Chapter 12 - The Visitor at the GateTwo weeks later, my chauffeur drove me up the winding, tree-lined driveway of the Maine estate. The property was breathtaking—a majestic stone-and-glass fortress overlooking crashing Atlantic waves. It was peaceful, isolated, and now entirely mine.
As the car came to a halt near the grand double doors, a figure stepped out from the shadows of the wraparound porch. It was a woman I hadn't seen in person since the day of the boardroom coup, though her face had plastered legal briefs for months.
Chloe.
She looked a shadow of her former self. Her designer clothes were gone, replaced by a cheap, faded windbreaker and unwashed hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. Prison work-release programs had granted her a brief weekend pass, and she had somehow tracked me down across state lines.
"Elena," she choked out, her voice raspy and desperate as she stumbled toward my car. My private security guards immediately stepped forward, crossing their arms, but I raised a hand to signal them to stand down.
I stepped out of the vehicle, the coastal wind catching my cashmere coat. "Chloe. You're a long way from downtown Manhattan."
"They ruined my life," she sobbed, falling to her knees on the gravel driveway. "Julian lied to me from day one. He told me you were separated, that you were just a paid fixture in his life! And when the feds came, he threw all the wire fraud charges onto my head. I’m serving three years while he rots, and he doesn't even care!"
I looked down at her with absolute detachment. "You chose to play a high-stakes game with a cheater, Chloe. You thought you were climbing the ladder, but you were just holding his coat while he pushed you off the cliff."
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"I have something," she whispered, pulling a crumpled, water-damaged flash drive from her pocket and holding it up like a holy relic. "Julian’s personal hard drive. I downloaded it the night before the FBI raided his apartment. It has every single hidden backup, every illegal offshore contact, and... proof that he was planning to frame you for corporate espionage if you ever tried to divorce him."
I stared at the flash drive. The plot thickened even further. Julian hadn't just been unfaithful; he had been actively preparing a legal trap to ruin me long before I struck first.
