I Forgot I Ever Loved You (Zoe and Hayden) novel Chapter 455

Ethan froze for a second before his face split into the greedy grin of a rat that had just found the cheese vault.

"Hayden, if you're giving me the green light, I'm not holding back. Sienna—excuse me, Chairwoman Winters—when you conquer the globe, don't forget the little guys."

Sienna had already mapped out her counter-strategy.

Before the Empathy AI Pro actually launched, she had harbored deep reservations about its market viability.

Zoe's previous concept—the Domestic Care Bot—had been a catastrophic commercial flop.

It had bruised her pride and made her highly skeptical of Zoe's core code.

When Ethan offered the eight-hundred-million-dollar buy-in, she had accepted immediately to offload the financial liability.

If the project cratered, at least she wouldn't be the only one bleeding cash.

If anything went catastrophically wrong, she could easily weaponize Hayden's bias and pin the sabotage on Zoe.

The entire database was siphoned from Zoe's servers. Sienna had a dozen built-in excuses, plus a mole inside Apex Tech. She could easily claim Zoe had intentionally fed them poisoned data.

Hayden would never hold her accountable.

Even if Ethan lost his entire investment, he wouldn't dare target her—Hayden would shield her from the fallout.

But the press conference had wrapped with over sixty billion dollars in locked-in sales. She never in a million years anticipated such an astronomical payout.

Now, she was practically gagging on her own regret for letting Ethan in on the seed round.

There was absolutely no way she was letting Ethan carve out a permanent slice of her empire.

Still, Sienna was too cunning to issue a flat rejection. Alienating Hayden's inner circle was a tactical blunder she refused to make.

Their loyalty would serve as vital leverage when she finally married him.

"I defer to Hayden's judgment."

She smoothly kicked the ball back into Hayden's court, but he simply sipped his espresso in absolute silence.

Sienna had predicted as much. The controlling shares of Easton had been legally transferred into her name; the corporation belonged to her on paper.

But in Hayden's mind, the company would always belong to his late brother, Charles Thorne.

Allowing Ethan to seize equity meant slicing up Charles's legacy.

Sienna gambled that Hayden would never allow that to happen.

Ethan, as shrewd as a fox, took a sip of his drink and seamlessly engineered his own graceful exit.

"Honestly, you two don't look like in-laws at all. You look like a married couple."

Hayden shot him a lethal glare, but the comment sent a thrill of pure ecstasy straight to Sienna's core.

Ethan was the first heavyweight to openly endorse her relationship with Hayden. To secure that kind of political backing, a little cash was a small price to pay.

Pretending to consider his request, Sienna said, "Easton equity isn't as glamorous as it seems, Ethan. If you're just looking for a higher ROI, binding yourself to our boardroom means you'd bleed with us during a market crash.

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