POV: Sophie Mitchell
The car ride to Derek Sterling's office takes thirty minutes and Sophie spends every second of it trying to convince herself to turn around.
She doesn't.
The building is all glass and steel. The kind of place that's designed to make you feel small the moment you walk in. Derek's office is on the forty-second floor and the elevator ride up makes Sophie's ears pop.
She's worn a black dress. Professional but not trying too hard. She wanted to look capable but also like she belonged in a space with expensive art on the walls and floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the entire city.
Derek Sterling is already standing by the window when she enters.
He's taller than his pictures suggest. Handsome in a way that's almost dangerous. The kind of handsome that comes from knowing exactly how to use everything you have to get what you want.
He smiles when he sees her and it's warm. Too warm. It's the smile of someone who already knows he's going to win.
"Sophie. Finally we meet in person." He doesn't offer his hand. He just gestures to the chair across from his desk. "Please sit."
Sophie sits. The chair is expensive and uncomfortable in a way that feels intentional.
Derek walks around his desk and leans against it. He's close enough that Sophie can smell his cologne. Close enough that he can see every expression that crosses her face.
"I imagine you're wondering why I wanted to meet," he says.
Sophie doesn't answer. She's learned that silence makes people fill the space with more information than they intended to give.
"Ashford Holdings is failing," Derek continues. "Not badly yet. Not visibly to most people. But I can see it. The company is being run by someone who's afraid to change anything. Someone who's comfortable with decline because decline is familiar. That company could be worth three times what it currently is. In the right hands."
He pauses. He's watching her carefully.
"I want to take it over," he says. "And I want you to help me."
Sophie laughs. She can't help it. The sound comes out sharp and wrong in his expensive office.
"I don't know anything about hostile takeovers," she says. "I run a coffee shop."
"You know James Ashford," Derek says. "That's what matters. You know how he thinks. You know what he cares about. You know exactly how to make him lose focus at the exact moment when he needs to be sharpest."
Sophie stands up. "No."
Derek doesn't look surprised. He looks like he was waiting for her to say that.
"No?" he asks, like he's testing the word.
"No. This isn't about business for you and we both know it. You want to hurt him and you want me to be the weapon. I'm not doing that."
Sophie moves toward the door.
"Your mother's medical insurance ran out six months ago," Derek says.
Sophie stops. Her hand is on the door handle and she stops moving completely.
"She's been getting treatment at St. Mary's Hospital," Derek continues. "Experimental treatment for her heart condition. Very expensive. Very necessary. She's been paying out of pocket because the insurance company deemed her condition a pre-existing issue. The bills are extensive."
Sophie doesn't turn around. She can't turn around because if she turns around, Derek will see that his words just ripped her open.
"How do you know that?" Her voice comes out quiet.
"I know everything about you, Sophie. I have for three months. I have a team that researches people the way other people research investments. And what I found is a woman who's been sending her mother money every month while running a coffee shop. A woman who sends money but has never actually asked her mother if it's enough. A woman who doesn't know that her mother's debt is almost three hundred thousand dollars and growing."
Sophie turns around. Derek is still leaning against his desk like he didn't just detonate her entire world.
"You're bluffing," she says, but her voice shakes.
Derek walks to a drawer in his desk and pulls out a file. He tosses it across the desk toward Sophie.
She picks it up with hands that aren't steady.
Inside are photographs.
Her mother in a hospital bed. Her mother looking smaller than Sophie remembers. Her mother looking scared.
Then the papers start. Medical bills. Hospital invoices. Collections notices addressed to her mother's apartment. Letters from lawyers. Warnings about debt.
Sophie's vision gets blurry.
"She hasn't told you because she doesn't want you to worry," Derek says. "She loves you. Mothers do that. They carry pain so their children don't have to."
Sophie closes the file because she can't look at another page.
"If you work with me," Derek says, "all of this goes away. Your mother gets the best cardiologist in the country. She gets the treatments she needs. She gets to retire. She never works another day in her life. And her debt disappears like it never existed."
Sophie sits down without meaning to.
"Why would you do that?" she asks. "What do you care about my mother?"
"I don't," Derek says simply. "But I care about you. And I care about winning."
He walks back around his desk and sits in his chair. He's not threatening her. He's not forcing her. He's just laying out the numbers and letting her do the math.
Sophie knows what this is. This is leverage. This is Derek Sterling showing her that he understands exactly what makes her weak.
Family.
"I'm not using James," she says. "I'm not going to hurt him for money."
"You're not doing it for money," Derek says. "You're doing it for love. That's the difference. That's why you'll be perfect for this. You won't be pretending. You'll actually care about the company's future. You'll actually want to fix what James broke. You'll just also be taking it away from him in the process."
Sophie looks at the file in her hands. She thinks about her mother carrying this alone. Her mother getting weaker every day and not telling Sophie because she didn't want to be a burden.
"What do you want me to do?" Sophie asks.
Derek smiles like the sun just came out.
"I want you to help me build a case for acquisition. I want you to learn everything about Ashford Holdings. I want you to be present when the shareholders meeting happens. I want you to present the future of that company with me. And I want James to see your face when his empire gets taken apart."
"And then?" Sophie asks.
"And then you become the CEO of the biggest acquisition of the year. You run Ashford Holdings the way it's supposed to be run. You make it profitable. You make it successful. You make yourself unforgettable."
He leans forward. "Is that really so bad? Getting everything you've ever wanted?"
Sophie thinks about this for a long time.
"If I do this," she says, "it's for my mother. Not for revenge. Not for James. For her."
"Of course," Derek says. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."
Sophie knows he's lying. She knows that Derek doesn't care about her motivations. He only cares about winning and he's betting that Sophie will help him do it.
"When do we start?" she asks.
"Tomorrow," Derek says. "You'll meet with my team. We'll give you financial records. We'll teach you everything you need to know. You'll become an expert in Ashford Holdings in the next three weeks. And then you'll walk into that shareholders meeting and change everything."
Sophie stands up. Her legs feel weak but she forces them to support her weight.
"There's one condition," she says.
Derek waits.
"My mother never knows about this. She never knows that Derek Sterling paid her medical bills. As far as she's concerned, those bills get handled by insurance. She doesn't know I'm involved in any of this. She doesn't become part of the deal."
Derek considers this. "Agreed. Your mother will wake up one day and discover that her financial situation has resolved itself. She'll think it's a clerical error or a miracle. She won't know it's because her daughter just agreed to dismantle the empire of the man she used to be married to."
Sophie walks toward the door.
"Sophie," Derek calls out.
She stops.
"You should know something," he says. "James never got over you. I've had people watch him. He dates women who look like you. He works eighty-hour weeks. He's hollow. You're going to walk into that shareholders meeting and he's going to see you and he's going to understand that he made the biggest mistake of his life."
Sophie doesn't respond. She doesn't need to.
She already knows that James made the biggest mistake of his life.
She's the one who's lived with the consequences.
As the elevator descends and Sophie watches the city get smaller beneath her, she realizes something terrible.
Derek Sterling was right about one thing.
She is going to be perfect for this.
Not because she wants revenge on James.
But because she's finally going to matter to someone.
Even if that someone is watching her destroy the only man who ever made her feel like she might be enough.