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-”

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