By the time Alina stepped back into the mansion, the tears had dried, but something sharper had taken their place.
Focus.
Naomi was close behind, quiet but alert. She knew this side of Alina too-the strategist, the storm that didn't need thunder to destroy everything in its path.
"Pull the internal logs," Alina said, heading straight for her private study. "Surveillance access. Emails. Anything in or out of the house or company servers in the last 48 hours."
Naomi nodded and peeled off without needing further instruction.
Alina sat at her desk, her fingers gliding across the touchscreen built into the table's surface. She pulled up a report Naomi had left open-one she hadn't looked at yet. Her thumb hovered over the highlighted section.
Subject: Preliminary Audit – Private Investments – Gregory Vale
She clicked.
And there it was.
A hidden fund transfer-disguised under a shell company tied to one of her subsidiaries. Transferred less than a week ago. The recipient? A media outlet known for digging up reputations and burying them in scandal.
Gregory had used her own company's money to leak Jesse's past.
A direct attack. One that could legally tie her to the slander if she didn't find it first.
Her jaw clenched. "He's not just trying to ruin my name," she said out loud. "He's trying to get me disqualified as CEO."
The clause in her father's will echoed in her mind: 'Should Alina's leadership be compromised by legal scandal or public scandal of significant weight, the board has the right to reassign authority within the family.'
She stood quickly just as Naomi reappeared.
"I found something else," Naomi said, eyes sharp. "Gregory's been in contact with an old associate of your father's-a man who helped draft the original terms of the will."
Alina's heart dropped. "He's trying to change the rules of the game."
"No," Naomi said quietly. "He's trying to prove you never followed them to begin with."
Alina paced the study, mind racing. "If he can show that the marriage is fake... if he can prove Jesse and I were a sham-"
"-then you lose the company," Naomi finished.
Alina turned to the window, fists clenched.
She'd built this empire with her own brilliance, her own sweat. And now a man who'd never earned a single dollar without backroom favors was trying to steal it with shadows and lies.
But what cut deeper than all of that?
The one person who might've h
elped her fight it... she'd just pushed away.