Takeover: Takeover Duet Book 0 Read online

  His career ended before it even began, and he changed his focus to me. He didn’t force me onto the path I’m on now. No, my father taught me that I could achieve anything and believed I would touch the very reaches he’d always dreamed he would but never did.

  “Lauren, your future is there,” he’d say with wonder and excitement.

  I’d look up, staring at the stars twinkling above us, and wonder what else was out there. Childhood curiosity and the love of my father drove me toward my destiny…toward today. Not into space, but to the inside of the boardroom, where I could make the dream a reality for others.

  Although I didn’t have the guts to become an astronaut, I knew from a young age that I wanted to make it possible for others to go where no man had gone before. My father believed in me and said I could do anything if I worked hard enough. I studied science and business at Boston University, graduating with a bachelor of science in aerospace and an MBA by the age of twenty-four.

  It didn’t matter that I was a woman in a male-dominated industry, the only limitations I had were those that others had placed on me, underestimating my drive and determination to reach the top.

  Five years ago, I became the CEO of Interstellar Corp—one of the world’s cutting-edge producers of aerospace technology. They are the second-largest company in the field, behind only Cozza International, the oldest company in the field. I never thought that within ten years of stepping through the door, I’d be head of the multibillion-dollar corporation.

  I’d achieved a small piece of my father’s dream before the age of thirty, but my father never got to see me take the helm. Three years before I was appointed the head of Interstellar, he died of a stroke.

  Although he wasn’t standing by my side, I thought about him watching me from above, finally going to all the places he’d always dreamed of seeing.

  It happened.

  I’d made it.

  Lauren Bradley, CEO of Interstellar Corporation.

  Being a businesswoman and running a company came with some major hurdles that I had never expected.

  But like everything else in my life, I didn’t let it stop me.

  I couldn’t.

  I always knew the business world could be cutthroat, but I never expected the betrayal to come from someone close to me.

  I braced myself for it. There’s always competition—both from inside the company and from other businesses in the same field.

  Years before I became CEO, I made a mistake.

  One that can be especially devastating to the career of a female executive.

  Not a what, but a who.

  Trent Moore.

  We’d worked long hours together on the development of a new engine technology, and the lust became undeniable. It was my first big assignment for the company and the launching pad that catapulted me to the top. Between Trent’s rugged good looks and MENSA-level genius, I couldn’t help but be attracted to him.

  He flirted.

  I blushed.

  He smiled.

  I swooned.

  After months of going back and forth, I gave in to him.

  Relationships were a complication I couldn’t afford, especially not in the beginning of my career. My mind knew it, but my body led me down the path of a sinful office romance that ended as spectacularly as a test rocket exploding before reaching the stratosphere.

  Eventually, I came to my senses, feeling boxed in after he became possessive, which had me backpedaling and looking for a way out. After I was able to break off our relationship, I asked if we could be friends, but Trent refused to believe that we were over. He did everything in his power to get me back, and every time I told him no, he took it to mean yes.

  I refused his every advance, but he bided his time and thought I’d come to my senses—but I never did.

  The one thing I know about myself is that once my mind is made up, I never go back.

  Trent was a hard lesson to learn—never mix business with pleasure. Interoffice romances spell disaster and should be avoided at all costs. I couldn’t just walk away from him entirely. We worked together. And that there is the rub.

  When I became CEO of Interstellar, he became the head of research and development, not because of me, but because of our work on the project that had pushed us together. We had a common goal—a new engine technology that would revolutionize the industry, and we were so close.

  I knew that, as a company, we needed him, even if I didn’t want a damn thing to do with him.

  He had a brilliant mind, and Interstellar needed him just as much as they needed me. We were trapped together in a symbiotic relationship, even though it was toxic. He needed me to back his projects and give him free rein, while I needed him to create something so magnificent it would make Interstellar the leader in the aerospace industry and allow me to leave my mark on the universe. Like it or not, our lives were intertwined.

  He pulled off the impossible, creating something that would solidify Interstellar’s dominance over the entire industry.

  Maybe he wasn’t my biggest mistake after all.

  Chapter Four

  Lauren

  Trent sits down, his straight brown hair wild and messy, fitting his mad scientist persona to a T. He places his hands behind his head and kicks back in the chair. “How much do you love me?”

  I take a deep breath and count to three. I’m not in the mood for his flirtatious banter this early in the morning. But then again, I never am. “We’ve been over this before. You need to knock before entering my office. Strolling in like you own the place is not acceptable.”

  Trent never did fully grasp the boundaries I’d put in place after we broke up. Being the CEO and his boss hasn’t earned me an ounce of respect in his eyes either. He comes and goes as he pleases, no matter how many times I’ve reminded him he can’t just breeze into my office like we’re still a couple.

  “Come on, Lulu.” He gives me the classic Trent “I’m the man” chin lift.

  I hate when he calls me Lulu. He gave me the nickname a few months after we started dating, and it always gave me the creeps. For being such a brilliant man, at times, he’s completely clueless.

  “What do you want?” I try to keep the anger from my voice, but I fail miserably.

  He shows off the dimple that I used to adore but now despise. “You lost your sparkle, sweetheart. What’s wrong?”

  I rise from my chair, stroll to the front of my desk, and lean against it. “Skip the bullshit, Trent. It’s not going to work on me anymore.” Crossing my arms, I stare down at the man I once thought I loved. “What’s wrong with the design?”

  He smiles smugly. “Nothing. It’s perfect.”

  It’s hard to imagine a time when I believed Trent was charming, but I fell for him hook, line, and sinker.

  My mouth falls open, and my arms drop. “It’s done?”

  That damn dimple deepens. “Yep.”

  “You did it?” I whisper, gripping the edge of my desk, unable to believe what he’s telling me.

  I shouldn’t be shocked that he found a way to make the engine work. It’s the reason I never fired him. Trent isn’t just a genius; he has the ability to rank right up there with Albert Einstein if he’s only given a chance.

  He squares his shoulders and puffs out his chest, because Trent wouldn’t be Trent without his cockiness. “I did.”

  “Do you know what this means?”

  The enormity of this moment isn’t lost on me.

  My heart beats wildly as my mind reels from the news.

  He did it.

  We did it.

  Interstellar pulled off something no one ever thought possible, and Trent made it happen. Suddenly, I’m thankful I never fired him even if he’s a daily pain in my ass. I’m all about taking one for the team, especially when they come through in a big way.

  He stands and invades my personal space with his aquamarine eyes gazing into mine. “That I’m a legend.” He moves closer, and I lean backward, trying to pu
t more space between us. “Bound to be remembered for eternity.”

  He cages me in, but in this moment, I’m not angry. How can I be after he just delivered the most amazing news? “Yeah, Trent, you will.” It’s true and ridiculous all at once. “But this means that we’re going to crush the bastards at Cozza.”

  “It’s what you always wanted.” He starts to stroke the exposed skin on my arm. “We make an amazing team, Lauren.”

  Team? We haven’t been a team in years, and even then, we were two entities that spent time together but didn’t gel as one. I was too busy busting my ass to climb the corporate ladder, and Trent, well, his brilliant mind never seemed to stay focused long enough. When we were a couple, he never paid as much attention to me as he does now.

  The man doesn’t understand boundaries. Not only does he breeze into my office whenever he feels like it, but he touches me more than I’d like. By that I mean, if he touches me once, it’s too much. But I can’t knee him in the balls in my office. Even if he doesn’t act professionally, I must.

  I dig my fingernails into the wood on the underside of my desk, and I narrow my eyes. I grit my teeth, but keep my voice down so the rest of the office doesn’t overhear. “Get your hands off me.”

  His thumb brushes against my flesh, too close to my breast as he ignores my request. “The new engine is my gift to you. Someday, you’ll come back to me.”

  “Trent.” I finally duck under his arm and move behind my desk again. I grip the back of my chair and raise my chin. “I appreciate the thoughtfulness behind your accomplishment, but there will never be an us again.”

  “I’ll wait for you. Bask in the knowledge that it’s ready for the final test phase before we can launch it into production, Lulu.”

  I wrinkle my nose and tamp down a growl that’s building in the back of my throat. “Thanks.” My tone is clipped and cold. “I look forward to reading your report and bringing it before the board for final approval. Can you have it on my desk before the end of the day?”

  “Already done. Cassie has it.”

  I’m at a loss for words.

  Trent’s always been thorough but not when it comes to paperwork. The man could build anything with his hands, but ask him to write something down, and he becomes inarticulate and lazy.

  I clear my throat. “I’ll call an emergency meeting and get the ball rolling ASAP.”

  He turns to face me before he makes it to the door. “Want to have a drink with me after work to celebrate?”

  “It’s never going to happen, Trent. We have a business relationship, and that’s it.”

  “But…”

  I hold up my hand because I don’t want to waste another minute having this useless, repetitive conversation. “Trent, stop making a fool of yourself.”

  I swear I hear him mumble bitch as he walks out, but I don’t say anything because I don’t want to give him a reason to come back.

  Before I can sit, Cassie strides into the room holding Trent’s report. “Thank God he’s gone.”

  “Tell me about it,” I mumble and hold out my hand, eager to read about the new engine. “Let me see that.”

  She places the report in my hands. “I’m sorry he just walked in. I tried to stop him.” Her lips are pursed as she speaks, but I’ve told her a hundred times I never blame her for his intrusion.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She sinks into the chair Trent just occupied and kicks off her high heels. “Is there anything you need me to do right now?”

  Cassie’s been my assistant and lifeline for the last five years. She’s always prompt and put together, dedicated to her job and to me, and I don’t know if I could do my job without her by my side.

  Typically, she knows what I want and need before I do, but she also knows the report Trent has placed in her hands, ones I trust implicitly, is important to the future of the company and will consume my entire morning.

  I open the report and push down on the spine with my index finger as my eyes start sweeping over the first paragraph. “Can you call an emergency board meeting for tomorrow morning at nine?”

  “On it,” she says before leaving.

  I sit for the next hour, reading word-by-word in complete awe. Most of the information has been so under wraps, even I didn’t know everything until now.

  The cocky bastard had figured out a way to make the engine work without using jet or rocket fuel. No longer would we be the second-largest aerospace company in the world, we were going to rule the universe.

  Interstellar is about to become the leader in travel. Not just airline travel, but his invention could be used to power ships into outer space and allow humans to travel farther than they’d ever gone before.

  This is a game changer.

  I’m one step closer to achieving my dream and my father’s.

  Chapter Five

  Lauren

  In under one hour, I’ll be presenting the proposal to the board members to get the go-ahead on the final testing phase of the new engine. Without their consent and their willingness to spend almost a billion dollars, we’d remain number two.

  But I had Trent’s plan, my vision, and a real chance to do something civilization had never achieved…reaching the outer edges of our solar system without using rocket fuel.

  I’m about to place the final proposal on the table when Josh Goldman stalks into the boardroom. “We have a problem.” He’s almost hyperventilating as he clutches his chest.

  My hand freezes a few inches above the table. “What’s wrong?”

  The nervous excitement I felt immediately morphs into nausea deep in the pit of my stomach.

  Josh runs his fingers through his dirty-blond hair and looks over his shoulder, peering into the hallways before answering. “It’s Cozza. Dawn raid. The bastards,” he says, stammering out the words and not talking in complete sentences.

  Josh is my number two at Interstellar. He started a few months after I did with a nose for business and a love of numbers. He’s usually calm and collected, though today he’s anything but.

  I slowly sit down and stare at the mahogany wood and the intricate design of the grain as I try to wrap my head around the information.

  As with other dawn raids, Cozza purchased a minority stake in Interstellar just as the markets opened this morning. They are positioning themselves for a takeover.

  It was old-school, sneaky, and purely Cozza, the cocky bastards. It was their way of making their intentions public to take over Interstellar without a huge media splash. Dawn raids were rare, especially in the United States, but I should’ve known Cozza would try anything to stop us. This meant only one thing—they’ve officially declared war, and somehow, they knew about the engine.

  “Do you know what this means?” Josh collapses in the chair next to me.

  Swallowing down the lump that’s settled in my throat, I nod. “I do.”

  I don’t want to believe it, but I should’ve known they’d pull something like this on the verge of our announcement. The timing’s uncanny and screams foul play, but things like this happen all the time in our industry… I should’ve expected it.

  “They’re going to try to take us over, Lauren.”

  “It won’t happen,” I say with a firm voice, trying to make myself believe the words as I speak them.

  Josh mashes his hands together tightly, and there’s a vein bulging from his forehead. “How can you be so sure?”

  Tapping my fingernail against the conference table, I look out the window and try to think of a good answer. “I don’t know, Josh, but we better get every goddamn person on finding a way to stop Cozza dead in their tracks.”

  This news changes everything.

  No longer is this a meeting to discuss the exciting future of Interstellar, but the focus now shifts to how to save Interstellar and stop the slow bleed of shares to Cozza.

  The stockholders need to know to hold their shares and not sell them under any circumstances. No matter what Cozza offers, wi
th the invention just on the horizon, they’d be wealthier than they ever imagined.

  He rises from his chair and fists his hands at his sides. “I’ll get the junior executives on it.”

  Based on his anxiety, I can be certain Josh isn’t behind the information leak that led Cozza to purchase the stock overnight.

  But if not him, who?

  There aren’t many people who know about the engine outside of the design team and the top executives. The board probably had an inkling that something big was happening since we called an emergency board meeting, but I can’t imagine they’d shoot themselves in the foot…especially when it came to money.

  “Wait.” My voice is surprisingly calm and unwavering as I speak. “Don’t.”

  He stops and turns. “Why?”

  “We don’t want word getting out until the board of directors knows about Cozza’s intentions. As soon as the meeting is over, we’ll put everyone on it.”

  His Adam’s apple bobs and he nods, closing his eyes briefly. “Fine.” He looks down at his watch. “We have one hour before everyone gets here. We’d better come up with a way to break the news gently.”

  “We’ll start with the original agenda. We’ll rave about the invention and needing final approval for the test phase so we can begin production as soon as possible. After we have everyone excited, we’ll drop the news about Cozza. With the revelation that we’re about to become the leader and make everyone in the room filthy rich, they’ll work their asses off to come up with a solution to get rid of Cozza and secure the corporation.”

  He pulls on the cuffs of his dress shirt before straightening his tie. “If you think that’s a good idea.”

  Josh rarely goes against me, but he isn’t sold on my plan either. Although he’d love to have my job, Interstellar means just as much to him as it does me. We both gave our blood, sweat, and tears to this company, and neither of us wants it to be for nothing.