The hunt was on.
The words from Marcus’s text echoed in the small apartment, a silent declaration of war. Kian’s focus was absolute, a physical force in the room. He didn’t celebrate the initial hit. He didn’t gloat. He simply processed it, the first link in the chain he intended to wrap around his mother’s neck.
“Back to your place,” he said, his voice clipped. “We turn your condo into our headquarters. It’s secure.”
Audrey nodded, her mind racing. The fortress that had once been her cage. Now it was their armory.
The next forty-eight hours were a blur of encrypted emails, takeout containers, and hushed, intense phone calls. Kian didn’t just command; he orchestrated. He stood in the center of the living room, a phone to his ear, a tablet in his hand, a laptop open on the kitchen island, directing a global team of forensic accountants and private investigators.
Audrey was not a spectator. She was the archivist of his war.
She sat at her dining table, a large whiteboard propped against the wall. With each piece of information that came in, she mapped it out. A red marker for Beatrice. A blue one for Cassandra. A black one for the money.
The Cayman Islands LLC. That was the first entry.
An hour later, Marcus called back. “The LLC funded a one-time payment to a high-end personal shopping service in SoHo. We got the receipts. A new wardrobe. Chanel, Dior, Valentino. Total spend, eighty-four thousand dollars.”
Audrey drew a line from the LLC to a new box. WARDROBE. $84k.
“She bought the costume for her big performance,” Audrey said, her voice laced with ice.
Kian’s jaw tightened. “Keep digging.”
The information flowed in a steady, damning stream. A wire transfer to a luxury car dealership for a new Mercedes. A series of cash deposits, all just under the ten-thousand-dollar reporting threshold, into a new savings account.
Audrey mapped it all, her curator’s mind finding patterns in the chaos. The spending was frantic, desperate. It wasn’t the spending of a woman who was used to wealth; it was the spending of someone terrified the money would disappear.
“She’s a pawn,” Audrey said late the second night, staring at the web of lines and figures. “Your mother gave her enough money to buy a new life, but not enough to feel secure in it.”
Kian came to stand behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders. He looked at the board, at the clear, undeniable story she had built from the fragments of data.
“You see it, don’t you?” he said, his voice a low rumble. “The narrative. The motivation.”
“She was desperate,” Audrey whispered. “And Beatrice used that.”
His phone buzzed on the counter. A secure video call. Marcus.
“We have it, sir,” Marcus said, his face grim on the small screen. “It was buried deep. Classic Sterling shell game. But we have it.”
Kian put the call on speaker, his hand finding Audrey’s.
“Walk me through it,” Kian commanded.
“The Cayman LLC, ‘Veridian Holdings,’ received its funding two months ago from another entity, ‘Helios Investments,’ based in Zurich,” Marcus explained, his voice crisp. “Helios was capitalized by a third shell, ‘Aquila Maritime,’ registered in Panama.”
Audrey held her breath. It was a labyrinth designed to be impenetrable.
“And Aquila Maritime?” Kian pressed.
“It’s a subsidiary,” Marcus said, and the satisfaction in his voice was unmistakable. “A dormant one, used for asset holding. It hasn’t been active in five years.”
“A subsidiary of what?” Kian’s voice was dangerously quiet.
Marcus looked directly into the camera. “Sterling Industries. It’s one of yours, sir. An old one your mother used in the nineties to hide acquisitions. We cross-referenced the incorporation documents. Beatrice Sterling is the sole signatory.”
The smoking gun.
Not just a gun. A cannon.
The money that paid for Cassandra’s apartment, her car, the very clothes on her back during that slanderous interview—it came directly from a company his mother controlled.
It was irrefutable. Unbreakable.
Audrey stared at the phone, then at Kian. The last piece of the puzzle slotted into place. The board wasn’t just a map of Cassandra’s greed; it was a portrait of Beatrice’s crime.
Kian ended the call without another word. He stood silently for a long moment, the city lights reflecting in his dark eyes. The fight was over. The war was won. All that remained was the execution.
He turned to Audrey, the cold fury in his expression melting away, replaced by a fierce, unwavering protectiveness. He saw the tension in her shoulders, the exhaustion in her eyes. This fight, his family’s poison, had taken its toll on her.
His phone vibrated again. A text message. Not from his team.
It was from a blocked number.
Kian glanced at it, his body going rigid. Without a word, he handed the phone to her.
Audrey’s blood ran cold. She knew before she even read the words. It was Cole. His last, desperate attempt to hold on.
The text was a single, grainy photo. It was of her, taken from across the street, looking through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the condo. She was standing at the whiteboard, her hand on her stomach. A ghost in her own home.
Beneath it, a single line of text.
He can’t protect you forever.
The threat was no longer a phantom. It was real. It was outside.
But the fear that would have once paralyzed her didn’t come. She looked from the photo of the frightened woman in the window to the powerful, resolute man standing beside her. She looked at the proof of their victory against one enemy, laid out in black and white.
She handed the phone back to Kian.
“He’s wrong,” she said, her voice clear and strong.
Kian deleted the message, his eyes never leaving hers. A new, colder front had just opened in their war, but it didn’t matter. They had the truth on their side. They had each other.
“First, we deal with the conspirator,” Kian said, his voice a low promise. “Then we deal with the stalker.”
He picked up his jacket, his movements once again full of purpose.
“It’s time to pay Cassandra Thorne a visit.”