Chapter 241
“I’m sorry!” Charla screamed, sobbing. “I lied! I did it! I’m sorry!”
Cailin looked down at the woman who had dismantled her life. She had expected to feel triumph. She had expected to feel something close to joy.
Instead, she just felt tired.
“Your apology is worthless,” Cailin said. “But I accept your defeat.”
She turned and walked away. She didn’t look back at the sobbing woman on the floor. She didn’t look at the cameras. She walked straight for the exit.
Hilliard caught up to her in the hallway. “Cailin!”
She kept walking. “Not now, Hilliard.”
He reached for her arm. “You did it. You destroyed them.”
“We destroyed them,” Cailin corrected, pulling free. “Ashley and the kids did the work. You just provided the venue.”
“Cailin, please.” Hilliard stepped in front of her. “Come back to the penthouse. Let’s talk about the kids. Let me meet them properly.”
“No,” Cailin said.
“Why?” His voice cracked with desperation. “Charla is gone. The lawsuit is dead. We can be a family.”
“Because you still don’t understand,” Cailin said, stopping to look at him directly. “You think removing Charla fixes the rot? Your father is still trying to sue me. Your grandfather tried to buy my children last night. The problem isn’t just Charla, Hilliard. It’s the entire ecosystem you live in.”
She pushed through the exit doors. The cool air hit her face.
“I’m going to my kids,” she said. “Don’t follow me.”
Hilliard stood in the empty corridor and watched her climb into Ashley’s van. He watched until it turned the corner and disappeared.
The victory turned to ash in his mouth. He had won the battle. He was losing the war.
He pulled out his phone.
“Gavin,” he said. “Initiate the takeover of English Holdings. Burn it to the ground. And get my lawyers on the phone — I’m going to war with my own family.”
The English mansion was a scene of devastation.
Servants were making off with the silver. Movers were hauling paintings out through the front door. The IRS had frozen every account within an hour of the press conference.
Charla sat in the middle of the living room floor, drinking straight from a bottle of vodka. Her bandage was unraveling at the wrist.
In the study, Gregg screamed into the phone at a lawyer who had evidently just dropped him as a client.
“It’s over,” Victoria wailed from the sofa. “We’re destitute. We’ll have to move to — to Connecticut!”
Charla didn’t hear them. She was replaying the last hour on a loop behind her eyes. The humiliation. The kneeling. Cailin’s red shoes. The lobby full of cameras.
And the hack. The hospital AV system. How had Cailin pulled that off?
Charla pulled a backup phone from her pocket. She had spent her last ten thousand dollars bribing a sleazy IT contractor at Mount Sinai to trace the source of the breach. His report had just arrived.