Chapter 2 - The Inheritance
To understand how I found myself kneeling in a puddle of vintage champagne at an exclusive Manhattan gala, you have to understand where I came from—and more importantly, who my grandfather was.
For four years, Trevor Slade had known me as Nina Rossi, an ordinary freelance financial analyst scraping by in the city, working seventy-hour weeks to pay off student loans while helping him climb the corporate ladder at Ashford & Sterling Capital.
He knew my mother had died when I was young. He knew I had grown up in a modest house in upstate New York.
What he didn't know—what I had deliberately kept hidden while testing whether he loved me for me rather than my social standing—was my true lineage.
My grandfather was Julian Rossi.
To the public, Julian Rossi was a reclusive, eccentric old man who lived quietly in a sprawling estate in Westchester County. To the global financial elite, however, Julian Rossi was the legendary venture capitalist who had quietly funded Silicon Valley’s biggest tech giants in the nineties, accumulated controlling stakes in international shipping conglomerates, and built a private equity fund worth upwards of twelve billion dollars.
And when Julian Rossi passed away three weeks ago, his entire empire didn't go to corporate boards or charitable trusts.
It went to me.
For the past twenty-one days, while Trevor was busy attending high-society parties with Camille and finalizing the details of his upcoming corporate promotion, I had been sitting in a high-security conference room in downtown Manhattan with a team of elite legal executors.
I was no longer just Nina Rossi, the struggling girlfriend from Brooklyn.
I was the sole controlling shareholder and chairperson of Rossi Global Enterprises.
And Ashford & Sterling Capital—the very firm where Trevor was currently celebrating his impending partnership—was sitting on a mountain of toxic debt that could only be cleared by one entity: Rossi Global.
When I walked out of the grand ballroom that night, I didn't cry in the back of a yellow cab. I got into the back of a bulletproof Maybach where my chief legal counsel, Marcus Vance, was waiting with an open laptop and a pristine dry towel.
“Did everything go according to plan, Ms. Rossi?” Marcus asked, handing me the towel without a trace of judgment in his eyes.
I wiped the sticky champagne from my forehead, tossing the damp cloth onto the leather seat.
“Better than planned, Marcus,” I said, looking out the tinted window as the glittering lights of Manhattan blurred into streaks of gold and silver. “Trevor has officially made his choice. Now, let’s show him what happens when you bite the hand that feeds your entire corporate division.”
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“Shall we execute the debt acceleration clause on Ashford & Sterling immediately?” Marcus asked, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.
“Not yet,” I replied, a cold, calculated smile touching my lips. “Let them enjoy the party tonight. Let Trevor propose to Camille under those crystal lights. Let them feel completely untouchable. Because at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, I’m walking into their executive boardroom—not as an ex-girlfriend, but as their new majority owner.”
