The words "corporate fraud" sat in Sophia's mind like a stone in still water, creating ripples that spread outward in all directions. She read Marcus's email three more times, each reading making her feel sicker than the last. By four in the morning, she'd pulled up every public filing Blake Ventures had made for the past two years, looking for evidence of what Marcus was describing.
She found it.
Blake Ventures had won seventeen major acquisitions in the past eighteen months. Each acquisition had been valued above market rate. Each one had defeated competitors who'd placed more reasonable bids. Each one had been funded through shell corporations and complex financial arrangements that, when traced carefully, led back to Blake family money.
The pattern wasn't immediately obvious. It required the kind of obsessive attention to detail that Marcus had developed, the kind of focus that came from years in corporate finance. But once you saw it, you couldn't unsee it.
If Ethan was committing fraud, it meant everything between them was compromised. The competition, the tracking, the knowledge he had about her movements and her plans. All of it could have been built on illegal advantage. All of it could be part of something larger and more sinister than she'd imagined.
She got out of bed without waking him, though the irony of sneaking away from someone who'd been tracking her for years wasn't lost on her. She moved through the penthouse like a ghost, settling into her office with her laptop and a bottle of water she didn't drink.
By six in the morning, she had a preliminary assessment: Blake Ventures' financial irregularities could be explained by aggressive business tactics and inflated valuations, but they weren't necessarily proof of fraud. A good lawyer could argue it was just strategic pricing. A better lawyer could argue it was standard practice in venture capitalism.
But if someone decided to look closely, if someone decided to investigate, the irregularities would be the kind of thing that would get noticed. The kind of thing that would lead to audits and SEC investigations and potential charges.
She made a decision that would define the next chapter of her life, though she didn't know it yet. She called Marcus at home, knowing he'd still be awake. He was always awake at six in the morning.
"I need you to be very careful with what you've found," she said without preamble.
"I know. I haven't told anyone but you. I wasn't even going to mention it, but you asked me to flag anything unusual about Blake Ventures' financial patterns, and this is unusual."
"Don't mention it to anyone else. Not to our legal team, not to our board members, not to anyone. If you need to document it, put it on an encrypted drive. But keep this quiet."
"Sophia, if he's committing fraud—"
"I know. But it's not our place to report it. If it's real, someone else will find it eventually."
She was lying to herself, and she knew it. She was protecting Ethan before she even understood why. She was choosing him over ethics, over doing the right thing, over turning in a man who might be committing crimes.
That should have been her first clue that her feelings for him had already moved beyond rational boundaries.
Ethan emerged from the bedroom at seven o'clock. She was still at her desk, surrounded by data and charts and financial documents. He looked at the screen, and she watched his face carefully for any sign that he understood what she'd found.
She found nothing. Either he was a brilliant actor, or he genuinely didn't know that she'd uncovered the fraud. Or it wasn't fraud at all, just aggressive business practice.
"You've been awake all night," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Couldn't sleep."
"Because of what I told you?"
"Because of a lot of things." She closed her laptop carefully. "I need you to tell me something, and I need you to be completely honest. Have you ever bent any rules in your business dealings?"
He was quiet for a long moment. "Yes."
Her heart sank.
"Every successful businessman has bent a rule or two," he continued. "We all exist in that gray space between what's explicitly legal and what's explicitly unethical. You know that. You've probably bent rules yourself."
"I'm not asking about rules. I'm asking about laws."
"No. I've never broken a law, though I've definitely tested the boundaries of some regulations." He sat down across from her. "What did you find?"
She debated how much to tell him. She debated lying. But she'd asked him for honesty, so she gave it. "Your company has been winning acquisitions at inflated valuations for the past eighteen months. The pattern suggests you're using excess capital to outbid other investors, creating artificial inflation in the acquisition market."
"That's not illegal."
"No. But it's not ethical."
"It's competitive."
"It's predatory."
Ethan didn't argue. "I know. My father is the one pushing for it. He thinks we should be dominating every sector we enter, and he's willing to use capital leverage to make that happen."
"Why?"
"Because he's from a generation that thinks strength is the only thing that matters. Because he can't understand my generation's obsession with ethics and sustainability. Because he sees every business opportunity as a chance to prove the Blake name still means something in this city." He leaned forward. "But I stopped the Techvision bid because I didn't want to keep doing that. I didn't want to keep being that person."
"By stopping one bid, you don't undo the other seventeen acquisitions."
"I know."
"And if someone investigates—"
"They'll find nothing illegal. Unethical maybe, but not illegal. My lawyers have assured me of that."
Sophia felt the weight of the secret settle on her shoulders. She knew about the irregular business practices. She knew they bordered on predatory. And she knew that revealing them would destroy Ethan's company and likely result in investigations into his entire family.
She also knew that by not revealing them, she was complicit.
"I'm going to need you to fix this," she said. "I'm going to need you to restructure your company's acquisition strategy, pull back from aggressive bidding practices, and start operating with actual ethics."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I'll have to report it."
"Will you?"
The answer hung between them, and Sophia realized they both already knew it. She wouldn't report it. She'd protect him because she was starting to care about him, and caring about someone meant protecting them sometimes, even from the consequences of their own choices.
"I don't know," she said, which was the only honest answer she could give.
That afternoon, she received a message from an unknown number. It was a photo of her leaving Ethan's penthouse this morning, timestamped and dated. Below the photo was a single line: "He's using you. Don't say we didn't warn you."
She showed the photo to Ethan that evening. His reaction was immediate and violent. He took her phone and spent twenty minutes trying to trace where the message came from. It was a burner phone, untraceable. But the message was clear: someone knew they were living together, someone knew about Ethan's business practices, and someone wanted her to know that she was being manipulated.
"It could be Victoria," Ethan suggested, though they both knew Victoria wasn't tech-savvy enough to pull off something like this.
"It could be anyone who knows about your company's acquisition strategy," Sophia countered. "Someone on your team, someone from the companies you've outbid, someone from—"
She stopped because she'd just realized something that made her blood run cold. "Or it could be your father."
Ethan's face went white. "What?"
"You said your father is the one pushing for aggressive acquisition strategies. What if he's testing me? What if he wanted to see if you'd choose your company and your family over protecting me?"
"My father wouldn't—"
"Wouldn't what? Know about the tracking? Know about the fraud? Know exactly how to manipulate you?"
Ethan pulled out his phone and called his father. The conversation was brief and explosive. By the time he hung up, Ethan looked like someone had just pulled the ground out from under him.
"It wasn't him," Ethan said quietly. "But he wouldn't tell me who sent the message. He just said I should be careful about what I tell you about company business. He said you were a competitor first, and that marriage doesn't change fundamental loyalties."
Sophia felt the last piece of trust she'd been building with Ethan shatter like glass. Because if his father knew about the message and wouldn't tell him who sent it, that meant someone in Ethan's own family was actively working against them.
That meant the threat wasn't external. It was coming from inside his family.
And worst of all, it meant that Ethan's father was right. In a battle between her company and her husband, Sophia still didn't know which one she'd choose. That uncertainty, that hesitation, was going to destroy everything.