Ethan's POV
James walked into his office without knocking.
That was the first sign something was wrong. James always knocked. James always respected boundaries. James was the one person in Ethan's world who maintained some kind of distance, some kind of professionalism.
When James didn't knock, it meant the world was ending.
"We have a problem," James said. He closed the door and sat down without waiting to be asked.
Ethan looked up from his desk. He'd been staring at the same email for ten minutes without reading it. His mind kept drifting upstairs. To Lily. To Sophie. To the fact that they were sleeping under his roof and he still didn't know if Lily would ever trust him.
"What kind of problem."
"The financial kind. The serious kind."
James pulled out a folder. His face was grim in a way that made Ethan's stomach drop. He'd worked with James for nearly twenty years. He knew what that expression meant.
"The auditors found irregularities," James said. "Millions of dollars. Transferred to offshore accounts over the past five years."
Ethan went very still.
"How many millions."
"At least forty. Probably more. The accounts are hard to trace because they're designed to hide. But there's a pattern. Money moving consistently from expansion budgets to accounts that don't exist on our official records."
Forty million dollars. Gone. Missing. Stolen.
Ethan's first thought wasn't about the money. It was about who had access to those accounts. Who had the technical knowledge to set them up. Who had been in enough positions of power to move money without raising immediate red flags.
"Marcus," he said.
James nodded slightly. "It looks like it. But I need you to understand what this means, Ethan. If Marcus has been stealing from the company, and if those accounts get traced back to you, the board will have questions. The media will destroy you."
The media. They already had Ethan's face splashed across every news outlet. They already had the story about the secret daughter and the hidden woman. Adding financial fraud to that narrative would be catastrophic.
Ethan stood and walked to the window. The city glittered below him. His city. His empire. Built on intelligence and ruthlessness and the kind of focus that made people afraid of him.
And now it was crumbling.
"How did this happen," he asked quietly. "How did Marcus move forty million dollars without me noticing."
"He controlled the audit process. He had access to the quarterly reports. He made sure the missing money was spread across different departments and different quarters so it wouldn't show up as one obvious gap. It was smart. It was careful. It was planned."
Marcus had been his friend. His business partner. The person he'd trusted to help build this empire from nothing.
And Marcus had been stealing from him the entire time.
Ethan thought about Lily upstairs. She'd warned him about this. Not specifically. But she'd said he was the kind of person who acquired things instead of loving them. Who possessed instead of cherished.
What had he been doing to the company. What had he been building. And now, when it mattered most, when he finally had something worth protecting besides money and power, the money and power were being taken away.
"We need to be careful how we handle this," James continued. "If we go to the board without solid evidence, Marcus will deny everything. He'll claim the accounts are legitimate. He'll use his position to convince them that you're lying or mistaken. The board is already shaky after the Lily situation. They're looking for reasons to question your leadership."
"Then find proof," Ethan said. "Everything. Every transaction. Every account. Every connection between Marcus and these offshore accounts. I want it all documented before we move."
"That's going to take time. Time we might not have if word leaks."
"Then we move fast. But we move right. I'm not going to accuse Marcus without evidence that can hold up in court and in the press."
James stood. He looked tired. Like he'd been carrying this weight alone since he discovered it.
"I'll get you what you need," James said. "But Ethan, you need to understand something. Even if we prove Marcus is guilty, the damage is already done. The board is going to lose confidence. The shareholders are going to panic. The company's reputation is going to take a hit."
"How much of a hit."
"I don't know yet. It depends on how the media spins it. It depends on how fast we can control the narrative."
James left before Ethan could say anything else.
Ethan stood alone in his office with the weight of everything pressing down on him. He'd built Blackwell Industries from his father's failing tech company. He'd taken something broken and made it powerful. He'd created something that mattered.
And now someone he'd trusted was trying to destroy it.
His phone buzzed.
Ethan looked at the screen and felt his blood run cold.
The notification was from a news alert he'd set up. TMZ. The headline was blinking.
"BLACKWELL INDUSTRIES UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR FRAUD. CEO QUESTIONED ABOUT MISSING FUNDS."
It was already public. Already spreading. The story was already live.
Ethan clicked through to the article. Someone from inside the company had leaked information. Not the full evidence. Not enough to prove anything. But enough to suggest that something was very wrong. Enough to imply that Ethan might be involved.
The comments were already rolling in. Speculation. Accusations. People he'd known for years pretending they'd always suspected something was off.
His phone started ringing. Board members. Lawyers. People wanting to know what was happening. People wanting to know if their CEO was a criminal.
He didn't answer any of them.
Instead, he stood at his window and looked out at the city. At the empire he'd built. At the life he was creating with Lily and Sophie.
Everything was about to implode.
Marcus had set him up perfectly. He'd stolen the money and made it look like it was coming from Ethan's accounts. He'd probably planned this the entire time. He'd probably been waiting for the right moment when Ethan was distracted.
And the right moment had arrived the second Lily and Sophie moved into the penthouse.
Ethan had been distracted. He'd been thinking about his daughter learning to read. He'd been thinking about Lily and whether he could make her trust him. He'd been thinking about something besides the company for the first time in fifteen years.
And Marcus had taken that moment and tried to destroy him with it.
His phone buzzed again. Another headline. Another news outlet picking up the story.
"QUESTIONS SURROUND BLACKWELL'S LEADERSHIP AS FINANCIAL DISCREPANCIES EMERGE."
Ethan watched the notifications pile up. Each one a new problem. Each one a new crisis. Each one something that needed his immediate attention.
But all he could think about was Lily. About Sophie sleeping upstairs. About whether they would still be here if the story got worse. About whether Lily would leave him now that his world was falling apart.
About whether he'd lose them both in the same moment he lost the company.
His hand was shaking when he turned away from the window.
He had to fix this. Had to find proof. Had to protect what he'd built. But more than that, he had to protect the two people upstairs who'd just started to trust him.
He picked up his phone and called James back.
"Get me everything on Marcus," he said. "And James, do it quietly. If word gets out that we're investigating him, he'll disappear. And I can't let him disappear before I know the full extent of what he's done."
"I'm already on it," James said. "Ethan, we're going to fix this."
But even as James said the words, Ethan wasn't sure they were true.
He'd spent his whole life thinking he could control everything. Control the market. Control his competitors. Control people.
But he couldn't control Marcus. And he couldn't control the media. And he couldn't control what was going to happen to his company.
The only thing he could control was how he responded.
And right now, the only response that mattered was protecting his daughter and the woman who'd given her to him.
Everything else could burn.