Gwendolyn Maxwell POV:
The numbers on the screen were bleeding. Bright, screaming red. The Maxwell Group's stock had nosedived the second the market opened.
Headlines swam before my eyes, each one a fresh insult. Maxwell Wedding Canceled, Bride Mysteriously Vanishes. Billion-Dollar Merger in Jeopardy After Society Wedding Implodes. Hotel Fire, A Jilted Bride, and a Corporate Catastrophe.
I slammed a copy of the Wall Street Journal onto my mahogany desk. The force of it rattled a porcelain teacup. My carefully applied makeup was a mask of civility over a well of pure fury.
Hugh stood before me, looking pathetic. His suit was wrinkled, his eyes were bloodshot, and he smelled faintly of stale champagne and failure.
My gaze, cold and sharp, sliced into him. "This is the mess you’ve made. You couldn't even manage one simple woman." My anger wasn't about his infidelity—I couldn't care less about that. It was about the loss of control. The public humiliation. The damage to the bottom line.
"How was I supposed to know she'd run?" he whined, shifting his weight like a guilty child. "She was always so… compliant."
"Compliant?" I let out a short, sharp laugh devoid of humor. "A compliant woman burns down a hotel corridor and then vanishes off the face of the earth, Hugh? Don't be a bigger fool than you already are."
My assistant knocked and entered, her face pale. "Ma'am, we've used every contact we have. The police, private investigators… Ms. Mayo has no credit card activity, her phone is off, and no one has seen her. It's like she never existed."
I waved her away with an impatient flick of my wrist. I didn't believe it. Darcie Mayo didn't have the spine or the resources for a disappearing act like this.
My eyes narrowed on my son. "What did you do to her, Hugh? What did you do to make her burn everything to the ground?"
He flinched, his gaze skittering away. He wouldn't meet my eyes. He mumbled something about a small argument, but I saw the lie written all over his weak face. He was hiding something. Something with that trashy stepsister, no doubt.
"Lock it down," I ordered, deciding to deal with his incompetence later. "The official story is that Darcie had a sudden health crisis. The wedding is postponed, not canceled."
Just then, Sterling, my chief legal counsel, walked in without knocking. His expression was grim. That alone set my teeth on edge. Sterling was never grim; he was a machine.
He placed a small, encrypted USB drive on my desk. "Gwendolyn. We have an emergency report from IT."
My stomach tightened. "What was compromised?"
Sterling’s face was stone. "The breach was sophisticated. Professional. They bypassed everything. They only accessed one thing." He paused, and the air in the room grew heavy. "A preliminary audit report on the Group's offshore trust and tax model in the Caymans. We don't know if they copied it, but the file was opened."
The blood drained from my face. I shot up from my chair, my hands gripping the edge of the desk. That file was my life's work. It was the architecture of our empire, the gray area where our true wealth was protected. If it leaked… it wouldn't just be a scandal. It would be the end.
This wasn't a jilted lover's revenge. This was a declaration of war.
I stared at Hugh, my voice a low, venomous hiss. "Darcie. It had to be her."
In that moment, I finally understood. We hadn't been dealing with a naive little girl. We had been nurturing a viper. And now, she held the poison that could kill us all.
