Too Late to Hold Me Back novel Chapter 368

During dinner, Mira casually asked, "Rachel, do you know the full story behind my and Mara's birth?"

Adrian Mercer had effortlessly thrown millions of dollars at the school just to make Mara's life easier. Contrasting that with Eleanor Quinn's drastically different treatment of the two girls, Mira's radar was going off.

"Your birth? By the time I started working for the Mercer family, you were already born, so I don't know the exact details. But you have to be Mr. and Mrs. Mercer's biological daughter. You look so much like Mr. Mercer, and they absolutely adored you growing up. You can't fake that kind of love. It was only after Mara came back that their attitudes toward you completely warped..."

Mira pondered this. "Could there be something wrong with Mara's background? They treated me like royalty before. Maybe they realized I was the wrong child?"

"That, I really couldn't say."

Mira couldn't make the pieces fit, so she mentally shelved it. The truth would claw its way out eventually.

She headed into her study to tackle her workload. With her grueling academic schedule, she couldn't afford to commute to Solflare headquarters every day.

Though Owen had stepped down from the main office, Cyrus and the executive team were highly competent and handled the day-to-day operations flawlessly. They only called her for emergencies. Routine documents requiring her signature were categorized by urgency, highlighted, and securely sent to her laptop. She only needed to physically visit the office once or twice a week.

After finishing her homework, Mira pulled up the stock market charts. Her phone rang. Seeing Master Ellis's name on the screen, she knew instantly it was about Central Offshore Energy. He preferred to relay sensitive information over secure calls rather than text.

With the timeline confirmed, Mira called Cyrus. "Send a secure memo to the core executive group. We enter the market the day after tomorrow. Also, pull all available idle capital from every subsidiary—including the idle deposits from the bike-share division. Anything that can be locked up for twenty days. Wire it directly into my private holding account."

Having a fiercely competent lieutenant was a luxury. She gave the order, and the machine moved.

This time, she was pooling all insider funds into a single massive account under her direct control, including the capital from Liora and the others. First, it provided total anonymity and prevented information leaks. Second, Mira's personal liquid capital wasn't quite large enough to maximize this play, so she would charge a standard 2% management fee on their profits.

She had been upfront about the risks. But humans were fickle; if the play went south, they would still complain. Since she was bearing the psychological burden of managing the fund, a 2% cut was more than fair. Business was business, even among friends and subordinates.