Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Machine"Bring me the tablet," Ethan commanded, looking down at me as I sipped steaming ginger tea by the roaring fireplace.
Helena was cornered near the mahogany bookshelf, her designer coat clutched around her like armor. The estate guards were locked outside the perimeter gates, unable to override the master system Ethan had quietly coded into the mansion's architecture months before the accident, anticipating exactly this kind of betrayal.
"You can't do this to your own mother," Helena hissed, though her voice lacked its usual steel. "I built this empire for you. I kept the board from tearing us apart while you were... while you were sleeping."
"Sleeping?" Ethan’s laugh was harsh and humorless. "You pumped me full of neuromuscular blockers disguised as vitamins for three hundred and twelve days. Every time I tried to blink, every time a muscle twitched, your private nurse adjusted the drip."
He tossed a sleek black tablet onto the coffee table in front of me. The screen lit up instantly, displaying a decrypted financial ledger and a security camera log from the night of his car crash.
I stared at the screen, my breath catching.
"Look at timestamp 02:42 AM," Ethan instructed me, his hand resting lightly on the back of my armchair—a silent, grounding anchor. "The night my brakes failed on the Kensington bypass."
On the screen, grainy CCTV footage showed Helena’s personal chauffeur tampering with the brake lines of Ethan’s sports car, while Helena stood under a streetlamp, checking her watch with chilling indifference.
"She didn't just want me out of the way," Ethan said, his eyes locking onto his mother's pale face. "She needed me gone before the quarterly audit, because she had already embezzled forty million pounds from the R&D fund to cover her private offshore accounts."
Helena slammed her hand against the bookshelf, knocking a heavy porcelain vase to the rug. "You ungrateful bastard! If I hadn't taken control, the board would have voted you out for your reckless investments!"
"And Clara?" Ethan’s voice dropped an octave, turning deadly quiet. "Why did you choose an impoverished nurse with a dying brother to be my bride?"
Helena sneered, regaining a fraction of her venom. "Because a desperate girl with a mountain of debt won't ask questions when her husband quietly passes away from 'natural complications' a month after the wedding. She would take the hush money and run."
Ethan looked down at me, his gaze softening just a fraction, filled with a sudden, fierce protectiveness. "She miscalculated. She didn't realize nurses know the difference between a life-saving drug and a slow poison."
May you like
"What do we do now?" I asked, my voice steadying as the warmth returned to my veins.
Ethan reached down, picking up the encrypted tablet and tapping the screen. "Now? We let the world know the master of Ashford Enterprises is wide awake. And his first official act as CEO is a family restructuring."
