Page 170 of Secret Heir For The Billionaire Twin

“They’ll have them tomorrow.”

Martin studies me for another moment.

“And New York?”

“Still standing.”

A few people smile.

I don’t.

“Blackwell isn’t choosing between coasts,” I continue.

“New York remains headquarters. California is where a growing percentage of our research is being developed. We built the infrastructure for this years ago. Now we use it.”

Nobody argues again.

Seven years ago, a room like this would have been surrounded by lawyers.

For a long time, almost every major decision at Blackwell came with another set of eyes attached to it: outside counsel, federal monitors, European regulators, compliance teams, board committees that existed because someone in Washington or Brussels wanted proof that we had learned how to behave.

We learned. Mostly.

The company sold assets we didn’t want to sell, unwound contracts that had once been considered untouchable, rebuilt entire compliance structures, and spent years answering questions from people who had already decided what they thought the answers should be. Adrian and I testified until I could predict half the questions before they were asked. Richard sat through hearings he once would have considered beneath him. Vivian built a legal department large enough to operate as its own small government.

Blackwell survived every one of them. Then we grew.

The regulators eventually stepped back. The market recovered. The businesses we kept became stronger, leaner, and considerably more valuable than the version everyone predicted would collapse when the first subpoenas arrived.

The scar tissue remains useful.

“Anything else?” I ask.

Nobody speaks.

“Good. Send the revised projections to Evelyn by 4:00. I want the San Jose expansion schedule on my desk before I leave tonight.”

Chairs shift as the meeting breaks.

The door opens before the last executive has cleared the conference room, and Tamara Reed walks in carrying my tablet, two folders, and the expression she wears whenever someone has attempted to damage her schedule.

Tamara has been with me for four years. She is fifty-two, terrifyingly organized, and entirely unimpressed by titles, wealth, or anyone who believes their emergency should automatically become mine. The first month she worked for me, she reorganized my calendar, fired two outside scheduling vendors, and informed me that if I continued accepting meetings without telling her, she would remove my access to my own calendar.

I hired her permanently that afternoon.

“You moved the capital review,” she says.

“I finished early.”

“You moved it twelve minutes.”

“I wasn’t aware twelve minutes constituted a crisis.”

“It does when three other people think they now own those twelve minutes.”

She sets the tablet in front of me.

I glance down at the schedule.