkov, who has spent twenty years not starting wars, knows perfectly well what happens if he so much as touches a hair on the head of a Fitzpatrick wife.”

Meline looked at him.

She had spent her entire adult life around men who lied about numbers, and she had gotten very good at the sound of it. What she heard in that room was not a lie. It was worse than a lie. It was a man telling the absolute truth and not apologizing for any part of it.

“And what do you get?”

“You.”

“You get a wife you don’t know.”

“I know enough.”

“Declan—”

“You are not listening.” He crossed the room. “I sat in that chair for forty-five minutes and watched you drink alone with a forty-thousand-dollar ring on the bar and no one to call. You could have gone back to him. You could have gone to the police. Instead you came to the only room in this city where nobody would ask you a question.” He stopped a foot from her. “You are the most interesting thing that has happened to me in six years. That is not a rescue, Meline. That is an acquisition.”

“That’s the most terrifying thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“I know.”

She wanted to laugh. She was horrified to find that she also wanted to say yes, and not for any of the reasons he had offered, which was the most frightening part of the whole night.

“I need time,” she said.

“Time is the one thing I can’t give you.”

“Then I need to think alone.”

Declan nodded once and walked to the doors.

He had his hand on the handle when the elevator chimed and Liam came through them, and Liam’s face did something that Meline had not seen it do in the two hours she had known him, which was move.

“Boss.”

“Speak.”

“Volkov’s lawyers filed at four this morning. They’re moving for appointment of a receiver over Hayes Holdings on the grounds that the CEO is incapacitated by — and I’m quoting it — ‘a documented psychological break following the dissolution of her engagement.'” Liam held out a tablet. “Judge Halloran’s chambers. Thursday at ten.”

Declan took the tablet and did not look at it.

“They’re going to have her declared unfit,” Liam said. “And then they’ll have the corporation. And then they’ll have an accident.”

Nobody said anything.

Meline stood at the window of the penthouse with her back to the lake and understood the shape of the thing, finally and completely. She had until Thursday. She had always had until Thursday. Everything else had been decoration.

“Liam,” Declan said.

“Boss.”

“Get Kavanagh on the phone.”

Meline’s voice came out of her before she had decided to use it.

“Declan.”

He turned.

“If I do this,” she said. “If I sign it. What happens to you?”

He looked at her for a long moment.

“What happens to me is that Ivan Volkov and I have a conversation,” he said. “One of us will not be standing afterward. It will very likely be him, but I want you to be clear about the fact that you are choosing this.”