And yet….
The thought tastes like poison in my mouth.
My brothers know the truth behind this marriage—but of course they wouldn’t leak it. We share the same last name. If my name burns, theirs burn with it. And I trust them with my life; they would never betray me.
Their wives know too, but those women are loyal to a fault. They protect the family name with a ferocity Vivian has never shown me. Whatever stains the Rusnak name stains theirs as well; they wouldn’t risk it.
That leaves the Laurents.
Henri Laurent would never leak something like this.
He’s too obsessed with pretending he still has influence, wealth, reputation. He’s holding up a collapsing empire with pride alone. He wouldn’t willingly expose his daughter as a pawn in a revenge marriage—not when it would drag his own legacy through the mud.
So who does that leave?
Vivian.
Beautiful, fragile-voiced, wide-eyed liar.
She had motive.
Smearing her own name could buy her freedom—paint her as the victim, make the world demand her release from me.
Give her the life she claims she never got to choose.
It had to be her.
Ithadto be her.
The door bursts open, and Sylvester rushes in. I swivel my chair toward him, already braced for impact. One look at his face tells me everything. It’s bad news.
“Spill,” I snap.
He doesn’t waste a second. “Stock markets are whispering. Investors are pulling out. And now there are rumorsspreading through socials about organized crime funding your expansion deals.”
My jaw clenches. Hard.
He steps forward and sets a thick file on my desk. “This is everything we’ve traced so far. It’s spreading fast.”
I flip it open.
Numbers. Screenshots. News excerpts. Financial withdrawals. A projection of losses.
Every line feels like a fist slamming into my ribs.
My jaw tightens. Veins throb under my skin.
This isn’t just gossip—this is a deliberate strike.
A calculated effort to shatter everything I built.
I slam the file shut, breathing through my teeth.
Sylvester’s phone begins to ring, sharp and shrill in the heavy silence. He answers immediately, pacing as he speaks in low, urgent tones. I don’t hear a word. My mind is already sprinting ahead—mapping contingencies, shutdown protocols, media reroutes, legal responses. I need to cut this out before it becomes a cancer that kills everything I’ve fought for.
It takes Sylvester’s measured voice listing PR disasters for me to snap back into the room.
“…another outlet is running with the ‘Mafia heir’ angle. A whistleblower claims financial misconduct—”
