The Wife He Forgot to Marry (Winona and Yule) novel Chapter 590

Sylvan Scully's expression remained perfectly cold. "Just call the cops. Winona Jowett is a liability with a terrible reputation—it's hardly surprising she's attracted this kind of trouble. We barely know her. We aren't responsible for what happens to her."

Giselle nodded slowly. "Understood."

She pulled out her phone, pretending to dial emergency services, but her thumb never actually hit the call button.

Beside her, Sylvan Scully calmly returned to scrolling through his emails, completely unbothered.

*

When Winona regained consciousness, she found herself lying on a plush sofa in a sprawling, ultra-luxury hotel suite.

A middle-aged man in a sharp suit stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, casually swirling a glass of red wine.

Winona had no idea who he was. She immediately looked down to check her clothing. Finding everything perfectly intact, her pulse steadied slightly, though she kept her gaze sharply fixed on the stranger.

Sensing movement, the man turned and walked toward her with an easy smile. "My apologies for the rough introduction, Ms. Jowett. I'm Stefan's uncle, Jasper Shepherd."

Winona sat up slowly. "Why did you have me dragged up here?"

Jasper took a sip of his wine. "You're the woman Stefan loves. I have absolutely no intention of harming you. I simply need to have a conversation with him regarding the General Manager position at Cirrus Beverages. He's been dodging my calls and refusing to meet with me. I needed leverage to force his hand. I honestly wasn't sure if grabbing you would work, but he just called me sounding incredibly panicked. Looks like my gamble paid off."

The selection process for the Cirrus GM role consisted of three rigorous rounds. Jasper had been eliminated in the very first phase.

Seeing his younger brother and Stefan's second uncle from the Goddard family both advance to the second round had enraged him. Cirrus Beverages brought in an annual revenue of eight hundred million. He couldn't just walk away from that kind of money. He was Stefan's uncle—Stefan owed him a second chance.

Winona remembered Stefan breaking down the internal politics surrounding the Cirrus role recently. Knowing this was just a corporate power play and that Jasper had no intent to physically hurt her, she fully relaxed.

But she wasn't about to just sit there and act as a passive pawn to be used against Stefan.

Jasper stared at her, genuinely taken aback by her sharp, surgical dismantling of his entire plan.

"Even if you're right, it's the principle of it!" he snapped, his pride rearing its head. "If I can't have it, I refuse to sit by and let others take that seat and reap the rewards!"

He couldn't stomach the idea of being boxed out while his rivals got rich.

Winona had read him perfectly. She kept pressing the advantage. "Mr. Shepherd, I work in pharmaceutical R&D. Over the past two years, my lab has collaborated extensively with the Goddard Group. That proves Stefan is aggressively expanding into the biotech and medical device sectors. The division you are currently running is about to become the crown jewel of the entire conglomerate.

"If you stop wasting your energy on internal family politics and actually focus on scaling your current subsidiary to match the Group's new trajectory, you could easily clear that eight hundred million on your own turf. Or do you just not have faith in your own leadership abilities?"

Jasper went dead silent.

He hadn't expected her to hit him with reverse psychology. More importantly, he hadn't expected a hostage to lay out a more compelling, lucrative business strategy than his own advisory board.