The ride to Cassandra’s new apartment was silent.
The city lights smeared across the windows of Kian’s town car, a river of gold and white. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing left to say, no strategy left to debate. The plan was set. The evidence was absolute.
Audrey stared out at the passing buildings, her own reflection a pale ghost against the glass. The threat from Cole’s text was a cold knot in her stomach, but it felt distant now, a secondary fire. The primary threat, the one that had poisoned everything from the start, was Beatrice Sterling and her web of lies. And Cassandra Thorne was the spider at its center.
Kian didn’t look at the city. He looked straight ahead, his profile carved from stone. He wasn’t nervous. He wasn’t angry. He was simply… executing. This was a corporate maneuver, a hostile takeover of the truth.
The car slid to a silent stop in front of a sleek, new glass tower that clawed at the night sky. The lobby was all white marble and recessed lighting, sterile and impersonal. A home bought, not made.
“My security has already been here,” Kian said quietly, his hand on the small of her back as he guided her through the lobby. “The doorman is ours. The elevator is waiting.”
He was always ten steps ahead.
They rode up in silence. Floor thirty-four. The doors opened onto a hushed, carpeted hallway. Kian led her to an apartment at the end, 34B. He didn’t knock. He produced a keycard, swiped it, and the lock clicked open.
He pushed the door inward and stood aside, letting Audrey enter first.
The apartment was a shrine to new money. White leather couches, chrome fixtures, and a vast, empty feeling. It smelled of paint and loneliness.
Cassandra Thorne was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, a glass of wine in her hand, staring out at the view she had bought with her lies. She wore silk pajamas, her hair perfectly coiffed. Even in private, she was playing the part.
She turned as the door clicked shut behind them. Her eyes widened. The wine glass trembled in her hand.
“Kian?” she gasped, a flicker of panic in her eyes before she masked it with a practiced nonchalance. “What are you doing here? You can’t just—”
“Hello, Cassandra,” Kian said, his voice flat. He walked into the center of the room, Audrey a half-step behind him, a united front.
“You need to leave,” Cassandra said, her voice rising, trying for indignation. “This is breaking and entering. I’ll call the police.”
“Go ahead,” Kian said calmly. “Tell them the man whose life you’ve been systematically trying to destroy is here. I’m sure they’ll be very interested in your story.”
Audrey watched Cassandra’s face. The mask was already cracking. Fear, raw and potent, was seeping through.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered.
Kian didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. He took out his tablet and placed it on the sterile glass coffee table. He tapped the screen.
A bank statement appeared.
“Veridian Holdings, LLC,” Kian said, the name dropping into the silent room like a stone. “Registered in the Cayman Islands. On August twelfth, it made a payment of sixty thousand dollars to this building’s management company. A full year’s rent. For you.”
Cassandra stared at the screen, her face draining of all color. “That’s… that’s a family trust.”
“Is it?” Kian swiped the screen. A new document appeared. Receipts. “The trust also paid eighty-four thousand dollars to a personal shopper at Bergdorf’s. A nice new wardrobe for your television appearance.”
Audrey stepped forward. She couldn’t stop herself. The cold, hard satisfaction was a fire in her veins. She pointed to a line item on the screen.
“The Chanel jacket you wore,” Audrey said, her voice steady and clear. “Six thousand, seven hundred dollars. You wore it while you cried about being an abandoned mother.”
Cassandra flinched as if struck. She looked from Audrey to Kian, her eyes darting around the room as if searching for an escape that wasn’t there. The walls of her glass tower were closing in.
“My mother is very thorough,” Kian continued, his voice relentless. “She hides her tracks. But I know her playbook. Veridian Holdings was funded by Helios Investments in Zurich. Which was funded by Aquila Maritime in Panama. Which is a dormant, wholly-owned subsidiary of Sterling Industries. A company she controls.”
He looked up from the tablet, his eyes locking onto hers. He delivered the final, killing blow.
“The money that paid for this apartment came from my company, Cassandra. I have the wire transfer codes. I have the signatory documents. I have the proof.”
It was over. The fight drained out of Cassandra in a single, shuddering breath. Her shoulders slumped. The wine glass slipped from her fingers, shattering on the marble floor, red wine bleeding across the pristine white stone like a wound.
“She promised,” Cassandra sobbed, her body collapsing onto the white leather couch. “She promised you’d never find it. She said she’d protect me.”
“My mother protects her own interests,” Kian said coldly. “You were just a tool. And now you’re a liability.”
“You don’t understand,” she wept, burying her face in her hands. “My family lost everything. We had nothing. Beatrice… she came to me. She said it was a simple arrangement. That you owed me, from years ago. That you were with some… some social climber who was trapping you.”
Her tear-filled eyes found Audrey’s. There was no malice in them now. Only a pathetic, desperate plea for understanding.
“She coached me,” Cassandra confessed, the words pouring out of her. “What to say, what to wear. She hired the child. An actor’s kid. My sister’s son lives in Oregon. Beatrice said if I did this one thing, my family would be secure forever.”
The full, ugly scope of the deception lay bare on the floor, as stark as the shattered glass.
Kian walked over to the chrome console table and picked up a briefcase Audrey hadn’t noticed. He placed it on the coffee table and opened it. Inside was a single stack of papers and a pen.
“This is an affidavit,” Kian said. “My lawyers drafted it. It details everything. The initial offer from my mother. The payments. The scripted interviews. The hiring of the child actor. Everything you just told us.”
He slid the document across the table toward her.
“You have two choices,” he said, his voice leaving no room for negotiation. “You sign this confession, and in return, my company will not press charges for wire fraud and conspiracy to defame. We will give you a sum of money—enough to start over, somewhere far from here. You will disappear.”
Cassandra stared at the papers, her tears dripping onto the title page. “And the other choice?” she whispered.
“The other choice,” Kian said, “is that I hand all of this evidence to the District Attorney in the morning. Your accounts will be frozen. You will be arrested. And you will spend the next ten years in a federal prison. And believe me, my mother will not lift a finger to help you.”
It wasn’t a choice. It was a sentence, and he was offering her the only possible pardon.
Slowly, her hand shaking so badly she could barely hold the pen, Cassandra Thorne reached for the affidavit. She didn’t read it. She just signed, her signature a frantic, jagged scrawl on each page.
The scratching of the pen on paper was the only sound. It was the sound of a war ending. The sound of a lie dying.
She pushed the papers back across the table. Her part in the drama was over.
Kian took the signed affidavit. He didn’t look at it. He put it back in the briefcase and snapped it shut. He had his weapon.
He looked at Audrey, a silent question in his eyes. She gave a single, sharp nod.
They turned and walked to the door, leaving Cassandra sobbing amidst the wreckage of her beautiful, hollow life.
In the elevator, descending from the glass tower, Kian finally spoke.
“It’s done,” he said, his voice tight with a victory that felt more grim than celebratory. He held the briefcase that contained their proof. Their justice.
“What now?” Audrey asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Kian looked at the briefcase in his hand, then at her. The cold, ruthless magnate receded, and the man who loved her looked out from his eyes. But his resolve had not wavered. It had only sharpened.
“Now,” he said, pulling out his phone. “I’m calling an emergency board meeting for Sterling Industries. Tomorrow morning.”
He wasn’t going to confront his mother in private. He was going to execute her reign in public.