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Serena's face was ashen.

"No — no, you've misunderstood me completely, I can explain —"

She scrambled forward and grabbed at the hem of his jacket.

Adrian stepped back and let her fall.

He left the room. Oliver followed.

By that night, Oliver had compiled everything.

The hit-and-run: staged. Serena had organised it herself, using a connection she'd cultivated through an old fraud network, and had also been the one to remove the signed divorce papers from the car before anyone thought to check. The whole incident — the injury, the missing papers, the blame on Eliana — had been engineered from the start.

The photographs of Eliana and Maxwell: composites. Created by the same network, delivered to Adrian at the moments most likely to inflame his suspicion.

Every loyal gesture — the client dinners, the knife, the remote site — had been choreographed. Serena had had help for all of it. The man she was actually in a relationship with had coordinated the logistics; the pregnancy had been confirmed as his child weeks ago.

"She's been embezzling from the company, sir," Oliver said. He sounded like someone who had just found out their house had no foundations. "Nearly seven figures. Her parents have been telling people they're your future in-laws and trading on the Wyndham name to run their own schemes. Fraud, mainly."

Adrian sat down.

The full weight of what he had done — what he had been convinced to do — settled on him like something physical.

Oliver looked at his hands. "I'm sorry, sir. For my part in it. I said terrible things to Mrs. — to Eliana. I believed all of it."

"Freeze her assets," Adrian said. "All of them. Have the legal team file for recovery of every sum embezzled — civil and criminal both. Have everything she's done leaked to the press."

A pause.

"And her parents?"

"Same." He looked up. "I want them to have nothing left."