Page 61 of In A Mood For Mr. Wrong

She swallows, arms crossing over her chest. “Last night…”

I step closer. She doesn’t move away.

I exhale slowly. “Yeah.”

A loaded pause stretches between us. I should say something. I should set boundaries, draw a line. Instead, I reach for her and she doesn’t pull away. Her breath catches as my fingers trail lightly over her arm, as I step closer, my body instinctively gravitating toward hers.

“You should go,” I murmur, even as my hands slide to her waist.

“I know,” she whispers back, but she doesn’t move.

We are too close now, heat crackling between us, the same push and pull we have never been able to resist. Her lips part slightly, and I swear the entire world tilts. And then, my phone rings. The name flashing across the screen sends a chill down my spine.

Eleanor. This war is far from over.

43

MARGOT

Eleanor doesn’t waste time. The moment Grayson’s phone rings, the air between us tightens, stretched thin by the weight of what we already know is coming. His hand clenches around the device, his jaw locking as he stares at the name flashing across the screen. For a long, excruciating second, neither of us moves. Neither of us breathes. Because we both understand that whatever she has to say will be calculated, precise, and designed to inflict maximum damage.

Grayson exhales slowly, then answers the call, his voice controlled but cold. “Eleanor.”

I watch him carefully, my pulse hammering as I try to read the shifting tension in his posture. He listens in silence, his grip on the phone tightening until his knuckles turn white. And then, finally, his voice drops to something lethal, something sharp enough to cut through steel.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

A pause. Something dark flickers across his expression, something that sends a chill down my spine. Then, without another word, he ends the call. The silence that follows is deafening, pressing in on us like a storm about to break.

I take a cautious step closer. “What did she say?”

Grayson doesn’t answer immediately. His shoulders remain rigid, his gaze fixed on some invisible point in the distance, as if he’s trying to will away the inevitable. When he finally looks at me, his blue eyes are unreadable, but the sharp edge of betrayal lingers just beneath the surface.

“She’s calling an official emergency board meeting,” he says, his voice eerily calm. “Tomorrow morning.”

My stomach tightens, dread curling through me like a slow-burning fuse. “She’s not wasting any time.”

“She doesn’t have to.” His laugh is humorless, bitter. “She has Daniel Whitmore locked in as her replacement. She’s claiming thatPerfectly Matchedneeds stable, experienced leadership after all the recent…internal chaos.”

My breath catches. “She’s framing you.”

His gaze darkens, the muscles in his jaw tightening. “Not just me.” Something in the way he says it, low, controlled, heavy with unspoken meaning, makes my heart stutter.

I step closer. “Grayson, what else did she say?”

He hesitates, and the hesitation alone is enough to confirm my worst fears. He turns away, running a hand through his hair before gripping the edge of the counter, as if bracing himself for impact. When he finally speaks, the words are clipped, like they taste bitter coming out of his mouth.

“She’s going public.”

The floor tilts beneath me. I blink. “What?”

Grayson exhales sharply, his back still turned to me. “She’s going to leak the truth about my father.” His voice is rough, strained. “Aboutme.”

The words sink in like ice water pouring down my spine. She’s exposing him. The secret he never even knew about until recently, the truth that Charles King isn’t his biological father,that the legacy Grayson has built his entire life around is, in the eyes of the law, not his by blood.

“She wants to erase me,” he says bitterly. “Not just fromPerfectly Matched. Fromeverything.”

My entire body tenses, fury rising so fast and so fiercely that I can barely see straight. Eleanor isn’t just trying to take his position. She’s trying toruinhim. She’s coming for his identity, his reputation, the foundation ofwhohe is. And she’s not stopping until he has nothing left.

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