The confirmation was a cold, hard stone in my gut. I hadknown it, felt it, but having the proof was something else entirely.
“Gianni also pulled deleted text messages from her cloud backup from that night,” Fury continued, his voice relentless. “There’s a whole string between her and Garrett after the photo was leaked. She’s panicking, accusing him of being obsessed with the ‘new girl.’ He’s trying to calm her down, telling her it was a calculated move to get you, Sean, out of the picture by making Beth look bad.”
It was all there. A tangled, ugly web of jealousy, lies, and manipulation. Kyra, feeling Garrett pull away towards Beth, had tried to sabotage her, to paint her as a home wrecker and get her fired. And Garrett, the master manipulator, had tried to spin it as a “calculated move” to his angry, jealous lover.
“The full dossier is over 30 pages,” Fury said. “Emails, texts, financial records, photos. It’s a complete thermonuclear device. You now have everything you need to not just expose them, but to utterly destroy them, professionally and personally.”
“Thank you, Fury,” I said, my voice thick with a gratitude that went beyond words. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he replied, and I could hear the hard edge of family loyalty in his voice. “This prick targeted someone who is with one of us. He made a stupid, stupid mistake. You just decide how you want to use this information to protect Beth. You call the shots. Let me know what you need from me.”
We ended the call, and I stood in the dusty silence of the stockroom, the weight of the information settling over me. I had the truth. I had the ammunition. Now I had to figure out how to use it without causing another explosion in Beth’s already fragile world.
That evening,I stood outside a sleek, ridiculously exclusive-looking restaurant in SoHo, my tie feeling unusually tight. Fury had insisted on dinner, and he’d been adamant: “Bring Beth. It’s time we meet the woman who has you tying your life into knots. Sienna is dying of curiosity.”
I was nervous. Not just for me, but for Beth. Meeting any family can be daunting; meeting the McCrae-Carideo-Gracen clan was like being introduced to a pack of charming, fiercely loyal, and incredibly perceptive wolves. And Fury and Sienna were the alphas.
Beth, however, looked breathtaking. She wore a simple, elegant black dress that clung to her curves, her fiery hair piled on top of her head in a messy, sophisticated knot. She looked nervous too, her hand clutching mine tightly as we walked inside.
“What if they hate me?” she whispered as the maître d’ led us towards a secluded corner booth.
“They won’t,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Just be yourself, and they’ll love you.”
Fury was already there, rising as we approached. He looked exactly the same as always: like someone just stepping off the cover of a magazine without even trying, carrying himself with that easy, unshakable confidence that practically entered a room before he did. He greeted me with a firm, brotherly hug before turning his intense, dark brown eyes on Beth.
“And…youmust be Beth,” he said, his voice a smooth, charming baritone. He took her hand, but instead of shaking it, he brought it to his lips, a move that was so old-school gallant it could have been cheesy, but on him, it just worked. “It’s apleasure to finally meet the woman who managed to get my cousin to abandon all logic and fly across the country.”
I saw a faint blush rise on Beth’s cheeks, but she didn’t miss a beat. “Well,” she said, her Scottish lilt full of wry humor as she gracefully retrieved her hand, “I hear it doesn’t take much to get a McCrae, or Gracen man to abandon logic.”
A slow, appreciative grin spread across Fury’s face. He shot me a look over Beth’s head that clearly said,“Okay, I get it now.”
“This is my wife, Sienna,” Fury said to Beth, gesturing to the woman beside him.
I’d met Sienna before, of course, but tonight, she was…radiant. Luminous. Her emerald-green eyes, sharp and intelligent as ever, sparkled. She wore a daring, emerald-green silk top that draped elegantly over her frame. And as she stood to greet us, I noticed the subtle, unmistakable curve of her belly.
“Sienna,” I said, my voice filled with a surprise and joy that was completely genuine. “You’re… wow. Congratulations.”
She smiled, a brilliant, confident smile, and placed a hand on her stomach. “We were going to wait to tell the whole family, but you’ve got a good eye, Sean.”
Fury’s chest puffed out with a pride that was almost comical. “I’m going to be a dad,” he said, as if announcing he’d just discovered a new continent.
Beth looked from me to them, her own surprise evident. “Oh my goodness, congratulations to you both! That’s wonderful news.”
Sienna’s gaze settled on Beth, and I saw that sharp, perceptive intelligence at work. It was an assessment, a sizing up. “So,” Sienna said, her voice a low, husky purr as we all sat down. “You’re the one causing all this trouble.”
It wasn’t an accusation; it was a statement of fact, a challenge.
Beth met her gaze without flinching. “I seem to have a talent for it,” she replied, a hint of her own fire in her eyes. “But I’m told the company I keep has been a contributing factor.”
Sienna laughed, a rich, throaty sound. “I like her,” she announced to Fury, who just grinned.
The tension in the booth dissipated, replaced by an easy, flowing conversation. Fury slid a heavy manila envelope across the table towards me. “The dossier,” he said quietly. “Everything we talked about.”
I took it, the weight of it feeling significant in my hands. Beth’s eyes flickered from the envelope to my face, a question in them.
“It’s the full background report on Garrett and Kyra,” I explained to her softly. “We have everything, Beth. Proof of their affair, of them embezzling from the foundation. And definitive proof that Kyra was the one who leaked the photo of you and Garrett to the press.”
I watched as a wave of emotions washed over her face: shock, validation, and then a quiet, simmering anger.
