Taming the Bitch (COMPLETED)

Chapter VIII - The Ballroom

It had been nearly a fortnight since Vincent last saw Gabrielle. Barely a day after the night they met, he had flown back to Germany—summoned by the collapse unfolding within the company. He had not yet spoken to his grandfather about the young woman whose path he had crossed in such unlikely circumstances: the daughter of Gabriel Davis, President of Davis Holdings.

Conrad Walton's mind, however, was already set.
Either Vincent married the President's daughter—
or Gabriel Davis claimed everything the Walton Group had built.

There was no negotiation.
No space for sentiment.
Just a decree, as calmly delivered as a weather report.

Yet Vincent could not accept it—not entirely. He was determined to salvage whatever he could without a merger... and without forcing a marriage with the young heiress.

He had no intention of marrying anyone. Not yet.
Certainly not like this.

And yet—God help him—he could not stop thinking about her.
He had tried. Truly, he had. But the memory of her—her sharp tongue, her broken fierceness, the warmth in her eyes when she let her guard slip for a moment—had lodged itself under his skin.

Attraction was a weak word. It hardly covered the way she had lingered in his thoughts, in his senses.
But marriage?
That was something entirely different.

He had learned, sometime during his absence, that Gabriel Davis had managed to drag his daughter back under his authority. How? By what means? Vincent could only imagine—and every possibility made him sick. Gabrielle Davis was not someone who surrendered easily. If she had bent... then she had likely been forced.

A week later came the next blow: she was now training under her father, being shaped into the next CEO—on the condition she married.

He confronted his grandfather in the library, finally ready to refuse.

"We can save the company," Vincent said, standing opposite the heavy mahogany desk. "We don't need the merger."

Conrad slowly lowered his spectacles, regarding him with that cool, maddening steadiness.

"And why this sudden change of heart?"

"I don't wish to marry his daughter," Vincent said sharply.

"You don't have to remain married to her," Conrad replied with a shrug, as though discussing the weather.

"What is the point of marrying her at all then?" Vincent snapped, anger flaring. "Do you want me to ruin her life the way her father already has?"

"No father wants his daughter's life ruined," Conrad said quietly.

"Really? He's already broken her. She isn't—"
He hesitated, then forced it out.
"She isn't well."

"She is far stronger than you realise," Conrad said, voice firm. "Marry her."

Vincent clenched his fists. "Do you truly think she'll simply agree to marry a stranger?"

"She signed the merger herself."

"I don't believe that," Vincent muttered—until his grandfather slid a document across the desk.

"She cannot run the company alone," Conrad said. "She's brilliant, yes—but she holds enough resentment toward her father to set the entire empire on fire and walk away. And if she does that, we collapse with her. You must marry her."

"So Gabriel pressures us into a merger because he needs an heir?" Vincent said bitterly. "Does he give a damn about her?"

"You may frame it that way if you wish," Conrad replied. "But no man wants his daughter to live in misery. And that is precisely where Gabrielle is headed."