On My Birthday, My Boss Asked Me to Marry Her, but After My Answer Her Most Powerful Partner Stopped Smiling

At the moment when Elena Vance asked me to marry her beside the birthday cake, the music in the backyard stopped and everyone looked at me as if they already knew the answer.

It was nine o’clock in the evening. Warm lights swayed in the wind at the house by the lake, golden balloons touched one another beneath the ceiling, and the cake’s cream was slowly melting on the table. I was still wearing a gray T-shirt and jeans. After work, I had only needed to bring the report, hand it to Elena, and leave.

But Elena Vance never let you leave when you yourself wanted to.

She stood in a red dress. Her hair was loose, which was rare for her. Usually, she tied her hair tightly, as if even one free strand could reveal her weakness to someone else. She smelled of sandalwood and rain-wet stone.

“Happy birthday, Harrison,” she told me.

“I didn’t know chief executives held backyard parties.”

“I don’t usually.”

Her assistant, Martha, changed the music pointlessly. Our chief financial officer, Liam, was looking at his phone, although his finger was not touching the screen. Everyone knew this was not an ordinary birthday.

Elena raised her left hand. There was no ring on her finger.

“You see?” she said quietly. “No one owns me.”

“You don’t like symbols.”

“I don’t like empty symbols. I like ones that change the outcome.”

She took a lighter from the table and held it out to me. Her fingers lightly touched my wrist. The touch did not seem accidental. It was as if she was checking whether I would run away.

“Make a wish.”

I blew out the candles. Everyone applauded. But I looked only at Elena. My wish was simple: that, just once, she would no longer have the face that held a heavy door closed with its shoulder.

That was when she told me.

“Marry me.”

She said the words in a low voice, but such silence fell that I heard every sound. My mouth went dry. Martha turned up the music, while Liam raised his head for the first time.

“Is this a joke?” I asked.

Elena’s smile disappeared.

“Do you have a problem to solve, or do you need a husband?” I tried to laugh.

“I have a problem,” she replied. “And if you agree, we may be able to save my company.”

This was already a different voice. Not that of a woman joking at her birthday, but of a person whose last wall was collapsing.

“Who is threatening you?”

“Tomorrow at ten in the morning, the board of directors will decide whether the company remains in my hands. My father’s will says that his controlling shares will remain with me only if I register a family partnership within one year of receiving the inheritance. Otherwise, the shares will pass to Victor Hale’s foundation.”

“That’s absurd.”

“I know. But the court does not open in the morning, Harrison. The board does.”

Liam came over to us. His face was calm, but he held his glass so tightly that the glass squeaked.

“Elena, it’s time to explain to the guests that this is not a funny subject.”

“That is exactly why I am explaining it to Harrison.”

“You shouldn’t decide the company’s fate based on him.”

I looked at Elena.

“Why me?”

“Because you are the only person who does not care about my money. The only one who looks for a mistake in the accounts even when finding it angers your boss.”

“And because you love me?”

Something froze in her eyes. She did not answer.

I went into the house. In the bottom drawer of the black cabinet in the hallway lay my small leather notebook. On its cover I had burned a little compass myself as a child. In that very notebook I had written what I had hidden from everyone for three weeks: transfers in the company accounts that seemed to be going to a legal foundation, but in reality were returning to Victor Hale’s company.

Elena did not know this yet.

She followed me and locked the door.

“I need an answer now,” she told me.

“Will the marriage be a deal?”

“At first.”

“And afterward?”

For the first time, her eyes lost their look of authority.

“Then, if we both want it, perhaps it won’t be.”

There was a metal-locked folder on the table. Elena reached toward it.

“But before you decide anything, you have to see this…”

“But before you decide anything, you have to see this…”

Elena opened the folder. It was ten o’clock at night. Quiet voices and the sound of dishes touching came from the living room, but here, in the small study, only the sharp ticking of the wall clock could be heard.

The first sheet turned out to be a marriage contract. Not a simple agreement, but a forty-three-page document stating that the marriage had to be formalized by eight in the morning, both people’s property would remain separate, and the relationship could be ended only after six months.

“Is this real?” I asked.

“It is a draft prepared by my lawyer.”

“Does your lawyer know that you offer a future husband a contract beside the cake on his birthday?”

“My lawyer knows that tomorrow two hundred people may be left without work.”

The corner of the sheet was slightly bent. Elena straightened it with her thumb, again and again. That small movement said more than her stern face.

“What if I refuse?”

“Then I will thank you and go to the board alone in the morning.”

“And the company?”

“It may be lost.”

“Why didn’t you ask someone else? Liam? Any wealthy investor?”

Elena raised her head.

“Because Liam is already on their side.”

Outside, the music suddenly stopped. Silence fell in the study.

“What are you saying?”

“For the last two months, money has been disappearing from the internal accounts. The transfers go to Victor’s foundation, but in the documents they are marked as medical research expenses. If I say this at the board meeting, they will use it against me. They will say that I signed all the transfers.”

I put my hand into my pocket and felt the notebook with the image of my compass. Three weeks earlier I had noticed these very numbers. Then I thought I had only come across fraud. Now I understood that it was a plan to seize the company.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t know whom to trust.”

“And now you know?”

Elena looked at me for a long time.

“No. Now I only know that I have no choice left.”

Liam’s voice sounded beyond the door.

“Elena, Victor has arrived.”

His words were polite, but there was a threat in his tone.

Elena closed the folder.

“Stay here.”

“On your birthday, you’re suggesting that I hide in a closet?”

“Please.”

“This is the first time you’ve asked me for something.”

“This is the first time I need you not to run away.”

Those words struck me directly in the heart. The door opened. Victor Hale entered, a little over sixty, with white hair and a blue silk handkerchief. Two lawyers accompanied him. Liam stood behind.

“Happy birthday, Elena,” Victor said. “I have brought good news for a pleasant evening.”

“You are not invited.”

“That will no longer matter at tomorrow’s board meeting.”

His gaze moved to me.

“Is this the employee you are offering a game of husband with?”

“This is Harrison. And you are in my house now.”

Victor chuckled.

“If you haven’t signed by eight in the morning, the shares will pass to me. If you sign, the board will say you made the decision during an emotional crisis. Either way, you lose.”

“You seem very sure.”

“Because I know what is in the folder.”

Elena’s face changed. Victor noticed and smiled like a victor.

“Oh, you haven’t shown him yet?”

I looked at Elena.

“What am I supposed to see?”

Victor pointed a finger toward the folder.

“That the marriage contract protects not only your property. It contains a clause transferring all old financial obligations to your spouse.”

Elena looked sharply at me.

“That’s a lie.”

“Read the last page, Harrison.”

My hands went cold. Elena opened the folder again and found the last sheet. At the bottom I saw a clause written in small letters. If the company went bankrupt within six months of the marriage, the insured debt would be transferred into my name.

“You knew?” I asked Elena.

“I did not add that clause.”

“But I was supposed to sign it.”

“Because the lawyer hid it from me.”

Victor said calmly:

“Tomorrow morning everything will end. Either you sign, or you say goodbye to the company.”

He closed the door and left.

Elena dropped the folder onto the table.

“Harrison, I swear I didn’t know.”

And for the first time I realized that not only her company was in danger in this story. Perhaps Victor did not need my signature at all. Perhaps he already had something else.

I took the notebook from my pocket and placed it on the table.

“Then look at this. I have been checking your company for three weeks.”

Elena saw the cover, the small drawing of the compass, and slowly turned through the first page.

Her face turned pale.

“Where did you get these numbers?”

“From the same source from which Victor knows about your folder.”

“Who is the source?”

At that moment someone knocked three times on the door.

A frightened woman’s voice came from the other side of the door:

“Harrison, if you are here, do not open the door. They know that I have the recording…”

“Harrison, if you are here, do not open the door. They know that I have the recording…”

It was eleven o’clock at night. The door handle moved slowly. Elena immediately turned off the light, and I moved against the wall. Outside, the same woman was still breathing, the woman whose voice I did not recognize.

“Who are you?” I asked quietly.

“Nora. From the accounting department. Liam sent me.”

Elena shook her head negatively.

“We cannot trust Liam.”

“He told me to tell you,” the woman whispered. “If that recording is not played at the board meeting in the morning, everything will be blamed on you.”

I opened the door. Nora stood leaning against the wall, holding a small protective case for a memory card. She had a dark bruise on her wrist.

“Who did this to you?” I asked.

“Their driver. When I refused, he deleted the copies of the accounts.”

Elena took the case from her.

“Where is the recording?”

“Here. But one copy is already with Victor. He knows that you know.”

We returned to the study. It was nearly midnight. The recording started on the laptop screen. At first, only a poor-quality image from an office camera was visible. Then a voice sounded.

“Elena’s signature will be enough,” Liam said.

The second voice was Victor’s.

“No. Her signature is only the outward part. After Harrison is dismissed, the entire responsibility for the audit will pass to him. If Elena forces the marriage and the company then collapses, we will involve the husband too.”

Liam chuckled in the recording.

“He thinks Elena loves him.”

Elena’s eyes lowered. I stared at the screen, and a coldness appeared in my heart as if I had fallen into the lake.

“There is more,” Nora said.

The rustling of papers sounded in the recording.

“Tomorrow morning we will tell the board members that Elena falsified the report. If the husband signs, we will impose the debt on both of them. If he does not sign, the shares will pass to us.”

The video ended.

No one spoke for a long time.

For the first time Elena covered her face with her hands.

“I trusted them,” she said.

“You are not alone,” I told her.

“I brought you into this.”

“I haven’t signed anything yet.”

“But you already know that they threatened you because of me.”

Nora placed a copy of the recording together with my notebook on the table.

“This is enough for the police,” she said.

“It will be enough only if we bring the original. Victor will say that the recording was edited.”

Elena raised her head.

“Where is the original?”

Nora bit her lips.

“In the warehouse, in the old server room. Liam left the complete camera files there.”

At that same moment Elena’s phone rang. An unknown number appeared on the screen. She turned on speaker mode.

“If you do not sign the contract by seven in the morning,” Victor said, “Nora will disappear and you will never find the recording.”

“Do not touch her,” Elena told him.

“That will not be decided by me. You will make the decision.”

The call ended.

Nora grabbed the chair so she would not fall. And I realized that Victor had failed to calculate one thing: he thought fear would turn us against each other.

Elena closed my notebook.

“We are going to the warehouse.”

“Let’s call the police first.”

“Before they come, they will take the original.”

“What if this is a trap?”

Elena looked straight into my eyes.

“Then for the first time I will enter the trap together with you.”

It was one o’clock at night when we entered the company’s underground parking garage. Nora stayed in the car, while Elena and I headed toward the old elevator. The elevator’s iron door closed with a squeak. Elena’s hand touched mine.

“Harrison, if we do not make it until tomorrow, know that that proposal was not only a deal.”

“You’re telling me this now?”

“I may not get another time.”

“Do you love me?” I asked, without even understanding why.

Instead of answering, Elena looked at the floor of the elevator.

“That word cost me too much.”

The elevator stopped on the underground floor. The doors opened. In the darkness, we found the door to the old server room open.

Only one light was flickering inside.

The red indicator of a camera was shining on the floor.

Elena suddenly seized my arm.

“Harrison, this recording is already being made about us…”