Chapter 3

She checked her time; it was already eleven. She pushed the cakes forward to take a look, it looked attractive, and hoped it tasted sweet too. She rang her secretary to come in and told her to box and decorate the cake. She already had her Bestie present beautifully wrapped up. It was a box containing a gold wristwatch, cufflinks, tie. and a fountain pen. She was going to give him a surprise at work by showing up to celebrate his day with him. She had stayed up till a minute past midnight just to be the first to wish him a happy birthday, though she had a lot of work to keep her company she did not admit that to him else she wouldn t have got the appreciation she deserved. Still, Daniel had been skeptical she stayed awake because of him just because she wanted to wish him a happy birthday. He had asked if she had been working but she had lied and had finally gotten the appreciation she deserves. "No, rather the appreciation she doesn t deserve." She mused At exactly fifteen minutes past eleven, Mitchell left her office after packing some files to work on at home into her bag. She won t be returning to work for that day but she was certainly going to get the days worth of work done at home even if she had to burn a lot of oil. She stopped at her secretary s desk to instruct her to contact her appointments for that day and reschedule with them. She gurgled when she realized she was supposed to have an appointment with the CEO of Lyon Incorp. This was the second time she would be rescheduling him. She hoped he wouldn t take it personally. In her line of work, sometimes one has to be daring, ruthless, and be able to keep their competitors on the edge and she hasn t climbed this high not to be able to give herself some respite, especially when it is for her bestie, Engineer Daniel D. Spencer, one of her most favorite humans in the world. Mitchell already heard and knew so much about Lyon; he was hardly outside the news. In less than a few years of returning from the state where he had lived most of his life and taking over the reign of his father s company, he had grown it to twice the size he started with, taking over more than three competitive companies. Lyon was also known for being very ruthless, astute, and shrewd and the news never fails to recognize him as such, but in business world been ruthless, daring, and all of that was allowed. Mitchell wasn t well acquainted with the CEO of Lyon Incorp and had only met him in person once for a brief moment, though she had met the chairman, who was Lyon s father, now retired on more than two occasions. Also, the majority of the board of directors of the company are people she was familiar with because they were either shareholders of one or other companies where her company has shares. It wasn t until recently when Lyon started a hostile takeover bid of Zion Company that they met. The target company management had been unwilling to agree to the takeover. Lyon had also proposed a merger to which they out-rightly rejected and he, therefore, set out on acquiring the company by all means possible. Lyon owns twelve percent of Zion s company shares and was able to buy over another twenty-three percentages from different shareholders of the target company. Mitchell s company was also a major shareholder of sixteen percent of Zion s company, which was apparently enough to help Lyon take over the company without hassle if she agrees to sell her shares of that company to him. Mitchell figured Lyon undoubtedly wants to discuss her company selling her shares of Zion s to him and she already decided not to if that was why he had arranged a meeting with her. As such, she knew she would be making enemies with Lyon, no doubt but she didn t care. They were after all competitors and that didn t make them friends but contemporaries watching each other with eagle s eye from afar. Since Mitchell wasn t going to have anybody buy over her shares of Zion s Company or touch Zubal s in any way, she already started taking early measures by asking her investigator who also doubled as the company s lawyer looked into Lyon s and his companies and fortunately, she had one of the best investigators and he had uncovered some shady deals about Lyon Incorp and had also found their strength. Shady deals that are bad enough to serve as a strong weapon against Lyon in case he gets ruthless with her company. Their strength was another company they had kept secret, maintaining secret transactions with, it had taken her best team of tech engineers three days to hack and break into their system. She had told them to use whatever means they could to break into their system and hack every transaction of the company. It was on the third day of tireless work that one of her techs had noticed some shady coded transactions between Lyon and another company, Eagle Incorp. The messages had been encrypted but they were able to decrypt them after a long while. She had beamed with joy and complimented her workers for the good job done. Mitchell now has two weapons to deal with Lyon. All she needed was proper planning. She wasn t going to wait for the battle to start before she got prepared. What he can t have, they say he destroyed but she was going to make sure he can t destroy nor have her company.