Chapter 9

I agreed to my first date with Julian two months later.

There were no reporters and no parents waiting for us.

We met at an ordinary restaurant.

He did not give me diamonds.

He did not reserve the entire restaurant.

Halfway through dinner, he received a call from his overseas team.

A major mistake had been made on one of their projects.

The executive in charge was trying to blame a female analyst who had just joined the company.

Julian listened and asked one question.

“Who signed the final approval?”

The person on the other end went silent.

“I did.”

“Then you are the first person we investigate.”

He ended the call.

He did not try to appear gentle because I was sitting across from him.

He did not protect the executive simply because the man worked for him.

After that night, we began spending time together.

We were not potential spouses chosen by our families.

We were not meeting for the sake of a business partnership.

We still argued during meetings.

I rejected acquisition terms proposed by Mercer.

Julian rejected expansion plans proposed by Hale.

Once, his father told him to use our relationship to force me to give Mercer a larger share of the company.

The next day, Julian brought me a revised agreement.

Hale gave up nothing.

Mercer was still protected.

He had simply kept our personal relationship out of the negotiation.

I watched him for a year.

I watched how he treated employees who made mistakes.

I watched how he reacted when a decision cost him money.

I watched how he handled pressure from his family.

I also watched whether he kept his word when doing so offered him no benefit.

During that year, I completed three major acquisitions of my own.

The overseas business we bought from Brooks became Hale Capital’s entry into several new markets.

My father placed me in charge of the company’s most important investment committee.

The media stopped referring to me only as the Hale heiress.

They began calling me the next leader of Hale Capital.

Our women’s career program expanded into more than twenty companies.

It required open promotion standards, independent reporting channels, protected positions after maternity leave, and employment decisions that did not judge women by marriage or pregnancy.

Those rules could not make every workplace fair overnight.

But more women no longer had to stay silent to keep their jobs.

The investigation center led by Noah also grew from five employees to more than forty.

When he closed the center’s one hundredth complaint, he placed the final report on my desk.

“I was too afraid to protect Anna back then.”

“At least no one has to wait two years now.”

I signed his promotion document.

From that day on, he became the official head of the investigation center.

I had not heard anything about Ethan for a long time.

The continuing boycott forced Brooks Group to sell most of its core businesses.

After his father resigned as chairman, he left New York with the remaining family assets.

The family did not take Ethan with them.

His frozen trust had been used for compensation.

His apartment was taken back, and his cars were sold.

The people who once followed him everywhere eventually found him again.

They suggested using his remaining money to start a new company together.

Ethan believed them.

The day after he transferred the money, every one of them disappeared.

He had finally become the one they chose.

They lied to him, used him, and threw him away.

This time, no one helped him recover what he had lost.

The following winter, Julian waited downstairs after I finished a board meeting.

He knelt on one knee and handed me a document.

I opened it.

It was a prenuptial agreement.

Our careers would remain independent.

Any cooperation between our families would remain separate from the marriage.

Neither of us would have the right to interfere in the other’s company decisions because we were married.

A ring was placed inside the final page.

Julian looked at me.

“I know you will not say yes because of a ring.”

“You can keep evaluating me.”

I closed the agreement.

“How long do I have?”

“That is up to you.”