A thick, jagged, furious red scar tore an angry path from my right temple, carving down across my cheekbone, and ending just before my jawline. The stitches made it look like a crude railway track stitched into my flesh. It pulled at the corner of my eye, altering my expression into something hardened, something unrecognizable. The naive, trusting girl who had signed those papers in the cabin was dead.
I didn’t cry. My tear ducts felt as though they had been cauterized by the freezing Aspen wind. I lowered the mirror and turned to look at the man standing by the window. Arthur Harrison stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching me with a mixture of immense sorrow and fierce pride. Over the past three days, as my body healed, he had laid out the truth: my mother’s flight from his powerful family, the forged adoption papers, his relentless search. He was my blood. And right now, we shared the exact same burning desire.
“He took my trust,” I said, my voice no longer trembling, but vibrating with a new, dark steel. “He took my safety. He tried to murder my child.”
I stood up, ignoring the phantom pain in my ribs. “I don’t just want him in jail, Arthur. I want him to lose everything. I want him to feel the exact moment his world shatters, in front of everyone he’s trying to fool.”
Arthur turned, a grim, terrifying smile touching the corners of his mouth. It was the smile of a corporate predator who had dismantled empires before breakfast.
“The Apex Group handles his claim, my dear,” Arthur said smoothly, walking over to hand me a sleek black folder. “I am the CEO. I have personally arranged the payout ceremony for tomorrow morning at the cathedral. He thinks he’s getting a VIP fast-track because of the tragedy.”
I opened the folder. Inside were copies of Carter’s forged signatures on my medical releases, his frantic emails to his offshore creditors promising imminent payment, and text transcripts recovered between him and Sienna.
read more in next page
