One Night Stand With My Ex's Uncle

Lucy’s POV

My heart stopped the moment Anna’s words cut through the room like a blade:

"Then we terminate our partnership."

The floor tilted beneath me, panic surging like a tidal wave up my throat. No, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Anna Shaw was meant to crack under pressure not flip the entire damn table.

She’s bluffing, I told myself, clinging to the hope like a lifeline. She has to be bluffing.

The Phoenix Project was a guaranteed win. No sane executive would walk away from a goldmine over some glorified escort.

But the look in Anna’s eyes wasn’t the look of someone bluffing. It was cold. Unflinching. Calculated.

I forced a calm expression onto my face, though my mind spiraled through the implications. Without Phoenix, I’d lose everything my position, my leverage. My title as General Manager wasn’t just a job; it was my legitimacy in the eyes of the Simpson family.

Months of carefully cultivated goodwill with Mary Simpson would vanish. All that effort to position myself as the perfect daughter-in-law alternative gone.

Have they all lost their minds? I thought, watching this absurd standoff unfold. Phoenix was bulletproof. The research, the market projections it was built to succeed.

And then it hit me: Anna wasn’t bluffing.

She was calling ours.