My Boss's Hidden Heir (Elara and Marcus) novel Chapter 216

12:35 Sat, Aug 8 TS

My Boss’s Hidden Heir

College

Elara’s POV

The words sat in the middle of the boardroom like something dropped from a height, and every person at that table was looking at Elara waiting to understand what they meant.

Marcus was the stillest person in the room, very still in the way he got when he was taking something in and hadn’t decided yet what to do with it.

Elara stood up.

“Killian.” Her voice came out even, which surprised her. “What are you doing here?”

Killian pulled out the chair directly across from Marcus and sat down. “Running a company. Apparently the same one that’s been competing with your husband’s.”

The casual delivery of it landed like a second dropped thing. Dante looked at Marcus. Patricia looked at Elara. The rest of the room looked between all of them trying to find something to hold onto.

Marcus pulled his chair out and sat back down slowly. His eyes hadn’t left Killian’s face since the words hi babe had left his mouth.

“You two know each other,” Marcus said. Not a question.

“College,” Killian said. He looked at Elara briefly, something in the look that said follow my lead. “A long time ago. We lost touch.” He opened the folder in front of him like that was the end of it. “Should we start?”

Elara sat back down.

The meeting started.

It was the strangest and longest hour of Elara’s professional life and she had lived through some strange hours. She sat at that table and watched her husband and the man she’d been in love with at teenage age negotiate across from each other with a precision that made the hair on her arms stand up, and she was the only person in the room who understood the full weight of what she was watching.

Marcus was exceptional at this. She’d known that, had seen it in boardrooms and crisis meetings and late nights at the kitchen table talking through deals. He read people quickly, found the center of an argument fast, and didn’t waste energy on positions he couldn’t hold.

Killian was exactly the same.

Not similar. The same.

They moved through the substance of the conversation in the same rhythm, building on each other’s points and pushing back against each other’s weaknesses with the same instinct, the same timing. When Marcus made a concession Killian had already anticipated it. When Killian pushed Marcus went to meet it without flinching.

Elara watched Patricia write something on her legal pad and turn it slightly so Dante could read it. Dante read it and said nothing but something shifted in his expression.

At one point Marcus sat back and looked at Killian with that narrowed look he got when something wasn’t adding up the way

it should

“Why did you call me bro,” Marcus said. Just like that, flat and direct, in the middle of a conversation about client acquisition strategy.

12:35 Sat, Aug 8

My Boss’s Hidden Heir

Killian didn’t even blink. “Ask your father.”

The room went very quiet.

“My father,” Marcus repeated.

5 090266.

“When you’re ready.” Killian turned a page in his folder. “The Singapore contract. I’m prepared to hand it back as a gesture of good faith if we can agree on the framework for-”

“You called me bro and told me to ask my father and you want to talk about Singapore.”

“The Singapore contract is worth four hundred million dollars. And yes.” Killian looked up. “When you’re ready to have the other conversation, you’ll know where to find me. Right now there’s business on the table.”

Marcus looked at him for a long moment. Elara could see him running through it, the call me bro, the ask your father, the face that had been sitting across from him for an hour feeling like something he almost recognized.

He let it go. For now he let it go, and Elara understood that was one of the hardest things Marcus Thorne knew how to do.

The meeting moved forward.

They reached a temporary truce by the end of it. Both companies would pull back from the aggressive positioning, no new moves on shared clients, while they explored what a merger could actually look like. Terms to be drawn up by both legal teams within the week.

It was the most sensible outcome. Everyone in the room could see it was a sensible outcome. Killian had been right when he’d said it made sense and Marcus had been right to push back enough to get better terms before agreeing and now they were here.

Killian’s team stood first. The two quiet men who’d sat on his side of the table gathered their things with the efficiency of people who did this regularly.

Killian shook hands around the room. Patricia. Dante, who held the handshake a beat longer and looked at him with something unreadable. Two of the senior team members.

He came to Marcus last.

They shook hands and Marcus held it and said quietly, low enough that only Killian and Elara could hear: “The bro thing. The father thing. We’re going to talk about that.”

“I know,” Killian said.

“Soon.”

“Whenever you’re ready.” Killian let go of his hand and looked at Elara/”It was good to see you.”

She nodded because she didn’t trust what might come out if she opened her mouth properly.

He walked out. The elevator opened and closed and then it was just the Thorne Dynamics team left in the room, and the specific silence of people who had just been in something they didn’t entirely understand.

People started gathering their things. Quiet conversations starting up, the meeting being processed and pulled apart. Patricia stopped beside Elara on her way out and said “interesting man” in a tone that meant considerably more than those two words and kept walking.

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