The first headline dropped at 7:01 a.m.
MERIDIAN SCANDAL: GERALD WOLFE IMPLICATED IN COVER-UP OF DEATH, MONEY LAUNDERING
By 8:15, the major networks picked it up.
By 9:02, Wolfe International's stock had dropped seventeen percent.
Ava watched the fallout from a rooftop café downtown, coffee untouched, phone vibrating every ten seconds with press inquiries, threats, and offers.
She didn't answer any of them.
Because the real explosion hadn't happened yet.
She was saving that for noon.
That's when she'd scheduled a full leak of the audit trail—an anonymous data dump to every major investigative journalist in the country.
Emails. Wire transfers. Internal memos.
Gerald Wolfe's carefully curated empire would burn from the inside out.
And when it did… no one would be able to silence it.
But beneath the calculated vengeance, her heart ached.
Damian hadn't called.
Hadn't texted.
Hadn't stopped her.
She told herself it was for the best. That walking away had been the right call.
But the memory of his voice—"I can't"—still echoed in her bones.
He had made his choice.
Now she would make hers.
At exactly 12:00 p.m., she hit "SEND."
Across the city, newsrooms lit up.
Screens flashed.
Anchors scrambled.
The story was unstoppable now.
Ava exhaled.
It was done.
Or so she thought.
Until her phone rang—unmarked number—and a voice she hadn't heard in years filled her ear.
"Well done, Ava," Cecilia Wolfe purred. "You've finally made yourself interesting."
Ava's stomach flipped. "Cecilia."
"I must say, I didn't think you had it in you. But don't get too comfortable. You just exposed my husband. And darling…"
She chuckled.
"…you have no idea what kind of war you've started."
The call cut off before Ava could respond.
A moment later, her email pinged.
URGENT SECURITY ALERT: DEVICE COMPROMISED.
And then another.
Location breach detected. Files accessed remotely.
Her eyes widened.
Lucian.
He'd double-crossed her.
And suddenly, everything she thought she controlled was spinning out of reach.
Ava's hands flew across her phone, encrypting the last of her private files before the remote wipe could finish.
Too late.
The screen blinked—ACCESS DENIED—and then went dark.
Her heart pounded.
Lucian hadn't just betrayed her.
He'd weaponized her work.
Somewhere, the documents she'd leaked—the ones meticulously edited to protect Damian—were being replaced. Rewritten.
And in Lucian's version? Damian Wolfe would not come out clean.
He'd burn, right alongside his father.
Panic shot through her.
She needed to get to him.
She tossed cash on the table and sprinted for the street, waving down the first cab she saw. As she climbed in, her phone buzzed again.
Unknown Sender:
You thought you were the player.
You were just the bait.
Her blood turned cold.
Ava gave the driver the address to Wolfe Tower, then yanked out her backup device from her purse—a burner phone, clean. Only two contacts. One of them: Damian.
She called.
Voicemail.
She called again.
Still nothing.
She stared out the window, fingers trembling.
How had it flipped so fast?
How had she gone from holding all the cards to being outmaneuvered?
When the cab reached Wolfe Tower, it was surrounded by reporters. Dozens of them. Microphones. Cameras. Shouting.
And right there, walking through the doors in a storm-gray suit and his signature glare…
Damian.
Ava jumped out of the cab and shoved past the crowd. "Damian!"
He turned—and their eyes locked through the chaos.
She pushed through the mob until she reached him.
"We need to talk," she said breathlessly.
His face was unreadable.
"I know about Lucian," she added. "He hijacked the documents. He's trying to frame you now."
Damian exhaled. "He already has."
"What?"
He handed her a folder.
Damian Wolfe Implicated in Fraud
EXCLUSIVE: Secret Son Followed Father's Footsteps
It had already started.
Ava's hands shook. "I can fix this. I swear. I just need time."
"Time," he repeated. "Ava, you lit the match."
"I lit it for him. Not for you. I tried to shield you."
"I never asked for that."
"No," she said, softer now. "But I love you. And I wasn't going to let him take you down with him."
He stared at her, jaw tight, something breaking behind his eyes.
"You may have just made that impossible."
The Wolfe International boardroom was a fortress—floor-to-ceiling glass, twelve leather chairs, and a silence heavy enough to crush steel.
Damian walked in first, Ava just behind him, though technically she no longer had clearance. But no one stopped her.
Everyone wanted to see how the prince of the empire would fall.
Gerald Wolfe was absent.
Cecilia wasn't.
She sat at the head of the table like a queen awaiting a beheading. "You're late, Damian."
He tossed the damning article onto the table. "And you're not surprised."
"I never am," she said coolly.
A tall, silver-haired man stood up—Paul Renner, interim board chair. "This emergency session has been called to vote on the immediate suspension of Damian Wolfe, pending investigation into financial misconduct."
Ava stepped forward. "He's being framed. The original documents I leaked were clean. Someone tampered with the files."
Renner didn't blink. "The public doesn't care what's original. They care about what's loud. And right now, your little crusade has made this company a headline factory."
Ava's fists clenched. "Lucian Monroe is behind this."
Cecilia gave a razor-sharp smile. "And who let him in, darling?"
Everyone looked at Ava.
Damian's eyes didn't leave hers.
"Let's get to it," Renner said. "All in favor of suspending Damian Wolfe—"
"Wait," Ava interrupted, voice steely. "Before anyone votes, you should know something else."
She pulled out her backup drive—the one Lucian didn't know existed—and inserted it into the room's main console.
"Original files," she said. "Uncorrupted. Timestamped. With voice memos—some from Gerald himself."
The screen flickered. The board leaned in.
Cecilia stood. "This is not procedure—"
"No," Ava said, looking her dead in the eye. "This is truth."
The first voice memo played.
"Get the girl to sign it, I don't care how—she dies, she dies. Just clean it up."
Gasps filled the room.
Renner froze. "Is that…?"
Ava nodded. "Gerald Wolfe. Talking about Isabelle. Two weeks before she died."
The room erupted.
The vote paused. Renner called for an immediate internal review. And Cecilia—fuming—stormed out.
Damian didn't say a word.
Not until the room cleared.
Then: "You had that all along?"
"I kept it hidden," Ava said. "Even from you. Because if Lucian had known, he'd have killed for it."
Damian stared at her like he didn't know whether to kiss her… or walk away.
"I don't trust anyone anymore," he said finally.
"I'm not asking you to," she whispered. "I'm asking you to fight with me."
Damian stood at the edge of his father's private study, the fire behind him throwing long shadows over the bookshelves.
Gerald sat by the window, whiskey in hand, looking for once… tired.
Not defeated.
Just old.
"So," Gerald said, "it's come to this."
Damian didn't respond right away. He glanced at the drink in his father's hand, the silence between them thick with everything unsaid.
"You let Isabelle die," Damian said finally.
Gerald didn't flinch. "She was a complication."
"She was a person."
Gerald downed his drink. "And now your girlfriend's lit the world on fire over a dead woman."
"That dead woman was your son's fiancée," Damian said sharply. "And you used her. Just like you used me."
Gerald smiled faintly. "Is that what this is about? You finally grew a spine."
Damian stepped forward. "No. This is about your legacy. Ending with you."
The older man laughed, bitter and hoarse. "You think the board will crown you king after this? They're eating you alive already."
"I don't want your crown," Damian said. "I want your name buried."
And with that, he dropped a signed affidavit onto the desk—a sworn testimony linking Gerald directly to the cover-up.
Gerald stared at it, then at his son.
"You're turning your back on everything I built."
"No," Damian said. "I'm burning down everything you poisoned."
And then he walked out.
Downstairs, Ava was waiting in the car.
But before she could speak, her phone buzzed again.
A number she didn't recognize.
She hesitated… then answered.
The voice on the other end was low. Familiar.
"I didn't know who else to call," the woman said. "But I have something of Isabelle's. Something you need to see."
Ava's breath caught. "Who is this?"
"…Her sister."
Ava's heart slammed in her chest.
"I thought Isabelle was an only child."
"She was—on paper," the voice replied. "But my mother knew the truth. And there's more. About what really happened that night. About who else was there."
Static crackled.
"Meet me," the voice said. "Tonight. Come alone."
The line went dead.
Ava turned to Damian, her face pale.
"What is it?" he asked.
She looked him straight in the eyes.
"Everything we thought we knew about Isabelle… we were wrong."