Chapter 1

"Cole, the company rings the opening bell on its IPO next week. For better management going forward, you'll hand your COO position over to Logan for now. Go spend some time in the back-office department and settle down."

On the dazzling stage of the company gala, Ivy Sutton, the woman CEO I had stood beside for seven years, held the microphone and coldly announced my sentence in front of all five hundred employees.

The room below went dead silent.

Everyone knew I had put my life on the line to help her build this company, starting from a four-person operation in a garage.

And now, for a rich-kid male assistant who had been here less than a month, she had used me up and discarded me in front of everyone.

My hand was in my suit pocket, where the diamond ring I had planned to give her tonight, when I told her how I felt, was still sitting.

Looking at Logan Lancaster beside her, grinning smugly, I didn't lose my temper. I just nodded calmly. "Fine."

If someone had told me seven years ago that Ivy would treat me like this, I wouldn't have believed it for anything in the world.

Seven years ago, I was a college senior. My mother suddenly fell seriously ill and needed $50,000 for surgery.

My relatives avoided me like the plague. With nowhere left to turn, I even thought about selling my blood or borrowing from loan sharks.

It was Ivy, a senior from my college who had just decided to start her own business, who came to find me.

Without a word, she slapped a bank card with $50,000 on it into my hand.

"Cole, consider this a loan from me. The condition is that after you graduate, you come work for my company and give it everything you've got."

In that moment, looking into her stubborn, bright eyes, I swore to myself that my life was hers from then on.

When the company was just starting out, it was only me and her, plus two guys who had been a few years ahead of us in college, Hank and Big Felix.

The four of us were crammed into an underground garage of less than three hundred square feet.

In summer it was as hot as a steam room. In winter it was so cold our hands shook on the keyboards.

To help her land our first big client, I drank at the dinner table until my stomach bled, and an ambulance took me away in the middle of the night.

Ivy stayed by my hospital bed for three days and three nights, crying until her eyes were red and swollen.

She held my hand, her voice choked. "Cole, if I ever make it, I will never let you down."

After that, the company slowly found its footing.

From four people, to forty, to the five hundred we had now.

Ivy became a famous Ice Queen CEO in the industry, and I became her most trusted right hand and the company's COO.

Over those seven years of fighting side by side, something quietly changed.

I fell for her, hopelessly and in secret.

The bond between us ran too deep.

On countless nights of working past midnight, we would drink together in the empty office.

She would kick off her heels and lean on my shoulder with her guard completely down, telling me about the fears she carried, the pain of the family she grew up in, and her dream of taking the company public no matter what.

"Cole, the day the company rings that bell, we'll finally have made it. And then..."

Every time she got to that point, she would lift her head and look at me with shining eyes.

She never said it outright, but I had always believed we had an understanding.

For that one word of hers, "IPO," I worked like a madman.

During the day I chased deals and oversaw projects. At night I studied management and finance.

My position kept rising, until I held seventy percent of the company's core clients in my hands.

In everyone's eyes, I was the "second boss," and everyone agreed I was the man behind Ivy.

Then, one month before the IPO, Logan showed up.

Logan was the son of the company's largest partner.

He had just come back from studying abroad, carrying the title of a foreign-educated master's degree, and was parachuted in as Ivy's personal assistant.

On his very first day, he parked a flashy Ferrari right at the company entrance.

Dressed in a custom suit and holding a huge bouquet of red roses, he walked into Ivy's office in front of the whole company.

I was running the morning meeting with all the department heads at the time. When I saw this through the glass wall, I frowned.

What surprised me even more was Ivy's reaction.

The "Ice Queen CEO," who normally hated nothing more than people bringing their private lives into the office, didn't throw Logan out that day.

She even accepted the flowers and let Logan put them in the vase on her desk.

From that day on, Logan stuck to her like a tail she couldn't shake, following her around every day.

"Ivy, this French restaurant is really hard to get into. Let's go for lunch."

"Ivy, that suit looks amazing on you today. So elegant."

Everyone in the company could see exactly what he wanted from her.

In the past, any male employee who dared to flirt with Ivy at work would have been fired on the spot.

But with Logan, she showed a tolerance and indulgence she had never shown anyone.

Even when Logan made mistakes, she always protected him.

Once, Logan put a decimal point in the wrong place on an important quote and nearly cost the company more than a million dollars.

At the regular meeting, I called out the problem without mincing words and asked that Logan be given a formal written reprimand and docked his bonus, per company policy.

Ivy frowned and cut me off.

"Cole, let it go. Logan just got back to the country and doesn't know the domestic market yet. Besides, the contract didn't end up getting signed, did it? There was no actual loss. A verbal warning is enough."

I froze, staring at her in disbelief.

"Ms. Sutton, you wrote the company policy yourself back then. If rewards and punishments aren't applied fairly, how will anyone respect them from now on?"

"Am I the CEO, or are you?" Ivy's voice shot up, and her eyes swept over me, ice-cold. "I make the call on this. Meeting adjourned!"

That day, every executive in the conference room exchanged looks.

Rumors about the two of them began flying around the company as if they had sprouted wings.

"Did you hear? Ms. Sutton and Lancaster Jr. are supposedly together."

"Obviously. He's the partner's son, he's got money and looks. It's a power couple."

"Then what about Mr. Sinclair? He's been with Ms. Sutton for seven years. Did he just get beaten to it?"

The gossip reached my ears and stabbed at my heart like needles.

I tried asking Ivy about it once.

That night, using a work report as an excuse, I went into her office.

"You and Logan... what exactly is going on between you?" I stared into her eyes. The words were hard to get out.

Ivy didn't even look up as she flipped through the file in her hands. "We're colleagues. He reports to me. Cole, since when are you like those gossiping women in the office?"

"If he just reports to you, why are you protecting him so much?" I raised my voice.

"Because his father is the company's biggest investor! The IPO is right around the corner. I have to keep him happy, don't you get it?"

She slammed the file down on the desk with a smack, her voice full of impatience.

Fine. For the IPO.