Hidden Heir: I Called My Ice-Queen Boss My Mom's Future Daughter-in-Law

She held out her hand. "Ms. Langley, it's a pleasure. I'm Sloane Mercer from Starline Media." My mom shook her hand, but her eyes drifted back to me. "Your company sent you?" My throat went dry. "...Yes." Derek froze for a few seconds, his eyes darting between me and Vivian, as if he had finally caught the scent of something big. He was the first to recover, and his smile was warmer than anyone's. "Well, well, so Ethan knows Ms. Langley? What a coincidence." My mom glanced at him and didn't respond. Sloane didn't say anything either. She simply took her seat, perfectly calm. But I could feel it. The air around her had turned even colder. The thing she hated most was mixing business with personal life. The moment I sat down, my back broke out in a sweat. My mom, on the other hand, was completely at ease. "Don't just stand there, everyone sit. Let's eat something first. We can talk over dinner." The server began bringing out the dishes. At first, the atmosphere was fairly normal. Sloane laid out the requirements, walked through the strategy, and broke down past case studies with total clarity. My mom asked a question now and then, each one right on target. When they got to the rollout plan and the budget structure, Derek suddenly cut in. "Ms. Langley, rest assured. Since we've got Ethan's connection here, a lot of things should be easy to work out." The private room went quiet in an instant. I tightened my grip on the pen in my hand. Sloane looked up at him. Her voice wasn't loud, but it sent a chill through everyone. "Manager Coleman, we talk about the project here. Not connections." Derek gave a couple of forced laughs. "I was just trying to lighten the mood." My mom smiled too, but only faintly. "I don't do personal favors. I only look at proposals." Derek's face went a little stiff, and he quickly ducked his head to sip his tea. I let out a breath. But I'd barely let out half of it when my mom picked up a barbecue rib and set it on my plate. "These were your favorite when you were little. Don't just focus on work." I was speechless. Derek's eyes lit up. Sloane set down her fork and looked at me. Her face showed almost nothing, but her tone was cold enough to sting. "Ethan, you never mentioned that you and Ms. Langley knew each other." I opened my mouth. "I only found out when I walked in that today's client was—" Derek jumped in at once. "Come on, Ethan, that's not very fair of you. If we'd known she was one of our own, all that early back-and-forth wouldn't have been such a struggle." "Ms. Mercer has had the whole team working themselves to the bone these past two months, and it turns out one word from you could've settled everything." He was clearly stirring the pot. Pushing me toward the label of someone who got ahead on connections. I was about to speak when my mom raised her eyes to Derek. "Where exactly did you hear that one word from him could settle anything?" Derek choked on his words. My mom's tone stayed mild, but her words carried weight. "If a word from him were really all it took, I wouldn't have needed to call you all here to talk face-to-face today." Derek had no choice but to smile apologetically. "Yes, yes, of course. I misspoke." Sloane didn't look at him. She looked at me, her gaze deep. I couldn't tell whether what I saw there was disappointment or suspicion. "Go on," she said evenly. I barely tasted anything that whole meal. All I knew was that the thing I feared most had happened anyway. In her eyes, I had become someone who might have gotten ahead through connections. Halfway through dinner, I stepped out to take a call. It was my mom. "Come out for a minute." I stood at the far end of the hallway, badly irritated. "Mom, why didn't you tell me sooner that this project was yours?" My mom laughed on the other end of the line. "You didn't ask." "Besides, the Southside Complex is being handled by a brand company under the group. I'm just helping review it. When your bid materials came in, I saw your name on the project team list. I assumed you knew." I closed my eyes for a moment. "I didn't know." "My boss didn't know either." "She hates it more than anything when people play the connections game." My mom paused. "You mean the woman you work under?" I went on guard. "Don't jump to conclusions." "Do I even need to guess?" My mom drawled, "Ever since you were little, your ears turn red whenever you're nervous. When you walked in just now, they were redder than a tomato." I had nothing to say. Then she asked, "You like her?" I didn't answer. She laughed. "Good taste, at least. She seems very steady." "Mom, this isn't the time to talk about that." "Then when is?" She lowered her voice a little. "Ethan, you're twenty-six, not sixteen. If you like her, stop standing in the background like a shadow." I leaned against the wall and didn't reply. Of course I knew that. But between Sloane and me, it had never been only a question of whether I had the nerve to say it. She came from a good family, had a great education, and had a great career. She'd seen far more of the world than I had. And she had once said something in public. "The people I can't stand most in this life are the ones who mix feelings with work." Back then, everyone assumed someone had been pursuing her too hard. Only later did I learn that wasn't it. That winter, after the company's year-end party, Sloane had too much to drink. I took her home. In the car she lost her composure, which was rare for her. She kept her eyes shut, her brows knit tight. When we got to her building, she suddenly grabbed my sleeve and said quietly, "Never trust a partner who talks about love. In the end, the ones who get burned are always the ones doing the work." It was only later that I heard the story from some of the veteran employees. At her previous job, she had dated her startup partner for a year. Then he traded her proposals, her contacts, and her clients for investment, and when they fell out, he dumped all the blame on her. She nearly ended up liable for breach of contract. After that, she sealed herself off completely. She was guarded about love, and even more guarded at work. So how could I dare to say it? I was lost in thought when the door to the private room opened. Sloane walked out and caught me standing in the hallway with my phone in hand. Her eyes swept over me, her tone even. "Clause seven of the supplementary agreement. Did you bring the data I asked you to prepare?" I nodded right away. "Yes. It's on my laptop." She gave a short hum and turned to leave. I couldn't stop myself from calling out. "Ms. Mercer." She stopped. My Adam's apple bobbed. "I really didn't know Ms. Langley was the client this time." With her back to me, she said nothing for a few seconds. The hallway lights were bright, and they made her profile look a little cold. "Whether you knew or not doesn't matter." "What matters is whether this connection has compromised the project." I answered immediately. "It hasn't." Only then did she turn around and look at me. "Then let the results speak." With that, she went back into the room. I stayed where I was, a heavy feeling settling in my chest. She hadn't outright decided I'd done something wrong. But she hadn't believed me either. When I returned to the room, the atmosphere had changed. Derek was sitting right next to my seat, chatting and smiling with my mom. "Ms. Langley, Ethan keeps such a low profile at the office. I'd never have guessed his family was this well-off." "Then again, people with that kind of background really don't have to grind like the rest of us." Anger flared in me the moment I heard it. "Derek, watch what you say." He spread his hands. "I'm complimenting you." My mom looked up, her expression cooling too.

Sloane spoke first, though. "Manager Coleman." "One more word tonight that has nothing to do with the project, and you're out." Derek's face went stiff. He didn't make another sound. I froze for a second. Something warm stirred in my chest. But before I could hold on to that warmth, trouble came again in the second half of the dinner. While checking the payment milestones, their legal counsel suddenly said that the proposal budget they'd received didn't match the version we'd brought with us. The difference was a full $1.2 million. Sloane and I both stopped short. I immediately pulled up my laptop, while Sloane simply took the documents from them. The more she read, the deeper her frown grew. The electronic copy sent to the client clearly contained several execution fees that didn't exist at all. And the sender's address showed my company account. Derek's voice shot up. "Ethan, what is this?" My head jerked up. "That's impossible. That's not the version I sent." "So the email didn't come from your account?" "The account is mine, but I didn't change the attachment." Derek gave a cold laugh. "Well, it's not like the client changed your quote themselves, is it?" The air in the private room pulled taut. My palms were drenched in sweat. I knew better than anyone that once something like this stuck, at best it was a question of competence. At worst, it was a question of business integrity. Worse still, Sloane would think I'd used this connection to set something up on purpose. Without thinking, I glanced at her. She wasn't looking at me. She kept her eyes on the budget sheet, her voice steady. "Ms. Langley, could you forward that email to us?" Mom nodded. "Of course." Derek sighed from the side. "With a personal connection right here, and it still ended up like this. There's really no excuse." I clenched my fists. In that moment, a very bad feeling came over me. This didn't look like an accident. On the way back to the office, the car was so quiet it was unnerving. Derek sat in the passenger seat and sighed the whole way. "I always said we had to be careful with projects like this." "Great. Now what's the client going to think of us?" "The worst thing is if people think we padded the price on purpose and then counted on a private connection to let it slide." I held it in for half the drive, but finally spoke. "Can you shut up?" He twisted around to look at me. "What, I'm not allowed to talk now?" "That budget went out from your account. You owe us some kind of explanation." Sloane sat in the back and didn't say a word the entire time. Yet the longer she stayed silent, the more panicked I felt. By the time we got back to the office, it was almost ten. The whole floor was still lit. Everyone on the project team was waiting for news. The moment Sloane got out of the car, she went straight into the conference room and shut the door. "Give me the laptop." I pushed it over. She sat down and started going through the email logs. I stood beside her, palms slick with sweat. Derek followed us in and deliberately sat as far from me as he could, as if afraid something dirty might rub off on him. Before long, the company's VP, Victor Hale, showed up too. He ran the business side and was usually close with Derek. The moment he came in, he looked at me, then at Sloane, his expression sour. "What happened?" Derek jumped in first and recounted everything from the dinner. At the end, he made sure to add, "I'm not accusing anyone, but Ethan and Ms. Langley on the client side really do have an unusual relationship. This is too sensitive." Victor frowned at me. "Why didn't you report it beforehand?" I kept my temper in check. "I had no idea the client's lead was my mom." "Well, now you know. It's not too late." "Mr. Hale, my mom is my mom, and the project is the project. I never once used her connections." Victor sneered. "Anyone can say that." He turned to Sloane. "Sloane, how are you running this project team? A connection this big, and you had no idea at all?" That was the real point. He wasn't after me. He was using me to take a swing at Sloane. Starline's internal power struggles had been fierce for the past two years. Sloane had risen fast, and Victor had always resented her. Especially with the Southside project. If it closed, she had a real shot at moving up another step, into a VP seat next year. It suddenly clicked. Tonight's trap wasn't aimed only at me. It was aimed at her too. Sloane set down the mouse and finally looked up. "I lead this project. I'll take responsibility." "But responsibility gets assigned once the facts are clear. Whoever shouts loudest doesn't get to be right." The conference room went silent at once. Victor's face darkened. "What's that supposed to mean?" Sloane looked at him. "It means don't be in such a hurry to convict one of mine." My heart gave a hard thud. One of mine. She'd said one of mine. Victor was caught off guard for a beat, and his voice turned colder. "Then investigate. If you can't get to the bottom of it, the whole project team gets suspended pending review." He left as soon as he'd said it. On his way out, Derek glanced back at me, a smugness in his eyes he couldn't quite hide. The conference room door closed again. Only Sloane and I were left. The air went still. I stood there a long while before saying quietly, "I'm sorry." She was still going through the emails and didn't look up. "Sorry for what?" "For causing you trouble." "Until the facts are clear, don't go admitting fault." She paused, her voice dropping lower. "Ethan, I'll ask you one more time. Did you change the budget sheet?" I looked at her. "No." She finally raised her eyes. We held each other's gaze across the conference table for a few seconds. Then she said, "Fine. I'll trust you this time." In that instant, I nearly lost my footing. She trusted me. Even if it was only this once, it was enough. She turned the laptop around. "The email was sent at 6:14 yesterday afternoon. Where were you then?" "In a meeting room with the design team, going over materials." "Can anyone vouch for you?" "Yes. Tessa Brooks and Liam Foster from design were both there." She nodded and immediately called the two of them in. Tessa was already worked up as she came through the door. "Ethan was helping us revise the key visual all afternoon yesterday! I even ordered his dinner for him. He never left the meeting room." Liam nodded too. "Sometime after six, he was still walking me through the second draft of the script." I let out a breath. Sloane asked another question. "Was your laptop ever out of your sight?" I froze. It actually had been. At five-thirty yesterday afternoon, I'd gone to the print room to pick up a contract and left my laptop at my desk for about ten minutes. The moment I said it, Tessa remembered something. "Oh, right! Around then, I think Manager Coleman came looking for you." I turned to her. "Are you sure?" "I walked by and saw him standing next to your desk. He even asked me where you'd gone." The conference room fell silent. Sloane and I looked at each other at the same time. Her eyes darkened. "Security footage," she said. "Go pull the security footage."

But things didn't go that smoothly. When we got to the security monitoring room, the guard on duty looked uncomfortable. "The temporary camera in the twenty-first-floor office area broke today. We only reported it for repair this afternoon." My heart sank all the way down. That was way too convenient. Sloane's face darkened. "What about the one by the elevators?" "That one works, but it can't see the desks." She had the guard pull up the elevator footage for that time window first. On screen, at 5:37 p.m. yesterday, I left my desk and headed for the print room. At 5:39, Derek appeared in the hallway, just as we'd suspected. He glanced left and right, walked over to my desk, and stood there for a dozen seconds or so. Because of the angle, the camera only caught half his back. We couldn't see what his hands were doing. At 5:40, he turned and left. It wasn't enough evidence. But it was already enough to raise suspicion. I stared at the screen, my jaw clenched tight. "It was him." Sloane didn't respond. She was watching more closely than I was. Once she'd finished with the footage, she took me straight to IT. It was past eleven at night, and she hauled the on-call engineer up out of his chair. "Pull the remote logins and local activity logs on Ethan's email." The engineer didn't dare drag his feet and quickly booted up. For the ten-plus minutes we waited for the data to come through, I sat off to the side, my heart pounding so hard it hurt. Sloane stood by the window taking a call. I heard her talking to my mom. "Ms. Langley, please don't report the results up the chain tonight." "Give me twelve hours." "If we can't figure this out, we'll withdraw from the project ourselves." I froze. To protect the project, she was even prepared to pull out of the deal. And yet she was still investigating. She hadn't just thrown me under the bus. When she hung up, she turned to look at me. "Scared?" I gave a bitter smile. "Yeah." "Scared of losing your job, or scared I'll misjudge you?" I hesitated for two seconds, and the truth slipped out. "The second one." She looked at me and said nothing. The night outside the window was reflected in her eyes, as if something were being held down there. After a long moment, she finally looked away. "Let's deal with what's in front of us first." Just then, the engineer looked up. "Ms. Mercer, I found it." I shot to my feet. The engineer pointed at the screen. "The email sent from Ethan's account at 6:14 yesterday really did go out over the company intranet. It wasn't sent from a phone. It came from a computer." "But right before it was sent, there was a password reset." My scalp prickled. "A password reset?" "Right. Someone used the company's internal admin system to request a temporary login code for him. The approver was..." The engineer trailed off. "You'd better see for yourselves." Sloane and I looked over at the same time. The name on the screen was clear as day. Derek. But before I could breathe easy, the engineer frowned again. "Wait, there's something else here." "Derek submitted the reset request, but the final approval didn't come from the system automatically. Mr. Hale's assistant approved it on his behalf." "And before the attachment was uploaded, someone pulled an old template version from the shared drive." My stomach dropped. This was bigger than I'd thought. This wasn't just Derek framing me on a whim, all by himself. Someone else was behind it. Sloane stared at the screen, her expression growing colder by the second. She picked up her phone and placed a call. The moment it connected, she said just one thing. "Ms. Langley, could you please come to our office tomorrow at ten a.m. and bring your legal team?" "This may be about more than a pricing error." She hung up and turned to me. "Ethan." "From now on, you stay with me. Don't go off on your own." Before I could ask why, my phone buzzed. It was a message from Tessa. "Ethan, check the company Slack channel, now." I opened it. Someone had anonymously posted a photo in the channel. It was from the private room tonight: my mom piling food onto my plate. The caption was a single line. "No wonder he got to lead the team on a major deal. Turns out his family's money bought him the seat." The replies had already exploded. Some were snide, some feigned surprise, and some came right out and said no wonder Ms. Mercer had only brought Ethan this time. The color drained from my face. They weren't just out to destroy me. They were after Sloane, too.