My Boss's Hidden Heir (Elara and Marcus) novel Chapter 212

Chapter 212

Chapter 212

Elara’s POV

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Life has been genuinely good, after all the chaos we passed through, we are finally allowed to breathe.

Elara stood at the bathroom mirror finishing her earrings when Marcus appeared in the doorway, still in his dress shirt with his jacket thrown over one arm, and stopped walking.

“What?” she said without turning around.

“Nothing.” He leaned against the frame. “You look incredible in that dress.”

“Don’t start, husband.”

“I’m just saying.” He crossed to where she stood and slid both arms around her from behind, his chin dropping to her shoulder. “A new baby wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

Elara met his eyes in the mirror. “Marcus Thorne if you don’t let go of me right now and go somewhere far away from me.”

He laughed, the sound warm against her neck. “I’m just saying we’re good at it.”

“We were good at it and now we have two of them destroying the living room with Maria while we stand here having this conversation.” She turned in his arms. “Avoid me. Actively. Go stand on the other side of the house.”

“You’re so beautiful when you’re threatening me.”

“Go.”

He kissed her once, slowly and certain, the kind of kiss that still caught her off guard after these months together. Then he pulled back with that look on his face that meant he was very pleased with himself and went to find his cufflinks.

Elara turned back to the mirror and tried very hard not to smile.

Downstairs the twins were in full chaos by the time Elara came out of the bedroom. Alexander had somehow gotten Maria’s reading glasses on his face and was walking into furniture with great confidence while Catherine sat in the middle of the floor surrounded by blocks she’d arranged into what could only be described as architecture.

“Glasses,” Elara said.

Maria retrieved them from Alexander without breaking stride. “They’ve eaten, they’ve had their bath, and they will be asleep by seven thirty. You two go and have a nice day.”

“We’re only going to the office, not a date,” Elara said.

“Nevertheless.” Maria handed Catherine a block she’d been reaching for. “Go.”

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Marcus was already at the door with his jacket on, keys in hand, looking at the twins with that expression he still got sometimes, like he couldn’t quite believe they were real and they were his. Catherine glanced up at him from her blocks, assessed, and went back to her architecture. Alexander walked directly into the couch.

“He gets that from you,” Elara said.

“The confidence is absolutely a yes.”

When they got to the Thorne Dynamics boardroom it had the specific energy of a room where bad news had arrived early and nobody knew how bad yet.

Elara felt it the moment they stepped out of the elevator and noticed people moving too fast, with their phones pressed to ears, the low urgent murmur of conversations happening in corners. Marcus’s assistant met them in the corridor wearing the expression of someone who had been holding their breath for the last hour.

“How long has this been happening?” Marcus asked without slowing down.

“Since the opening bell this morning. The stock has been sliding steadily and we can’t identify a single catalyst. There’s no news, no announcement, nothing public that should be causing this.”

They walked into the boardroom where six people were already assembled around the table, all of them on phones or laptops or both. Dante was at the end of the room with three screens open in front of him, two phones.

Marcus took his jacket off and put it on the back of a chair. That was always how Elara knew he was ready to work, that single quiet gesture.

“Talk to me,” he said.

The head of finance, a sharp woman named Patricia who Elara had liked from the first time she met her, pulled up her screen. “We started losing ground at nine forty this morning. Slow at first, the kind of movement you’d attribute to market noise. But it kept going. We’re down fourteen percent as of twenty minutes ago and it’s still moving.”

“Where are we losing deals?”

“Everywhere.” Patricia pulled up a different screen. “The Singapore infrastructure contract we were finalizing, gone. The partnership with Meridian Group we’ve been negotiating for four months, they called this morning to say they’re going in a different direction. The Hartford acquisition we were this close on-”

“Gone?” Marcus asked.

“By noon.”

The room was quiet for a moment.

Elara had found a chair against the wall where she could watch without being in the way. This was Marcus’s space, his language, and she knew how to be present in it without crowding him.

“These aren’t market fluctuations,” Marcus said. “These are relationships we’ve been building for months.

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Nobody walks away from a four–month negotiation because of stock movement.”

“They do.” Dante said without looking up from his screens, “if someone gives them a better offer before they

walk out the door.”

“Who?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out since ten this morning.” Dante finally looked up. “Every single company that’s pulled out today has gone quiet about where they’re going. Whatever they’ve been offered, someone asked them to be discreet about it.”

“Or they signed an NDA,” Elara said from her chair.

Every head in the room turned to look at her.

“If someone is systematically pulling your clients, they’re not doing it carelessly,” she continued. “They’d protect themselves. You sign the client, you make them agree to silence while you build your position, and by the time anyone figures out what’s happening you’re already inside the walls.”

Marcus was looking at her with an expression she recognized.

“She’s right,” Patricia said quietly. “This is coordinated. This isn’t someone taking advantage of an opportunity. Someone planned this.”

The room started moving again, people pulling up client files and communication records, trying to trace back the first thread of whatever had been unraveling all morning.

Dante’s fingers hadn’t stopped moving across his keyboard. He had the look he got when he was closing in on something, head slightly tilted, jaw set.

Marcus poured himself water and stood behind Dante’s chair watching the screens. There was no panic in him, which was always the thing that steadied a room even when it couldn’t be named.

“The Singapore contract,” Dante said. “They were approached six weeks ago. I’m looking at communication metadata and there are encrypted conversations between their CEO and an entity we don’t recognize starting six weeks ago, running parallel to our own negotiations the entire time.”

“So while we were talking to them, someone else was also talking to them,” Marcus said.

“And offering more. Or offering something different. Something that made us look less appealing without Singapore ever having to explain themselves.” Dante clicked through screens. “It’s the same pattern with Meridian. The Hartford acquisition. I need to pull three more but I’ll guarantee you they’ll show the same thing.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“The earliest signature I can find is three months ago.” Dante looked up. “Marcus, someone has been running a parallel operation alongside ours for eight months. Watching what we’re building, approaching the same clients, positioning themselves to take what we’re about to close.”

“And we never noticed.”

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Chapter 212

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