LITMIR.BIZ

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lifted a shoulder. “A beast doesn’t need to connect. He lives on another level entirely.”

      That he did. Her mouth pursed with the desire to speak, but she shut it down. He might tell himself that. But everyone needed to connect, to experience their human ability to feel. Even a beast.

      “Shall we get started, then?”

      He nodded. “Elisa is making a shrimp-and-lobster paella. Would you like a drink first?”

      She shook her head. “Mineral water is fine.” Tonight she was keeping this all about business. Every last single minute of it.

      The pentagon-shaped terrace, boasting coveted southern, eastern and western views of New York, including one of Central Park, was an amazing space to work in. Frankie booted up her PC in one of the comfortable seating areas scattered around the space, and took in the view.

      “I’ve received input from Marketing and Sales,” she told Harrison when he returned with their drinks.

      “Good.” He came over to sit beside her to look at the screen. He was overwhelmingly male and distracting with his long legs splayed out in front of him. It was going to take all her powers of concentration to keep her mind where it should be.

      “Did we get operations to mock up an organizational structure?”

      “Yes, it’s here.” She flipped to the slide. The drawing illustrated every division of the massive company that was Grant International, including a new parallel subcompany to Taladan for gauges and meters in Siberius. It was mind-numbing to look at, the scale was so vast. Pretty much every piece of a car you didn’t see on the outside was made by Grant International.

      Harrison studied the diagram. “That’s fine. Slot an overall positioning slide in at the beginning and I’ll give you some points.”

      She added an up-front slide. He started dictating points, then stopped, backtracked and changed some of his wording. It sounded like semantics to her but she kept typing.

      “Point three—the Siberius brand will be maintained as is, pending the outcome of the operations group and consumer research studies.”

      Frankie started typing. He frowned and waved a hand at her. “Delete that. I want to bury it further down in the plan.”

       Bury it? Why would they do that?

      She kept her mouth shut. He had a reason for everything he did, much of it unbeknownst to her. They finished the opening slides and started on the marketing plan. Frankie thought the team had done an excellent job of making gauges and meters a sexy topic for the industry audience the campaign would be targeted at, but Harrison ripped out two of her favorite ideas.

      “Why?” she asked, with her newly granted ability to question. “Those are really smart, creative ideas that work for the target audience. Isn’t that key to growing a brand?”

      He nodded, his dark lashes coming down to veil his gaze. “But I think it’s overkill in this case.”

      They moved on to the next section of ideas the marketing team had grouped as “core must-haves.” The first point included ads in trade publications. “Take that out,” Harrison instructed. Now she really didn’t understand. When Josh had gone through the ideas with her he had told her advertising was key to creating mass awareness for a product. “If nobody in the North American market knows about Siberius’s cool products,” she asked, “how are you going to expand its base?”

      He gave her a pained look. “Expanding Siberius’s base isn’t an important priority for us right now. It’s doing fine in the strength areas it currently occupies.”

      This was hurting her brain. She put her laptop down and eyed him contemplatively. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we supposed to be selling Leonid on how Siberius will flourish within Grant International? Encouraging him we are the right way to go? He said he had innovative products no one else has. How do we promote those?”

      “Every company says they have innovative products,” he bit out impatiently. “I am conscious of not setting unrealistic expectations when anything could happen when the board gets ahold of this deal.”

      She frowned. “But of course they’ll support the plan if this is the only way you can get Leonid to sign. They’ll have no choice.”

      “That’s an idealistic way to look at it, but the reality is they’ll do what makes business sense. I can only make suggestions. In scenarios like this when we’re acquiring similar resources, the board will likely force us to streamline the two companies into one. It’s doubtful Siberius will be left standing as its former entity.”

      “So why are we spending all this time doing a plan?” The words were hardly out of her mouth before it hit her. Harrison had no intention of keeping Siberius intact. He was going to lure Leonid in with this plan and dismantle Siberius when it was done.

      Every bone in her body hated the idea. The company had belonged to Leonid’s father. He wanted his legacy preserved. That had been his whole hesitation in signing.

      She eyed him. “It’s a bait and switch.”

      The impatience in his gaze devolved into a dark storm brewing. “No,” he rejected in a lethally quiet voice. “I made a promise to Leonid to do what I can to see Siberius preserved. It is beyond my or any other CEO’s control to promise him it will remain intact when business realities say it won’t.”

      Yet he wasn’t even giving the company a fighting chance with this plan. She lifted her chin. “I see.”

      “Francesca...”

      She shook her head. This was the part where she needed to stop talking because it got her into trouble. “Let’s keep going,” she said quietly, looking down at her screen. “Where were we?”

      “Francesca,” he growled. “This is business. Put the self-righteous look away and be a big girl. You have no idea of the stakes here.”

      The “big girl” remark did it for her. She looked up at him, eyes spitting fire. “Dictate to me what you want in this plan and I will do it. But do not ask me to say that this is right.”

      “It is right.” His ebony gaze sat on her with furious heat. “This is the law of the jungle. Only the fittest survive.”

      “In your world,” she said evenly. “Not in mine.”

      “And what would your world have me do? Allow some other predator to snap Siberius up because I’m the one stupid enough to tell Leonid the truth? Not happening.”

      “I believe in karma,” Frankie said stubbornly. “I know what a good man Leonid is. He’s putting his trust in you.”

      The fury in his eyes channeled into a livid black heat that was so focused, so intense, it scorched her skin. “I know all about karma, Francesca. I know more about it than you will ever want to know in your lifetime. Trust me on that.”

      She watched with apprehensive eyes as he got up, paced to the railing and looked out at the fading light of New York. Having him ten feet away allowed her to pull in some air and compose herself. This job meant everything to her; she was proving she could make it on her own. But so did the principles upon which she’d been brought up.

      “I’m not trying to be difficult,” she said quietly to his back. “But my father taught me to treasure my ethics at all costs. That if I was ever in a situation that would make it hard for me to sleep at night, maybe I shouldn’t be a part of it.”

      He turned around, leaned back against the railing and rested his elbows on it. His anger had shifted into a cold, hard nothingness that was possibly even more disconcerting than the fury.

      The chill directed itself her way. “Although my grandfather built Grant Industries, it was my father who had the foresight and brilliance to modernize its methods and transform Grant from a successful but stagnant regional

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