Billionaire For Ransom - Layla Valentine Page 0,1

lucrative career, and as such, was the only person on the board who really understood what it was like to be me. What it was like to be a woman in charge—and a woman fighting to keep herself on top, despite what the world around her thought she should be doing.

She gave me a slightly abashed smile the moment her eyes came up to meet mine, and I knew in that instant that she didn’t want to be here any more than I did. She’d thought it was a stupid idea right from the start, and if I knew Julia, she’d already known exactly how I was going to react.

Giving up a whole division of my company, just so someone else could make money I could keep in the company coffers. Please. It would have been a stupid business decision that would have not only cut our profits, but also reduced the size of the company itself—which wouldn’t have looked good on any of our financial reports the next time we wanted to take out a loan or discuss going public.

All because one stupid man had talked a bunch of other stupid men into believing that I couldn’t handle my business. Or, I realized suddenly, one stupid man had thought he could help out another of his businesses by forcing my business to hire out to them.

I bit my lip. Was that it? Did Allan have some side interest in a distribution firm? Was that where this screwy idea came from?

“I think you’ve said exactly what you needed to,” Julia said quietly, bringing my attention back into the room. She shifted her gaze to Allan—the instigator of the entire thing, I was sure—and cocked a single eyebrow at him. “Allan, I believe you’ve got your answer. Shall we all head out for lunch, and leave Alice here to continue with what I’m certain is a very important day?”

“I just think we should have more say in the direction of the company,” Allan protested in a last-ditch effort to be heard.

“You want more direction?” I asked pleasantly. “Tell me, Allan, how much did you make from your share of this company last year?”

I waited, wondering if he was going to tell the truth. Because I knew exactly how much he’d made. And if he was smart, he wouldn’t try to short it. I would call him out on it just to make him look stupid, and he had to know I would.

“Around five million,” he muttered.

I nodded slowly, tapping a finger to my lips in thought. “Imagine that. Over five million dollars, all for sitting around and not doing anything. All for having played hero when I was younger and needed an investor. That’s not a bad payday, I guess.”

There were some murmurs of agreement at that, and I nodded at everyone else.

“And just think, Allan, that you made that five mil because of decisions I made. Because of products that I thought up and then developed and distributed myself. Now honestly, have I ever given you a reason to doubt my business sense?”

He took forever to give me an answer—because he knew I was right.

“No,” he finally said.

“And don’t you have better things to do than to be hanging over my shoulder all the time, trying to second-guess me?”

“Yes.”

“So don’t you think that the best option here is for you to back off, let me make the decisions for my company, and take the free money I’m handing you?”

He didn’t even bother to answer that question. He just started packing his things up, slamming them around like a little kid who’d just had his favorite toy taken away. Once he was done, he stormed out of the office—followed more slowly and reasonably by the rest of the board.

I watched them file out, feeling a combination of elation at having won… and frustration at having had to fight the fight again. Because this wasn’t the first time we’d had this discussion. And I doubted that it would be the last.

Being a businesswoman in Silicon Valley was no joke, but add into it that I was a woman at the head of a major corporation, and you had a recipe for a twenty-four-seven headache.

I’d never received the respect I wanted. And I wasn’t sure I ever would.

That didn’t mean I was ever going to stop asking for it, though. I’d worked hard to get to where I was, and I was never going to stop expecting some recognition for that.

I was never