Derek Blackwell showed up at Ashford Capital the next morning looking like a man who hadn’t slept, showered, or eaten in days.
His suit was wrinkled. His eyes were bloodshot. The arrogant tilt of his chin was gone, replaced by something I had never once seen on his face.
Humility.
Leo escorted him to my office. I didn’t offer him a seat this time either, but he didn’t try to take one. He just stood in front of my desk, hands at his sides.
“Aurelia.” His voice cracked on my name. “I know I don’t deserve to be here.”
“You’re right. You don’t. Sit down.”
He sat.
“Vanessa’s gone,” he said. “She emptied my accounts — personal savings, the joint account, even the emergency fund my mother set up. Three hundred thousand dollars. Gone overnight.”
“I know.”
His head snapped up. “You know?”
“I know everything, Derek. I’ve known about Vanessa’s real identity for two days now.” I opened a folder and placed it in front of him. “Vanessa Hale. Daughter of Victor Hale, CEO of Hale Industries. She was planted in your life to destabilize Blackwell Industries so her father could execute a hostile takeover.”
Derek read the documents. With each page, the color drained further from his face.
“The affair… the divorce… it was all—”
“Engineered. Yes.”
He looked up at me, and for the first time in five years, I saw the man I had once married. Not the arrogant heir. Not the unfaithful husband. Just a lost, broken person who had been used.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“Because I need your help.”
He blinked. “My help? After everything I did to you?”
“Victor Hale filed an SEC complaint to freeze my shares. If I can’t vote at the shareholder meeting, he wins. But there’s one thing he didn’t account for.”
“What?”
“You. You still hold eight percent of Blackwell Industries through your personal trust. It’s the one asset Vanessa couldn’t touch because it’s locked in a generational trust with a morality clause.”
Derek stared. “You want me to vote with you.”
“I want you to stand up in front of the board, tell them exactly what happened, and vote to ratify my acquisition. Your testimony — combined with the evidence my team has assembled — will be enough to lift the injunction and destroy Victor’s case.”
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