Chapter 297:

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She paused, the pieces clicking into place. “If Allena stumbles on live TV, Vanguard’s stock tanks. The JHU deal falls apart. August can’t let that happen. He’s not going as her boyfriend. He’s going as her shield.”

“Her shield?” Jewel repeated, confused.

“He’s sending a message to the host, to the investors, to everyone,” Elisa said, her voice dropping to a cold whisper. “He’s telling them: ‘If you attack her, you attack me.’ He’s leveraging the entire Chambers empire to protect her lies.”

Jewel let out a shaky breath on the other end of the line. “My God. You’re right. This is Wall Street warfare.”

“Yes, it is,” Elisa said, a new, dangerous resolve hardening her features. “And if he wants to stand on that stage and be her shield, then I’ll just have to be the one to break it.”

“Elisa, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago,” Elisa said, her gaze fixed on the dark horizon. “I’m going to burn her down. Professionally. Publicly. And there won’t be a damn thing his money can do to stop it.”

She hung up the phone. She didn’t go back to the interview specs. Instead, she opened a different file, a secure, encrypted drive that Alastair had given her weeks ago.

𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴.𝘤𝘰𝘮

It contained the raw, unredacted data from Allena Sinclair’s time at Johns Hopkins. Every patient file. Every research note. Every discrepancy.

Elisa started to read. She wasn’t looking for gossip. She was looking for the fatal flaw. The lie that would unravel everything. She knew it was there. Allena was too arrogant, too lazy to cover her tracks perfectly.

And when she found it, she would use it. Not with anger. Not with tears. With the cold, hard precision of a surgeon excising a tumor.

Meanwhile, miles away in Manhattan, a black town car was parked across the street from The Willow Creek Center for Child Development.

August sat in the back seat, the engine idling. He stared at the building, a beautiful, ivy-covered brick structure that looked more like a country club than a medical facility. The lights in the windows were warm and inviting.

But August felt nothing but a cold, creeping dread.

He had read the dossier Simon provided. The center was exclusive, catering to the children of billionaires and diplomats. It specialized in “gifted and troubled” youth.

Why would Jewel Gilmore bring a child here? A child she claimed to have adopted from nothing? The fees alone would bankrupt a normal family. And the psychological evaluation, that was for children with severe behavioral issues, or for establishing a baseline for prodigies.

Kayden Gilmore was five years old. What kind of baseline did she need?

The suspicion that had been a seed in the school hallway had taken root, twisting around his spine. He had to get inside those walls. He had to see her file.

He picked up his phone and dialed Simon. “The meeting with the director. Make it happen. I don’t care what you have to promise. Chambers Foundation donations, gala sponsorships, whatever it takes. I want access to that child’s records.”

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