Too Late to Hold Me Back novel Chapter 1304

Staring at the massive celebratory banners emblazoned with the name Pearl Finn, Adrian was consumed by bitter regret.

Mira could have been the ultimate pride of the Mercer family. She could have elevated the Mercer Group's prestige to unprecedented heights and sent their stock prices surging.

Instead, their hostility and rejection had violently severed ties with a walking goldmine of a PR asset.

Meanwhile, Mara, whom Adrian had bailed out with a small fortune, was sick with jealousy.

Following the poisoning incident, criminal sentences were handed down due to the narcotics involvement. However, since it was Mara's first offense and she was technically still a minor, Adrian managed to secure her release by throwing enough money at the problem.

The deciding factor had been Fiona Quinn. After Mara's arrest, Fiona threw a fit every day, driving Adrian insane until he exhausted every resource to get Mara out as quickly as possible.

As for Lacey and Lucas, they played dumb, claiming complete ignorance, and only received short detention sentences.

Even though they were all free now, the catastrophic damage to their reputations and the Mercer Group's plummeting stock value were irreversible.

Mira's spectacular exam victory could have easily offset those losses, but Adrian had ruthlessly burned that bridge.

In this timeline, Mara hadn't originally planned to involve Shane Porter. But fueled by rage, she decided to join forces with him once again. She still remembered Shane's phone number perfectly.

Even though they had failed in her past life, Mara was convinced that with her foresight, she would be the apex predator this time around. She absolutely would not lose.

Shane had used her back then. This time, it was her turn to use him.

Rather than routing her communication through Norman like before, Mara bypassed him entirely and called Allen, Shane's assistant, directly. Unsurprisingly, they struck a deal almost instantly...

Ethan, meanwhile, finalized his total break from the family. After a vicious negotiation, Adrian handed over ten percent of the Mercer Group's shares to buy Ethan's absolute silence.

While it wasn't an infinite fortune, it was more than enough capital for the siblings to breach Wall Street.

By now, Ryan was on his summer break as well. Mira hooked him up with a gig tutoring two elementary school kids in her neighborhood, making sixty dollars a day—a far better deal than manual labor.

Ryan needed to learn self-reliance, or he'd become a parasite. Mira was more than happy to support Sarah and George, but she absolutely refused to financially carry Ryan for the rest of his life.

On Sunday, Mira took her adoptive parents and Ryan to the mall, intending to buy them a few nice outfits.

She would be leaving for Wall Street soon, and she needed to help them acclimate to upscale city life before she left.

As they walked past a high-end boutique, a sales associate suddenly reached out, aggressively grabbing Sarah's shirt and forcefully yanking her aside.