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Home / Urban / A Divorce She Regrets / chapter 148
chapter 148
Author: Rachel Holt
last update2026-04-12 22:46:40

Ethan had known about Derek Ashton for six days before Derek sent anything.

He had identified the access pattern within forty-eight hours of pulling Derek's background — the late-night portal logins, the document downloads, the rhythm of a man harvesting information on a schedule that was careful enough to avoid obvious detection but not careful enough to avoid someone who was specifically looking. He had said nothing. He had let Derek work. He had been waiting for Derek to send something signi
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  • chapter 155

    Morrison read for forty minutes without stopping. He read from official documentation — declassified, stamped, each page numbered and dated and traceable to a specific military record that existed independently of anything anyone could dispute. He did not editorialize. He did not frame. He read the records the way records are meant to be read: as a sequence of verified facts that require no assistance to make their point. The Shadow Order's planned operation. The four simultaneous targets. The device recovered from Sterling Global's east wing. The forty operatives. The hostage situation at the training hall. Ethan Cross, named as the civilian who neutralised the threat, operated without military rank or support, and coordinated with Morrison's team to prevent casualties across all four target locations. Then Morrison read the dissolution record. The formal end of the Shadow Profound Order, declared by the ring's authority, witnessed by six surviving operatives and three members of

  • chapter 154

    Ethan drove back from the members' club and called his team from the car.He told them what Dunmore had said. The Dobbs statement, the planned interview, Vivian's name and the words she had already agreed to say. He gave them the details in order, without commentary, and when he finished he said: "Do not intercept the interview. Do not warn her. Do not contact Voss's intermediary or do anything that signals we know it is coming. Let it air."The line was quiet for a moment.His analyst said: "She has already agreed to do it. Stopping it now would require—""I know what it would require," Ethan said. "I am telling you not to do it. Let it run."---David Crane, his lead lawyer, was at the villa when Ethan arrived.He had driven over when the team call ended, which told Ethan that Crane had something to say that he preferred to say in person. He was in the kitchen with a coffee he had made himself, which also told Ethan something — a man who makes himself coffee in your kitchen has sett

  • chapter 153

    Robert Dunmore was sixty-seven and looked older than that tonight.He was already at the table when Ethan arrived — a private room at the back of a members' club that had been chosen, Ethan assumed, because Dunmore was a member and because members' clubs have staff who understand that certain meetings are not seen. He had a glass of water in front of him that he had not touched. His jacket was on. His tie was straight. Everything about his appearance said he had made an effort, and everything about his face said the effort had cost more than he had expected.Ethan sat down across from him."I appreciate you coming," Dunmore said."Tell me what you know," Ethan said.---Dunmore told it directly, which Ethan noted — no framing, no establishing of his own good intentions, no extended explanation of why he had joined the coalition in the first place. He had made a calculation, he was making a different calculation now, and the bridge between those two things was not something he appeared

  • chapter 152

    The coalition map had seven names on it.Voss was the centre. Whitfield was gone. That left five, and Ethan had spent the two days since the trial ruling identifying which one to move against next.The answer was Bellmont.Geoffrey Bellmont's family held the primary insurance portfolio for three of Voss's most significant business interests — contracts worth 180 million annually that Voss could not replace quickly without significant disruption to his cash position. Cutting Bellmont did not hurt Bellmont. It hurt Voss. That was the distinction that made Bellmont the correct second move rather than the third or fourth.Ethan's financial team went into Bellmont Holdings at nine that morning.By noon they had found the first offshore account. Jersey registered, nominee director, the standard construction of someone who has been moving money quietly for long enough to have developed a preferred method. By two they had found the second — Cayman Islands, a different structure but the same f

  • chapter 151

    Derek's attorney leaned close and said one word. "Silence."Derek looked at him. Then he looked at the courtroom — the judge, the gallery, the plaintiff's table where Harriet Fowle sat with her hands folded and her eyes on the middle distance. Then he looked at the back row.Ethan was still there.Derek turned back to the front of the room."I want to make a statement," he said.His attorney put a hand on his arm. Derek moved the arm away. Not aggressively. With the specific exhaustion of a man who has run out of the energy required to maintain a position he no longer believes in.---He told it from the beginning.Raymond Voss's representative had approached him fourteen months ago through an intermediary — a governance consultant Derek had worked with twice before, a name he trusted, which was why the approach had felt safe when it arrived. The arrangement was straightforward: accept the board appointment if offered, access what he could access, transmit what he was asked to transmi

  • chapter 150

    Harriet Fowle called for a recess before the judge could.She was on her feet with the request in her mouth before Paul Adeyemi had fully returned to his seat, and the judge granted it — twenty minutes, which was enough time to do exactly one thing if she moved immediately.She found a private corridor two floors down and called Voss.He answered on the second ring. She did not give him context first. There was no version of this that benefited from framing."We have been set up," she said. "Every piece of the new evidence is fabricated. The capital restructure document, all forty-one pages — it was constructed specifically to be leaked to us. They have records of every access, every transfer, every timestamp." A pause. "And they have records of Ashton sending it. They named him in open court. The surveillance package is sitting on the clerk's desk right now." The line was quiet."They know about Ashton," Voss said. His voice was controlled in the way that a person's voice is contro

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