The CEO's Rejected Wife And Secret Heir novel Chapter 182

Chapter 182: Chapter 182 – Eleanor’s Confession

Aria’s POV

Barnes met me in the corridor before I reached the door. "Before you go in," he said.

I stopped.

He kept his voice low and even. "The phone records from one of Charles’s contacts came back an hour ago, we now have the full picture now."

"Tell me."

"Charles has been hemorrhaging money for months. Gambling private tables. He owes dangerous people a whole lot of money." Barnes paused. "When you took the Monroe company, you cut off his last legitimate income stream; now he has nothing left except."

"Access to Noah," I said.

"Yes. He made contact with an overseas trafficking network we’ve been tracking for years, the man at Noah’s school wasn’t just a scout. He was the handoff." Barnes held my gaze. "There was a buyer already confirmed. The payment had been agreed. Fifty thousand, enough to clear the most dangerous of his debts and buy himself time."

The corridor was very quiet.

"Fifty thousand," I said.

"Yes."

"How close?" I said.

"The handoff was meant to happen within forty eight hours of the school attempt. Ms. Pearce stopped it with eleven minutes between Noah’s reading session ending and outdoor break beginning."

I pressed my hand flat against the wall beside me and breathed once, slowly.

"Does Damien know?"

"I told him a few minutes ago."

I nodded. Straightened. Picked up my bag from where it had slipped on my shoulder. "Alright," I said.

Barnes stepped aside as I walked to the door, put my hand on the handle, and went in.

*********

The interview room Barnes arranged was not a cell — a small concession to Eleanor’s cooperation, I supposed — but it was not far from one. Pale walls, a table, two chairs.

Eleanor Monroe sat very straight in her chair the way she always had, spine correct, hands folded on the table, the lifelong habit of a woman who believed posture was character. But the composure that had always felt impenetrable was gone. She looked older than the last time I’d seen her — smaller, somehow, and when she looked up as I walked in, something moved across her face that I had almost never seen there. Shame.

I sat across from her and didn’t speak first. I’d learned, in boardrooms and in harder places, that silence was its own form of pressure.

Eleanor lasted approximately a few seconds. "Thank you for coming," she said.

"I’m not here for you," I told her. "I’m here because Barnes thinks you have something relevant to say, and I want to hear it before anyone else tells me their version."

She absorbed this with a small nod, accepting it. "I gave Charles information. I want you to know that I didn’t understand what he was planning to do with it."

"But you knew he was planning something."

A pause. "Yes."

"And you chose to help him anyway."

Her jaw tightened slightly, then released. "I told myself it was just information. Nothing that could hurt you directly. I thought he wanted leverage. A negotiation. Not—" She stopped. "When Barnes told me what he did at Noah school, I was"

"I don’t need your reaction to finding out," I said. "Tell me what you came to tell me."

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