---- Chapter 8 The detailed report landed on Ignatz's desk with a heavy thud. It was a thick file, filled with documents and photographs. It was the story of my life, the one | had hidden from him. & It started with the wedding. The smiling, happy couple who had walked me down the aisle? They were actors, hired for the day. The report included their headshots and résumés. The next page was a formal confirmation from Foley Tech's legal department. Arlington Foley had one child, a daughter, Genevieve, who had been kept out of the public eye for her own protection, educated abroad under a different surname. There was a photo of me as a teenager in a school uniform, my arm linked through my father's, both of us beaming. The assistant's voice was flat, emotionless. "Sir, to marry you, Ms. Foley relinquished her claim to the Foley fortune, an inheritance estimated at over twenty billion dollars." 2 Ignatz's hands started to shake. The report detailed the fight | had with my father, how | had run away with nothing but the clothes on my back. It included grainy security footage of me working behind the counter of a dingy coffee shop, my face tired but determined. It described how my father had me brought home after | ---- accepted Ignatz's proposal and locked me in my room. How | had gone on a hunger strike to protest. How | had knelt on the cold marble floor of the family mansion for three days and three nights until my father, his heart broken, finally relented. His only condition was that | use a different name and never reveal my identity. For my own protection, he had said. To see if Ignatz's love was real. Ignatz's trembling fingers flipped to our wedding photo. He remembered being annoyed that my "parents" were so cold and distant. He remembered thinking they were just simple, unimpressive people. The report concluded that my father had done a full background check on him and found him "lacking in character and unworthy" of his daughter. But | had threatened to take my own life if he didn't let me marry the man | loved. So he had hired the actors. Ignatz slammed the file shut. His chest was heaving. The air in his luxurious office felt thin, unbreathable. She gave up everything for me. A fortune, a family, her own name. And what had | done? His mind flashed back through the years. My clumsy attempts at cooking. | had laughed at her, called her a spoiled princess who couldn't even make toast. Now he realized, with a sickening lurch in his gut, that the daughter of a billionaire had probably never set foot in a kitchen. She had been learning for him. ---- He remembered me telling him | was pregnant, the joy in my eyes quickly replaced by a flicker of fear. She had been about to tell him everything then. To finally trust him with her true self. And he had shut her down. He remembered forcing her to go to the clinic. He remembered his mother's call from the warehouse. He had let it happen. He had sacrificed his own child, a child born of a love so powerful it had defied a dynasty, all for a lying, manipulative actress and a career opportunity. (& He let out a guttural roar of despair and swept everything off his desk. Glass shattered. He punched the wall, a sharp pain shooting up his arm, but it was nothing compared to the agony ripping through his soul. The next few weeks were a blur of crisis meetings. Foley Tech, led by the vengeful Arlington and the ruthlessly efficient Kaleb, had launched an all-out assault on his company. Stocks plummeted. Partners pulled out. Banks called in their loans. He barely slept, barely ate. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw my face. He somehow managed to stabilize the company, but when he finally went home to our empty apartment, he found it stripped bare. All my things were gone. The only trace of me left was the nursery. He pushed open the door. The crib | had been so excited to assemble was still in its box. The tiny clothes | had bought ---- were still in their bags. & He sank to the floor, the sobs tearing from his throat, raw and painful. He was a monster. He slapped himself, once, twice, hard across the face. He deserved so much worse. + He fumbled for his phone, his fingers shaking so badly he could barely dial my number. It went straight to a busy signal. You have been blocked. He tried again and again, a desperate, repetitive motion, until the screen went black, the battery dead. A frantic pounding on the front door startled him. Genevieve. His heart leaped. She came back. She came back for me. He scrambled to his feet and ran to the door, yanking it open. It wasn't me. It was Everleigh. Her makeup was smeared, her eyes red and swollen. She was being hounded by a pack of reporters held back by the building's security. "Iggy, please," she cried, trying to push past him. "You have to help me! That video isn't real, | was framed!" He looked at her, at the woman he had destroyed his life for, and felt nothing but cold, empty disgust. "Get out," he said, his voice flat. ---- "No, let me in!" she shrieked, clawing at his shirt. He shoved her back. "Go find the real father of your bastard child." She stumbled backward, her heel catching on the top step. She tumbled down the short flight of stairs, landing in a heap on the sidewalk. The reporters surged forward, their cameras flashing like a violent storm A moment later, a well-dressed, middle-aged woman burst through the crowd and grabbed a fistful of Everleigh's hair. "You little homewrecker!" she screamed. It was the wife of the man from the hotel bar video. She slapped Everleigh across the face. Everleigh, all pretense of fragility gone, shrieked and fought back, her nails scratching the woman's face. They rolled on the ground, a tangle of designer clothes and furious limbs. "My baby!" Everleigh suddenly screamed, clutching her stomach. "You're hurting my baby!" The woman just laughed, a cruel, ugly sound, and kicked her hard in the stomach. Everleigh's scream died in her throat. Her eyes went wide with shock and pain. A dark stain of blood spread across the light fabric of her dress. Then she went limp. ---- The next day, every news outlet ran the photos. The fallen star, bleeding on the sidewalk. All her remaining endorsements were cancelled. Her career was over. The former A-list celebrity was now a national punchline, a cautionary tale of greed and deceit.