No Second Chances Ex-husband (Lauren and Ethan) novel Chapter 77

ETHAN’S POV

I was no longer married to that woman Lauren, all these years she has been choking me in a marriage I had second thoughts of going into from the beginning.

Now I’ve finally corrected that mistake from my life, I’ve removed that problem, but that was just one of the many problems piled up in front of me, like the one I was staring at right now

I don’t know how many times I’ve stared at the numbers on the reports today. Same pages, same red lines, same sharp dip at the end of every graph. No matter how many times I look at them, they don’t change. The company is bleeding money.

It’s like watching someone you love fight for their life, and all you can do is sit there with your hands tied.

I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my eyes. My office felt colder than usual. Or maybe it was just me. Maybe it was the weight pressing on my chest that made everything feel so heavy.

My company wasn’t just a company to me. It was my life. It was my blood, my sweat, and my name. I built it from the ground up, brick by brick, night after night, with sacrifice after sacrifice. And now, seeing it in this state, it cut deeper than any betrayal ever had.

The problem wasn’t just money, though. If it were only money, I’d find a way. No, this was bigger. Clients were pulling out. Deals kept falling through at the last minute. And our competitors? They were eating us alive, snapping up contracts that should have been ours.

And because of the whole company stocks are crashing, Hale Industries, their stocks are crashing too which means the company is also running in losses but it’s not as bad as mine

And I knew why.

I didn’t have the right people in the right places anymore.

That thought sat with me like a stone in my stomach.

I picked up the phone on my desk and pressed the button for Jeff. He answered almost immediately. “Boss?”

“Come in,” I said.

A moment later, the door opened and Jeff stepped inside. He looked tired too, but he tried to hide it. That was one thing I liked about him. He never complained, even when he had every reason to.

“You called?” he asked.

I pushed the reports across the desk toward him. “Take a look.”

He scanned the pages, his brows pulling together. “Yeah… I’ve seen these numbers. We’re still down this quarter. Badly.”

I sighed. “It’s more than just numbers, Jeff. We’re falling behind. You see it too, don’t you?”

He hesitated before nodding. “Yeah. I see it.”

“We need someone,” I said. “A new voice. Someone who knows how to bring in clients, who knows how to see opportunities where we don’t. A business development manager.”

Jeff leaned back in his chair. “You’ve been thinking about this for a while, huh?”

“Every damn night,” I said, shaking my head. “I go home and lie awake, wondering what I missed. Where I went wrong. And it always comes back to the same thing, we don’t have the right person leading that department.”

Jeff didn’t argue. Which told me he agreed.

For a while, the only sound in the office was the faint ticking of the clock on the wall.

“I want you to start looking immediately,” I said. “Draft a job description. Start pulling resumes. Reach out to your contacts if you have to. I don’t care if we have to comb through a thousand names, I need the right person in that seat.”

Jeff nodded, already pulling out his notebook. He started jotting down notes while I kept talking.

“I don’t want another paper pusher,” I said. “I don’t want someone who only knows how to sit in meetings and nod along. I need someone hungry. Someone who knows how to fight. Someone who’ll look at this mess and say, ‘We can fix it.“”

“Got it,” Jeff said.

But I could see it in his eyes, he was worried. He had reason to be.

I rubbed my temples. “You know what this feels like?”

“What?”

“Like déjà vu,” I muttered. “Like I’m back at square one, fighting to prove myself all over again.”

Jeff didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. He knew what I meant.

When he finally left the office, I sat there alone again, staring out the window. The city looked alive from up here

cars moving, people rushing, lights flashing. But inside me, everything felt still. Too still.

—

I thought about the nights I used to work till dawn, chasing clients, sending emails, calling people three, four times a day until they gave me a chance. I thought about the first big contract I signed, the one that kept the company alive long enough to see another month.

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