Chapter 4 - The Offer Is Rejected
The auditors presented the acquisition file.
Callum’s company was not as strong as he claimed.
Debt hidden behind subsidiary guarantees.
Investor pressure.
A liquidity crisis within forty-five days.
An inflated valuation.
A plan to sell two Mercer vineyards immediately after purchase to cover his own losses.
Hannah read the pages silently.
Each paragraph turned the mud colder against her skin.
Callum had not come to buy an empire.
He had come to strip one.
Her grandmother’s empire.
Her inheritance.
The land where Evelyn taught her to test grapes by smell and told her never to trust a man who rushed a signature.
Hannah looked up.
“You were going to sell the eastern vineyards.”
Callum’s face hardened.
“They’re underperforming.”
“My grandmother kept them because that’s where the first workers’ cottages are.”
“This is business.”
“No,” Hannah said. “This is extraction.”
He laughed sharply.
“You sound like someone who inherited money this morning.”
The room went silent.
Callum realized too late.
Hannah leaned back.
“And you sound like someone who needs mine by Friday.”
Sylvia’s mouth almost moved into a smile.
Almost.
Hannah closed the acquisition folder.
“The offer is rejected.”
Callum stepped forward.
“Hannah—”
She held up one muddy hand.
He stopped.
“The offer is rejected,” she repeated. “All negotiations with Blackwood-Mercer Hospitality are terminated. Any future communication goes through counsel.”
Callum’s face went pale.
“Hannah, don’t do this because of a fight.”
She stood.
The towel slipped from her shoulder.
Mud marked the boardroom carpet where she had walked in.
“This is not because of a fight. This is because you came to my family’s estate with your mistress, pressured me to sign legal waivers, left me face-down in the mud, and planned to break apart the land my grandmother spent her life building.”
She placed her wedding ring on the table.
The small sound echoed.
“And because I’m divorcing you.”
Callum looked at the ring like it had betrayed him.
May you like
Maybe it had.
Or maybe, for the first time, it told the truth.
