?Chapter 399:


    Once Maiapleted drafting the contract, she summoned a nearby waiter, requesting him to print the document.


    It didn’t take long before the waiter returned with two printed copies, which Maia quickly nced over.


    Satisfied with what she saw, Maia glided forward and extended one copy toward her opponent.


    “Miss Cooper, please examine this thoroughly.”


    Mariana snatched the agreement without sparing it a nce, flinging it aside with theatrical carelessness. She fixed Maia with a gaze dripping with mockery. “Ms. Watson, you’re turning this into quite the production. Anyone watching this might suspect you’re trembling with nerves behind thatposed facade.”


    Maia’s subtle smile never wavered. “I strongly suggest you review the contract first. Once you’ve confirmed everything meets your approval, we can proceed. I prefer not to squander precious time on pointless disputes.”


    Her measured response caught Mariana off-bnce, disrupting her confidence. With a venomous re, she reluctantly retrieved the contract and began leafing through its pages.


    But as her eyesnded on a particr figure buried in the legal text, Mariana’s expression transformed, her eyes widening into undisguised shock.


    Mariana gawked at Maia, her face frozen in sheer shock. “Are you telling me this figure for the merger and acquisition is right?” she asked, her voice sharp.


    Maia gave a small, almost shy smile. “I forgot to add,” she said, “this isn’t your run-of-the-mill merger and acquisition. It’s a budget one. What’s written in the contract is spot-on.”


    Mariana’s mouth twitched, almost as if she couldn’t decide whether tough or cry. “One dor? Maia, have you lost your mindpletely?”


    The moment the words left her mouth, a wave of gasps rippled through the room.


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    What? One dor? Was Maia serious? Snapping up a top national brand for just a single dor? It sounded so absurd that it bordered on madness!


    Mergers and acquisitions, in simple terms, were all aboutpanies joining forces or one swallowing the other, which naturally meant that someone had to cough up cash to seal the deal. Normally, the price tag for big-name brands ran into the tens of billions, and even then, snapping one up through a merger took at least a few billion. Yet, the figure Maia had scribbled down was… just one dor?


    She had clearly gone off the deep end. It was like handing thepany away for peanuts!


    “Are you sure Ms. Miller is really on board with this price?” Mariana asked, her tone full of doubt.


    Maia tapped a few times on her phone, pulled up a file, and slid it across the table to Mariana. “I already sent her the contract,” she said. “She’s signed it. If anything goes wrong, she’ll have someone bring the signed paperwork over in no time.”


    The crowd stood there, so stunned that they couldn’t even think straight. It was one thing for Maia to throw caution to the wind, but why on earth was Pattie ying along with this madness?


    Even the old hands in the business world were scratching their heads, unable to figure out what Maia was thinking.


    At best, her odds ofing out on top were fifty-fifty. If she ended up losing, the Aurora Apparel Company would acquire MCN at the price of just one dor.


    Was she really willing to roll the dice on odds that slim — barely a fifty percent chance? It was all or nothing.


    But did she really need to push it this far? If she had set a higher price for the deal, then even if things went south, she could still walk away with a fat paycheck, enough to live easy for the rest of her days.


    She was backing herself into a corner with no escape.


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