Chapter 407
“He refused the lifeline,” Dallas said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “Now we do it the hard way.”
Victor Luna was hyperventilating. He clutched the edge of his desk, his face a mask of purple rage.
“You — you ungrateful, stupid boy!” Victor wheezed. “That was two hundred million dollars! Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve handed the company to Koch!”
Damon ignored his father. He knelt on the floor, picking up a piece of the torn check. He looked up at Eliza, his eyes clearer than they had been in days.
“I’m sorry, Eliza,” he said. “I’ve been selfish. I used your guilt. I tried to trap you. But I can’t let you marry Julian. He’s — he’s worse than Dallas.”
Eliza knelt beside him. “You just destroyed your company, Damon.”
“It’s just money,” Damon said, a sad smile on his face. “I can start over. But I can’t buy you back.”
For a moment, Eliza saw the boy she had been friends with years ago — before the rivalry, before the desperation.
“So what now?” she asked. “Dallas calls the debt tomorrow.”
Up𝖽𝖺𝘁𝗲𝗌 е𝘷е𝗿у 𝗐𝘦𝘦𝗄 𝗈ո 𝗀𝘢𝗅ո𝘰𝘃e𝗅𝘴.𝖼𝗼m
“I marry Cathey,” Damon said, his shoulders slumping. “It’s the only way.”
“No,” Eliza said, standing up. A cold resolve settled over her. “No more marriages. No more selling ourselves.”
“Eliza, we have no leverage,” Victor groaned.
“Yes, we do,” she said, turning to him. “We have my insight. We proceed with the original plan. We attack his company’s reputation.”
“The short selling strategy?” Victor shook his head. “It’s suicide. We don’t have the capital to withstand a squeeze.”
“We don’t need to win — we just need to wound him,” Eliza insisted. “We make his board of directors nervous. We make them question whether his personal vendetta is worth billions in market value. That’s our leverage.” She turned to Victor. “Give me control. Let me be the face of this. I know his playbook. I know how he thinks. He expects us to fold or beg. He doesn’t expect me to stand on the steps of the stock exchange and give an interview about how the great Dallas Koch is using his corporate empire to settle a marital dispute.”
Victor looked at Damon. Damon nodded.
“Do it,” Damon said. “She’s the only one who can beat him.”
Victor sighed. “Fine. Burn it down. If we’re going to die, let’s take a piece of him with us.”
At the Koch Estate, rain lashed against the library windows. Thunder rumbled in the distance, mirroring the storm inside Dallas’s chest.
He sat in his leather armchair, an IV drip connected to his arm. The fluid was clear, but it burned going in. Simmons stood by the fireplace, reading from a tablet.
“Market update,” Simmons said. “Luna Corp’s PR team has scheduled a press conference for market open. The rumor is that Eliza will be speaking. The markets are already reacting — our consumer goods stock is down three percent in pre-market trading.”
Dallas opened his eyes. They were dull, glazed with pain. “She’s fighting back.”
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