Unloved Unwanted Unstoppable (Seraphina and Dominic) novel Chapter 78

Cynthia also turned her head, offering Lily a warm smile. "Such a good girl, Lily. I'll take you out for something delicious next time. Once you're fully recovered, you can eat whatever you want."

Lily's eyes lit up, and she nodded eagerly. "Thank you, Cynthia."

Meanwhile, back in the private room.

By the time the three of them finished their conversation, the sky outside had already gone completely dark.

Victor took off his reading glasses and looked up.

"Seraphina, Julian and I have already discussed the preliminary stages of this project."

"We've decided to put you entirely in charge of finding the corporate partner for the company's new initiative."

Seraphina froze.

She knew Professor Vane's team operated a commercial entity on the side. But because she had always been completely absorbed in the academic side of the research, and because her mentors kept an incredibly low profile, she never actually knew the name of the company.

And now, they were asking her to run the partnership negotiations right out of the gate.

She immediately held her hands up. "Professor, I can't. I don't know the first thing about commercial operations or business negotiations. You should really leave this to Julian."

Julian aggressively waved his hands the second he heard his name.

"Oh, don't drag me into this, Seraphina. I'm already drowning in the experimental data for this project. If you make me handle corporate partnerships too, I'm going to lose whatever hair I have left."

He dramatically patted the thinning crown of his head, earning a soft laugh from Seraphina.

But her smile quickly faded.

She looked back at Victor, her expression dead serious. "Professor, I really can't. I've been stuck at home for years... I have zero experience with this side of the industry. I'm terrified I'll mess it up and ruin the project's timeline."

Victor frowned.

Seraphina was utterly speechless.

The elusive, mysterious billionaire CEO that the entire business world was frantically hunting for was sitting right across from her.

Julian let out a bitter laugh and waved his hand dismissively.

"I didn't have a choice. To get the professor's research funded and applied, we needed a commercial entity. I didn't want to hand our life's work over to corporate vultures, so I had to step up and do it myself."

His grimace deepened.

"But I absolutely hate the business side. All I want to do is stay in the lab. For years, I've just let Mr. Quincy handle the day-to-day. But he's a businessman, not a scientist. He doesn't have the technical background to properly evaluate our partners. We've chased a few bad leads because of it."

He looked at Seraphina, his eyes pleading.

"You're officially part of Zenith now. Please, just do me this one favor and handle the recruitment process. I literally have no one else I can trust with this. You're our only hope."