The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 37

Chapter 37 The Nethys Maneuver

Back in the cold, echoing marble foyer of the Nethys mansion, Kieran Nethys was a different man than the one who had tearfully disowned his daughter just hours before. The performance was over. The cameras were off. The silent, cavernous house felt different now. Emptier, yes, but also crackling with a new kind of energy. Not of grief but of ambition.

He paced the length of his study, the same room where he had once patted Elera’s cheek and told her she wasn’t clever. The memory made him pause, but not with regret. With a sharp, recalculating curiosity. He had been wrong. Spectacularly, deliciously wrong.

His daughter, his sweet, empty–headed Elera, had not run off with some penniless artist or crumbled under the pressure. She had vanished from the Valdris gala and reappeared, by some miracle he still couldn’t fully comprehend, as the wife of Drakonius Vex.

Vex.

The name was a monument in the world of true power, it was the kind that operated in whispers and boardrooms darker and deeper than Valdris’s glittering world. Old money, but sharpened with new, cutting–edge influence. Pharmaceutical empires. Biotech holdings that were literally changing the fabric of human life. And private. So intensely, infuriatingly private.

And his daughter was married to the king of that castle.

A slow, incredulous smile spread across Kieran’s face, erasing the lines of manufactured sorrow. He walked to the mahogany bar and poured himself three fingers of expensive whiskey, not to drown his sorrows, but to toast his sudden, staggering luck.

He had been aiming for a profitable merger with a tech mogul. He had somehow, through the inexplicable alchemy of his daughter’s actions, landed a dynastic alliance with an emperor.

He replayed the phone call in his head. Her voice. It hadn’t been the breathy, hesitant tone she used with him. It had been calm and cold. It had been the voice of a woman who knew she held all the cards. “I am

Mrs. Drakonius Vex now.”

He had screamed. He had raged. But now, in the quiet aftermath, he saw the sheer, beautiful genius of it. While he was on television playing the heartbroken fool, she was in some secret, secure location, signing marriage documents that made her the potential heir to a fortune that made the Valdris wealth look like pocket change. And by extension, it made him the father–in–law to that fortune.

Xan Valdris was a problem, yes. A humiliated, vengeful problem. But Xan was fire and Drakonius Vex was ice. And ice always won. With Vex as a shield, Valdris’s fury was nothing but a minor annoyance.

He set down his glass, his mind racing with new plans. The disownment? A tragic misunderstanding. A father’s raw, emotional pain. Now, having had time to reflect, to see his daughter had found true, lasting love and security with a man of such stature… well, what father wouldn’t forgive? What father wouldn’t be overjoyed?

He would be the man who, in his grief, had spoken too harshly. The man who now welcomed his beloved daughter back with open arms, and welcomed a powerful, admirable new son into the family.

He picked up his phone and called her. It rang, then went to voicemail. Her sweet, recorded voice said,

“You’ve reached Elera. Leave a message.”

“Mr. Nethys,” Marlene’s voice was cautious, confused. “Sir, another statement so soon? The narrative is one of grief and finality. We should let it breathe, let the public sympathy-”

He hung up, his heart pounding with exhilaration. He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening crafting his new performance. He practiced his expressions in the mirror–the weary relief, the proud, tearful smile of a patriarch whose family was not broken, but elevated.

He thought of the look on Xan’s face when he will heard. He thought of the faces of every business rival who had pitied him this morning. They would all be scrambling now. They would all want an audience with Kieran Nethys, father–in–law to Drakonius Vex.

He tried Elera’s phone twice more. Nothing. A small worry began to gnaw at the edges of his triumph. She needed to be on board. She needed to stand beside him at this conference, looking radiant and forgiven. She needed to play her part like the prodigal daughter returned.

But even if she didn’t… the fact remained. She was a Vex. And by the ancient, unspoken laws of society and business, that meant he was now untouchable. Valdris could rage. The press could speculate. But no one would dare move against the family connected to Vex Industries. The fear of that man’s quiet, unseen retaliation was more powerful than any lawsuit.

As night fell, Kieran sat in his dim study, the plans solidifying in his mind. He didn’t need her cooperation, not really. The marriage was a public record. It was a fact. He could build his new empire on that fact alone. He would praise his son–in–law’s privacy, his strength, and his obvious devotion to Elera. He would paint himself as the gracious bridge between two great families,

His daughter, in her defiant, shocking act of rebellion, had not destroyed his dreams. She had handed him the keys to a kingdom he’d never even dared to dream of. She had no idea. She thought she was punishing him, escaping him.

But she had, in her beautifully dramatic way, just made her father the most powerful man in the city, if not, the whole world.

He raised his glass to the dark, empty room. “To my clever, clever girl,” he murmured, a laugh bubbling in his chest. “You have no idea what you’ve just done for me.”