What She Overheard in Her Own Marriage novel Chapter 559

Finnian walked into the bathroom and braced his hands against the marble vanity, staring at the man in the mirror.

Suddenly, the reflection felt entirely foreign to him.

"What a waste of a mouth," Finnian mocked himself bitterly.

The next morning, the news of his divorce exploded, drawing massive public attention.

But at that exact moment, a catastrophic crisis erupted at Aethelstan.

It wasn't a technical failure. The disaster stemmed from an ophthalmology project that had already advanced to Phase II clinical trials.

Aethelstan had bought the rights to the project from a small biotech startup two years ago, internally naming it Project Code 012.

Noelle had been the executive representing the company during the initial negotiations. However, a recent internal audit revealed that the background checks from two years ago were disastrously sloppy. They had just discovered that the raw data provided by the startup had been entirely falsified. Everything from the animal trials to the pharmacokinetic parameters had been meticulously manipulated.

When Noelle's team took over at Aethelstan, they had blindly pushed forward with the research based on the fraudulent data. Over the past two years, they had incinerated tens of millions of dollars. Recently, after a set of parameters failed to align, researchers traced the data back to its source and uncovered the fatal flaw.

The lab was forced to run the tests from scratch, and the final conclusion left everyone horrified.

The target had been medically unviable from day one. Two years of blood, sweat, and millions of dollars were completely obliterated.

It was unclear if there was a mole leaking internal information, but the news spiraled out of control immediately. With the media already circling like vultures over Finnian's divorce, unscrupulous outlets aggressively connected the two events to maximize shock value.

"Palace Drama: Aethelstan Becomes the Victim."

"President's Affair, Public Company Foots the Bill."

He handled the barrage of questions with absolute clarity, backing his arguments with hard data and laying out actionable recovery plans step by step.

Despite his prompt crisis management, the shareholders cared about one thing: Was Aethelstan going under, and what the hell was the next step?

Who was going to clean up a disaster of this magnitude? Unsurprisingly, someone brought up Noelle's name, triggering a tidal wave of suspicion and fury directed at her incompetence.

Finnian didn't speak up to defend her or correct them. The entire catastrophe was undeniably her fault. If she had done her due diligence two years ago, this fraudulent data would have been caught. For a scientific researcher, an error of this magnitude was amateurish and entirely unforgivable.

Finnian tapped his index finger against the mahogany table. After two seconds of dead silence, he spoke: "Aethelstan will merge with Veridian."

The moment the words left his mouth, the entire boardroom fell deathly silent.

Finnian looked calmly at the shocked faces of the shareholders on the screens. His voice wasn't loud, but every single syllable was razor-sharp. "Aethelstan and Veridian will be consolidated into a brand-new entity immediately. The R&D centers will be unified, technical resources will be fully integrated, and market operations will merge. I propose that Kaia Chavez be appointed as the Head of R&D for the new company. She will have absolute executive control over all research operations."