Chapter 3
The media descended on the chapel like vultures ten minutes later.
By the time Clara, my lawyer Maya, the federal agent—his name was Cole, sharp jaw, tired eyes, a scar across his knuckle—and I stepped outside, the sidewalk was packed with news vans. Microphones were shoved in our faces before we even made it to the car.
“Elena! Elena, how long did you know Jonathan was a fraud?”
“Clara! Is it true you were held captive for ten years? What did they do to you?”
“Will you be taking back control of Duncan Apex? What happens to the shareholders?”
Maya herded us into the back of a black SUV, slamming the doors shut behind her. The driver peeled away from the curb, leaving the shouting reporters in our dust.
I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes.
My hands were shaking.
All the adrenaline that had carried me through the altar was starting to wear off, leaving me raw, hollow, like I’d been scraped out from the inside.
Clara reached over and covered my hand with hers.
“You did good,” she said. “Most people would have broken long before today.”
I didn’t answer.
I was thinking about Rosalind’s smile.
That cold, empty promise.
Maya was on the phone, her voice tight and professional, talking to someone at the DA’s office. Cole was in the front seat, typing on his laptop, every now and then glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
“First thing,” Maya said, hanging up the phone. “Jonathan and Rosalind are being booked at the downtown precinct. Their lawyers are already screaming about entrapment, about planted evidence, about you being a scorned woman out for revenge. The tabloids are already running headlines: ‘Bride From Hell Takes Down Billionaire Dynasty.’ It’s going to get ugly, Elena. Really ugly.”
I nodded.
I’d expected that.
Jonathan had spent a year painting me as fragile, unstable, a woman who couldn’t be trusted. It was the first card his lawyers would play. The only card they had, really.
“Clara,” Maya said, turning to her. “Your testimony is key. But the defense is going to try to discredit you too. They’ll say you’re a confused, traumatized woman who’s been manipulated by Elena. They’ll dig up every mistake you ever made, every bad business decision, every rumor from ten years ago, and throw it at the wall to see what sticks.”
Clara’s jaw tightened.
“Let them,” she said. “I spent ten years in a cabin with nothing but time to remember every single thing Jonathan and Rosalind did to me. I’m not scared of their lies.”
Cole turned around in his seat.
“There’s something else,” he said. He held up his laptop, showing us a bank transfer from that morning. “Two hours before the wedding, someone moved fifty million dollars from Duncan Apex’s operating account into an offshore shell company in the Caymans. The account is registered to a ghost name, but the routing numbers match transfers Rosalind made three years ago to pay off the two men who guarded Clara.”
My stomach dropped.
Fifty million dollars.
That was the company’s payroll for the next three months.
If it was gone, thousands of people would lose their jobs.
“Jonathan didn’t know about this,” I said, sure of it.
Jonathan was greedy, reckless, but he was also proud. He’d spent ten years building the lie that he was a genius CEO, that he’d grown Duncan Apex into a billion-dollar empire all on his own. He would never drain the operating account. It would make him look weak. Incompetent.
Only Rosalind would do that.
Because Rosalind had never cared about the company.
She’d only ever cared about the money.
And the power.
“Which means she planned for this,” I said, sitting up straight. The shaking in my hands stopped, replaced by the cold, familiar focus I used when I was digging through a tangled set of books. “She knew there was a chance we’d have Clara. She knew the warrants were coming. She moved the money before the wedding so that even if she and Jonathan got arrested, she’d still have a way out. Fifty million is enough to buy a new identity. A new country. Enough to disappear forever.”
Maya’s face went pale.
“Then we need to get to the estate,” she said. “Right now. If Rosalind had time to move that money, she had time to destroy other evidence too. The rest of the ledgers, the hard drives, the physical records—if they burn, we lose half our case.”
Cole nodded.
“I’ll call for backup,” he said.
“Backup will take too long,” I said. I looked at the driver. “Turn around. Take us to the Duncan estate. Now.”
The Duncan estate was a twelve-bedroom mansion on twenty acres of land at the edge of the city.
I’d lived there for eight months.
Eight months of walking on eggshells. Of checking my back every time I turned a corner. Of lying awake at night listening for Jonathan’s footsteps on the stairs.
As we pulled up the long, tree-lined driveway, I saw the front door was wide open.
A black Mercedes was parked crookedly in the circular drive, its rear door hanging open.
Rosalind was there.
She’d beaten us here.
I was out of the car before it even stopped moving.
I ran up the front steps, Maya and Cole right behind me, Clara a step slower, her leg still stiff from the old injury Jonathan had given her the day he’d faked her death.
The foyer was empty.
But from the back of the house, from Jonathan’s study, I heard it.
The sharp, acrid smell of burning paper.
And Rosalind’s voice, low and furious, talking to someone on the phone.
“Just get the jet ready,” she was saying. “I don’t care what it costs. Tell the pilot we leave in an hour. And if anyone asks, you never heard from me. Understand?”
I burst into the study.
Rosalind was standing behind Jonathan’s desk.
A metal trash can sat on the mahogany surface, flames licking up from the pile of papers inside. She was holding the private ledger—the one I’d spent three months finding, the one with every secret the Duncans ever had—over the fire.
She looked up when I ran in.
She smiled that same terrible smile.
May you like
“Took you long enough,” she said.
She tipped the ledger toward the flames.
