Chapter 12

The Wyndham legal team moved with the speed of people who had waited a long time for a satisfying problem.

Within forty-eight hours, Serena Holloway's history was across every major news platform — the fraud operations, the fabricated crisis at the remote site, the staged knife attack, the composite photographs. The embezzlement figures appeared in a financial investigation piece that afternoon.

The internet did the rest.

Her parents cut her off the moment they realised the Wyndham name was no longer attached to them. They received their own criminal referrals twenty minutes later and spent the following day issuing increasingly frantic denials.

In the melee, Serena miscarried.

Her ex-boyfriend disappeared overnight, leaving behind nothing but her cleared bank account.

She dragged herself to Adrian's address as soon as she could stand.

"You can't do this to me!" She pounded the door until her hands hurt. "After everything I did for you — open up —"

Oliver opened the door.

"There's no point in this, Miss Holloway. Mr. Wyndham has gone abroad."

She stared at him.

"Gone where?"

"To find his wife," Oliver said.

"He's divorced. He can't just —"

"It turns out," Oliver said pleasantly, "that the only reason he didn't realise how much he loved her was because of you. So in a way, you've done him a favour."

He closed the door.

From behind it, Serena's voice rose into something unrecognisable.

"It should have been me! He was mine — he chose me — I made him choose —"

Oliver leaned against the wall on the inside and let her exhaust herself.

"He'd told me before," he said quietly, to no one in particular. "That he only ever had one wife. I should have listened."