Page 28 of Seduced by Her Billionaire Fake Fiancé

“You said we’d look after the staff. You promised.”

“We can make any redundancy voluntary,” he said firmly. “The alternative is to re-hire them into other roles, whether within Acto or in one of my other companies.”

“These are people’s lives, Max.”

“And it’s our company. You want it to thrive, yes?”

“Can we just let things settle a bit longer first? People are still nervous. It will be terrible for morale if we just start offering redundancies and reducing departments straight away.”

“In my experience, bad news is always best given swiftly.”

She stared back at the report, hating that she hadn’t seen this herself. “I’ll think about it.”

“There’s also this office in Sydney,” he pulled more paper from his document wallet. “It’s too expensive for what it achieves.”

“It’s our only base of operations in the Asia Pacific. It’s important to have a presence there.”

“I agree.”

“Good, that’s settled then.”

“I don’t mean the office should stay.”

“Then what do you mean?” She sipped her wine, closing her eyes as it went all the way down. But her tension remained high, the air between herself and Max sparking.

“I have an office in Sydney. A whole building. I can give one floor to Acto, float admin staff initially. It seems redundant to be paying for two setups when you can come under the umbrella of my existing operations.”

She floundered. “But—,” It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion. A cost-cutting measure that would have little to no impact on profitability or market-share. But Andie hated the idea of it.

“Yes?”

“I’ll think about that too,” Andie glowered.

“What’s to think about? The figures are black and white. That operation is running at a significant loss. It’s a waste of company resources.”

“Yeah, well, maybe there’s a different way of doing things,” she snapped, standing up and taking another gulp of wine, needing to be close to eye height with Max. She glared at him, frustrated and annoyed.

“Such as?” He responded, outwardly calm, yet he was arguing back with her.

“Such as, I don’t know yet, that’s why I said I want to think about it.”

“Why are you fighting me on this?”

“Because you’ve come home and are basically demanding an entire re-write of the company. It’s only been two days!”

“Are you upset because I’m not flattering you? Do you need me to tell you that you’ve done an incredible job holding down the fort these last few years? In turbulent global times, with everything you’ve dealt with personally, the way you’ve kept things going is remarkable.”

She closed her eyes. “How do you make even that sound like an insult?”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“You qualify everything.” She infused sarcasm into her voice as she imitated him. “I’ve done well enough, given the pandemic and my mom’s death and my brother’s addictions. But now you’re here and you can do it allso much better,” she raged, wondering in the back of her mind why it felt so damned good to shout at him, when Andie was someone who never lost her temper.

“You approached me,” he reminded her.

“You were never meant to have a controlling share,” she replied sharply, her body moving of its own accord, around the table now so she was standing toe to toe with him.

He let out a harsh bark of laughter. “I see. So you wanted my money and no other contributions?”

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