Madam Chairman

Synopsis

I was twenty-four when the Roux family acquired me, and forty-three when they tried to return me. My husband is eight months dead, his chair at the head of the table still empty, and his mother has decided the cosmetics empire I run had better go back into the blood before the gold-digger ruins it. Her weapon is a beautiful young man: Laurent's last protege, Luca Bianchi, twenty-eight and brilliant, sent to charm me, study me, and quietly take my company apart. The boardroom thinks I am a caretaker keeping the seat warm. My mother-in-law thinks tenderness is a transaction, and she taught me to think so too. So when the boy who was sent to dethrone me looks at me as though I am the thing worth keeping, I assume there is a contract underneath it, because in my whole life there always has been. There is a vote coming for my company and a war coming for my name. She never apologised for taking up a room. It is, at forty-three, the only thing left for her to teach me.