---- Chapter 8 Desmond Day POV: The call came at 6 a.m. | was in Aurora' s penthouse apartment, the morning light streaming through the floor-to- ceiling windows, casting long shadows across the silk sheets. It was my CFO, Richard, and he sounded like he was about to have a heart attack. "Desmond... the audit. It failed. They' re killing the IPO." | sat bolt upright, the last vestiges of sleep vanishing in a rush of cold adrenaline. "What? That' s impossible. We were perfect. We scrubbed every number, every projection. | personally oversaw every line item for the last three months." "| know," Richard stammered, his voice trembling. "But this wasn' t a normal audit. The lead auditor... she was a shark. She dug into things we didn' t even know existed. Third-party vendor contracts from five years ago, employee expense reports from our first year of operation... It was a forensic dissection, not an audit." A cold dread began to seep into my bones. This wasn' t protocol. This was personal. "On top of that," Richard continued, his voice dropping to a ---- near-whisper, "someone on the inside... they found evidence of early-stage stock manipulation. The way we vested shares for the initial angel investors. It' s a gray area, but this auditor is painting it pitch black. The SEC has been notified." | hung up the phone, my hand shaking. My ten-year dream, my entire life' s work, was unraveling in the space of a single phone call. Aurora stirred beside me, stretching languidly. "What is it, darling? You look like you' ve seen a ghost." | told her. Her face, usually so composed, paled "My father," she said immediately, reaching for her phone. "He can fix this. He knows people at the SEC." | watched as she made the call, my last hope resting on the power of the Quinn family name. But as she spoke, her expression shifted from confident to confused, then to frustrated. "What do you mean, 'stay out of it' ?" she snapped into the phone. "Dad, this is Desmond' s entire future! Our future!" She listened for another moment, then her face went slack with disbelief. She hung up without saying goodbye. "He said no," she whispered, staring at the phone as if it had betrayed her. "He said this is out of his hands. That there are ... forces at play here we don' t want to cross." ---- Forces at play. The phrase echoed in my mind, ominous and terrifying. "It doesn' t matter," Aurora said, her composure returning, her voice hardening with pragmatism. "We' Il hire a new audit firm. A better one. We' Il pay them whatever it takes to rush a new report." It was a good plan. A lifeline. | spent the rest of the day on the phone, calling the heads of every top-tier accounting firm in the country. The answer was always the same. A polite, but firm, no. "We appreciate the offer, Mr. Day, but we don' t have the bandwidth for a project of this scale on such short notice." "Our compliance department has flagged a potential conflict of interest." "We are unable to proceed at this time." They were all excuses. | was being blackballed. Someone, somewhere, was systematically closing every door, cutting off every escape route. | demanded my assistant get me the name of the lead auditor from the firm that had just torpedoed my life. The shark who had started all of this. He emailed me the file. | opened it, and a name stared back at me from the screen. ---- Evelena Lindsey. The name felt... familiar. | couldn' t place it. Lindsey. It was a common enough name. It was probably just a coincidence, a ghost of a memory from some long-forgotten business meeting. And then, like a lightning strike, it hit me. Ariel. Ariel' s aunt. The one in New York. The cutthroat corporate lawyer she hadn' t spoken to in years. Ariel. | hadn' t thought about her in weeks, not since |' d left her in that hospital bed. In the chaos of the kidnapping aftermath and the frantic final push for the IPO, she had simply... slipped my mind. A sense of panic, colder and more profound than the fear for my company, seized me. Where was she? Was she okay? | bolted out of my office, ignoring the worried looks from my staff. | drove to the hospital where | had left her, my heart hammering against my ribs. The room was empty. A new patient was sleeping in the bed. | raced to the nurses' station. "Ariel Payne," | said, my voice breathless. "The patient who was in room 402. Where is she?" ---- The nurse checked her computer. "She was discharged weeks ago, sir." Discharged? Her injuries... she couldn' t have been well enough to leave. A terrible, sickening thought began to form in my mind. | drove like a madman back to our house, my hands clenched on the steering wheel. She had to be there. She had nowhere else to go.