2026-02-06 17:50:55
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 405
The trial date came through on a Tuesday: June fifteenth, still three months away. Nathan saw it first on the news ticker scrolling across the bottom of a television screen in a hardware store, standing in line with a cart full of drywall supplies while the clerk rang up the customer ahead of him. The media had latched onto Marjorie’s case with the fervor of sharks scenting blood, dissecting every detail, every revelation, every connection to Riverpoint’s wealthy elite. Reporters camped outside the Hayes estate. Camera crews haunted the financial district. Everyone wanted a statement, a reaction, a glimpse of the family crumbling.Nathan gave them nothing. He had better things to do.The building Marcus had agreed to let him work on sat on Brennan Street, in a neighborhood where most investors wouldn’t bother slowing down their cars. Three stories of brick gone gray with neglect, windows boarded with plywood that had itself been tagged with graffiti in overlapping layers of spray pain
Chapter 404
The call came at seven-fifteen, just as the sun was setting and painting the sky over Riverpoint in shades of orange and bruised purple. Nathan had been sitting on the edge of his bed in the maid’s quarters, staring at his phone like he could will it to give him good news. When it finally rang, Joe’s name appearing on the screen, he’d felt a flutter of something like hope.That lasted about five seconds.“Nathan.” Joe’s voice came through rough, strained in a way Nathan had never heard before. The foreman was usually all gravel and confidence, barking orders on the job site with the kind of authority that came from thirty years of hard work. Now he sounded tired. Worried. “You got a minute?”Nathan’s stomach dropped. “Yeah. What’s wrong?”A pause. Nathan could hear ambient noise in the background—traffic, maybe, or the hum of a bar. Somewhere public. Joe was calling from somewhere public, which meant he didn’t want this conversation overheard by the wrong people.“Had a visitor today,
Chapter 403
The Hayes corporate headquarters occupied forty-three floors of steel and glass in the heart of Riverpoint’s financial district, a monument to old money pretending to be modern. Cassandra had been inside the building dozens of times, had attended charity galas in the penthouse ballroom and dinner meetings in the executive dining room, but she’d never felt the weight of it quite like this. The elevator climbed with smooth efficiency, the numbers ticking upward while her reflection stared back at her from the polished doors.Navy suit, tailored perfectly. Hair pulled back in a style her mother would have called severe. Makeup minimal, professional. She looked like someone who belonged in a boardroom, which was exactly the point. Looking the part was half the battle in rooms like these.The other half was having the spine to stay standing when everyone else wanted you to sit down and shut up.The elevator chimed as it reached the fortieth floor, and the doors slid open to reveal the exec
Chapter 402
The coffee had gone cold in Nathan’s mug, a film forming on the surface that caught the light from the small television mounted on the wall of his quarters. He’d been staring at the screen for twenty minutes, watching the same footage loop over and over. Marjorie Hayes, impeccably dressed even in crisis, being guided into the back of a police car. Her hand shielding her face. Reporters shouting questions that blurred into incomprehensible noise. The chyron at the bottom of the screen scrolling past in bold letters: “Hayes Family Matriarch Arrested for Embezzlement - Millions Missing.”Nathan had expected it. He’d known the moment Diane made that phone call yesterday that the news would spread like wildfire. The Hayes name carried weight in Riverpoint, and watching it burn made for good television. Still, seeing it play out in real time, seeing reporters dissect his family on morning news programs while talking heads speculated about the full extent of the damage, made something twist
Chapter 401
The fluorescent lights in the rented office space hummed with a persistent buzz that Nathan had stopped noticing two hours ago. He stood beside the conference table, his hand resting on one of seven cardboard boxes that lined the room’s perimeter like silent witnesses. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Riverpoint’s financial district stretched into the gray afternoon, all steel and glass and ambition. Inside, the air felt different. Heavier. Charged with the weight of months of investigation compressed into manila folders and document sleeves.Marjorie Hayes sat across from him, though “sat” was generous. She’d collapsed into the leather chair sometime around the third box of evidence, her designer silk blouse now wrinkled at the collar, the perfect cream fabric creased where she’d been gripping it. Her makeup, always so carefully applied, had begun to smudge beneath her eyes. Nathan wondered if she’d touched her face without realizing it, or if the foundation simply couldn’t hold
Chapter Four Hundred
The warehouse groaned under the weight of its own destruction. Sparks hissed from twisted metal, smoke curled in thick black tendrils, and flames licked the edges of broken crates that had once been neatly stacked along the walls.Every sound—the drip of water from a punctured pipe, the occasional snap of a loose beam, the low roar of a fire consuming debris—seemed amplified in the cavernous space. Nathan’s chest heaved as he kept Marjorie firmly in his grasp, her wrist tight in his hand.Her usual composure, the predator’s confidence she carried like armor was gone. Fear had replaced it, raw and jagged, and Nathan felt an unusual rush of satisfaction mix with the tension that never left him in moments like this.Cassandra moved just behind him, keeping her weapon trained, eyes scanning every shadow, every corner where a stray spark could ignite another disaster. She had learned long ago to anticipate Nathan’s thinking, to move as an extension of his strategy rather than independent o
You may also like
The Ultimate Husband
Skykissing Wolf7.7M viewsYou Do Not Deserve Me
Keep It Flowing98.0K viewsTRILLIONAIRE ON TOP
Sweet savage222.1K viewsThe Lowly Son in Law is Quadrillionaire
Riku Ormstrom93.1K viewsThe Accidental Son in Law
Olivia670 viewsThe Conglomerate Heir Awakens
Hydrogen Starr235 viewsRise of The Masked Billionaire Magnate
Cynthia Paige392 viewsThe Day I Stopped Being Mr Nice Guy
Lady D657 views