Garrett:There is no ‘us’ anymore. This has nothing to do withyou and me. That’s been over for a while. This is business. A very lucrative business. Don’t interfere again. Lose my number.
I looked up at Sean, my stomach churning. It was all there in black and white. The validation of my instincts was a cold, bitter comfort. Kyra’s venom wasn’t just professional jealousy; it was the fury of a woman scorned, a woman desperately in love, watching her lover move on. And Garrett… his interest in me wasn’t romantic. It was cold, transactional. A “lucrative business.” He hadn’t been trying to seduce me for himself; he was using me for something else entirely, and I had no idea what it was. He hadn’t just played me; he had used me as a pawn in a game I didn’t even know I was playing.
“He played me,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash. “The whole time, he was playing me.”
“He tried,” Sean corrected, his hand covering mine. “But he underestimated you. He showed his hand, and now we have the whole deck.” He tapped the thick dossier. “This isn’t just proof, Beth. This is power. You get to decide the next move.”
I looked at the files spread across the bed, at the cold, hard evidence of their deceit. A new resolve, cold and sharp as steel, settled in my chest. Kyra was right about one thing she’d said at the gala: I wasn’t just an intern anymore. I was a player. And I was done letting other people move my pieces around the board.
“Okay,” I said, meeting Sean’s gaze, my voice steady. “Let’s go to work.”
We walkedinto the Hillsdale Foundation side-by-side, the dossier a heavy, powerful weight in my tote bag. Sean hadn’t questioned my decision; he’d simply asked, “What’s theplan?” He was my backup, my silent, imposing partner, and his presence gave me a confidence I hadn’t felt before.
The atmosphere in the office was the same as yesterday—hushed whispers, averted gazes. But today, it didn’t bother me. Let them whisper. They had no idea what was coming.
We found Kyra near the coffee station, chatting with one of the junior marketing assistants. Her laughter was bright and tinkling, the sound of a woman completely secure in her position at the top of the office food chain. Her face, however, froze when she saw us approaching, her smile dissolving into a mask of pure disdain.
“What do you want?” she snapped, dismissing the junior assistant with a flick of her wrist.
I didn’t answer right away. I just smiled, a calm, polite smile, and placed the heavy manila envelope on the counter between us. “I believe this belongs to you,” I said, my voice equally calm. “Or, well, it’s about you. And Garrett. A rather comprehensive collection of your… ‘special projects’.”
I saw her eyes flicker to the envelope, then back to my face. A wave of panic washed over her features before she quickly suppressed it, replacing it with a look of haughty indignation.
“I have no idea what that is,” she said, her voice a little too high. “But whatever fabricated nonsense you’ve cooked up, it’s inadmissible. Hearsay. You can’t use any of that in court.”
“Oh, Kyra,” I said with a sigh of mock sympathy. “Who said anything about court? That seems so… messy. So public. I wouldn’t want to drag the foundation’s good name through the mud.” My voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “No, I was just thinking of having a quiet, private chat with Ms. Henderson. To express my ‘concerns’ as a intern about potential fiscal mismanagement and inappropriate staff relationships. I’m sure she’d be very interested to see the documentation I’ve compiled. She seems like a woman who appreciates thorough research.”
Checkmate.
The color drained from her face. Her carefully constructed facade crumbled, revealing the desperate, cornered woman underneath. Her whole body began to tremble.
“You can’t,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “We’ll be ruined. We’ll be…”
“Fired?” I supplied helpfully. “Yes, I imagine so. At the very least.”
She finally broke. Tears streamed down her face, ruining her perfect makeup. “It was Garrett’s idea!” she sobbed, her voice a torrent of angry, jealous confession. “All of it! He was obsessed with you from the moment you walked in. He found those tabloid articles from Glasgow, and after that he wouldn’t shut up about you. I just…I wanted you gone! I saw him on the balcony with you, and I just… I snapped! He told me he was just playing you, that it was all a game to get to your family’s money, but I knew he was falling for you!”
“My family’s money?” I asked, my blood running cold. “What are you talking about?”
“His backer!” she cried, a wild look in her eyes. “Someone from Scotland who was feeding him information about you! Garrett was always bragging about this powerful connection he had who was going to make him rich. His ‘cash cow.’” She let out a hysterical, watery laugh.
The room tilted. Every bit of air rushed from my lungs. It could only be one person. Only one person could be this determined to get me down for the count. “Stewart,” I breathed, the name bitter on my tongue. “Stewart Beauchamp.”
The puzzle pieces didn’t just click into place; they slammed together with the force of a car crash. The anonymous gifts.Garrett’s sudden, intense interest in me. His questions. It hadn’t just been about a workplace affair or a jealous rival. This was bigger. This was about Glasgow. It was about Stewart.
The fresh start I thought I’d found in New York was a lie. I hadn’t escaped the game at all. I had just walked onto a different, more dangerous part of the board.
CHAPTER THIRTY
SEAN
The sterile quietof my hotel suite felt a world away from the chaotic energy of the Hillsdale Foundation office. The heavy manila envelope containing Fury’s dossier, sat on the coffee table, a silent testament to the mystery we had just unveiled. But my attention wasn’t on the dossier. It was on Beth.
She was curled up on the large armchair near the window, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring out at the New York skyline but seeing none of it. Her body was trembling, not from cold, but from the aftershocks of Kyra’s confession. The name Stewart Beauchamp hung in the air between us, a toxic ghost that had just drifted across the Atlantic to haunt this room.
I walked over and kneeled in front of her, taking her cold hands in mine. “Beth,” I said softly. “Talk to me. Tell me everything.”
She finally looked at me, her blue eyes dark with a pain sodeep it made my own chest ache. “Stewart Beauchamp isn’t just some lord with a weak chin,” she began, her voice a raw whisper. “He’s the man my mother has been trying to force me to marry for the last three years.”
