The Phantom Chairwoman
For years, Adrian Cole treated Clara like an embarrassment—useful only in private, invisible in public. He paraded himself as a rising executive at Nexora Systems, while she stayed quiet, never mentioning the one secret that could destroy his ego: three years earlier, when Nexora was collapsing, she quietly bought seventy-two percent of the shares through a private fund. The “Phantom Chairwoman” people whispered about?
It was her.
On the night of the annual gala, Adrian mocked her simple white dress and warned her to stay silent because “important people” would be there. He even mentioned the rumor that the real owner might appear—if he impressed them, he could become Senior Vice President.
Clara only smiled, because he was describing her. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let me take you back to the beginning, to the moment when Clara Moreno first met Adrian Cole.
Seven years ago, Clara was a twenty-eight-year-old financial analyst working for a mid-sized investment firm in Manhattan. She had a gift for numbers, an instinct for patterns that others missed, and a work ethic that made her indispensable. Her colleagues called her “the calculator” behind her back—not because she was cold, but because she could run projections in her head faster than most people could pull up a spreadsheet.
Adrian was thirty-two, charming in the way that comes easy to men who’ve never been told no.
He worked in business development at Nexora Systems, a tech company specializing in enterprise software solutions. They met at a networking event, the kind of forced mingling where everyone pretends to care about synergy and disruption while really just looking for their next opportunity.
Adrian approached her with a drink in each hand and a smile that suggested he was doing her a favor. “You look like you could use a rescue from whatever boring conversation you just escaped.”
Clara had been standing alone by choice, observing the room, but she accepted the drink anyway.
“And you look like someone who practices that line in the mirror.”
He laughed, genuinely caught off guard.
“Ouch. Beautiful and sharp. I’m Adrian.”
“Clara.”
What followed was six months of courtship that felt like a whirlwind but was really just Adrian moving at the only speed he knew: fast and focused.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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