Chapter 16: The Video

Lola's Pov

"This woman is not the Nightwood heir. She is a fraud and I will prove it in front of everyone today.” He started.

I turned the volume up.

"The woman making this so called inheritance claim has no verified documentation. No council witness. No formal presentation. What she has is a birthmark she conveniently discovered after her life fell apart."

He leaned into the mic slightly. "I was married to Lola Nightwood for five years. I know exactly who she is and what she is capable of. This claim is a desperate move from a woman who lost everything and is now trying to use a founding bloodline name to claw her way back. The Nightwood seat deserves better than that. Crescent Ridge deserves better than that. I will be presenting my evidence before the full Council tomorrow and when I am done, every wolf in this territory will know the truth."

He stepped back from the podium.

The broadcaster came back on screen saying something about a scheduled Council emergency session but I had already stopped listening.

I called Arthur.

He picked up before the second ring.

"I just watched it," he said.

"How bad is it?"

"It's already been shared four hundred times in the last twenty minutes. Pack territories outside Crescent Ridge are picking it up."

I stood up from the desk and walked to the other side of the room. "He called me a fraud on a live broadcast. In front of the entire pack."

"I know what he did."

"So what do I do? Because right now the whole pack thinks I abandoned my child and faked a bloodline claim."

"You need to show up, Lola. That's the short answer."

"Show up how? I'm supposed to be hidden."

"I understand that. But the longer you stay out of sight, the more his version of events becomes the only version people are hearing. You're losing the narrative and you're losing it fast."

I stopped walking. "If I show up before the Council presentation, he uses it."

"If you don't show up at all, you lose the custody case by default. The hearing is in eight days. The judge needs to see your face before then or she will rule in Sofia's favor on the basis of absence alone."

"She has no legal claim to that child."

"She has photographs. She has a sworn statement. She has Tristain standing at a podium calling you unstable." Arthur paused. "Right now on paper, she has more than you do."

I sat on the edge of the couch and pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead. "What does Williams say?"

"Williams says Council first. I still say custody first. But Lola, we are running out of time to keep debating the order. You need to pick one and move."

"Get me the custody filing documents. Everything Sofia submitted. I want to read every word tonight."

"I'll send them within the hour."

"And Arthur. That speech Tristain just gave. Is there any legal exposure for him in it?"

"Potentially. If we can prove he knew about the Seal and made a deliberate false statement on a public platform, that's defamation with pack law implications. But we'd need to build that case separately."

"Start building it."

I ended the call.

I watched the clip one more time with the sound off. The way he stood at that podium like he owned every word coming out of his mouth. Like the last five years had been his plan from the start and everything was still going exactly the way he intended.

I turned the screen off and called Dre.

"Tell me the transfers are clean," I said the moment he picked up.

"Every single one." His voice was steady. "Last file cleared forty minutes ago. The original client frameworks, the pricing models, the founding contracts.

All of it is sitting in the new encrypted vault under your name only. Nobody touches it without your clearance."

"And the shared drive on Tristain's end?"

"Empty. He's going to open it and find folders with nothing inside them."

"Good." I moved to the window. "What about the IPO tracking?"

"Two anchor partners pulled preliminary interest this morning. Three more are sitting on the fence. The valuation has dropped eleven percent since yesterday."

"He doesn't know why yet?"

"He knows something is wrong. He doesn't know what's gone or where it went. His financial team has been trying to trace the transfers for six hours and they keep hitting dead ends."

"Keep monitoring it. Updates every three hours."

"Understood." Dre paused. "The moment he figures out it was you, he's going to come at you hard."

"Let him. There's nothing left to come at me with."

I ended the call and stood at the window for a long time.

Eleven percent and falling.

Every boardroom he had walked into under my name. Every partnership deal I had begged for at six in the morning while he was still in bed. Every investor who had taken the meeting because of what I had built.

All of it unraveling in real time because I had taken back the only thing that had ever made it worth anything.

My phone buzzed.

It was Williams.

"I watched the broadcast," he said.

"Everyone watched it."

"His evidence presentation tomorrow is a problem. He's going to try to get ahead of your Council date."

"Can he do that?"

"He can request an emergency session. Two of the seven seats are already bought. If he walks in there before you do, he controls the first impression."

I turned away from the window. "So we move faster."

"I've already contacted the verification team. They can authenticate the Seal documentation by tomorrow evening if you bring everything in person."

"Tomorrow evening."

"That's the window, Lola. If you miss it, he presents first and you spend the next two weeks fighting his version of events instead of building your own."

"I'll be there."

"I'll send a car."

"I don't need your car, Williams."

"It's not about what you need. It's about not being seen arriving alone. We are under contract. Act like it."

I didn't argue. "Fine. Send the car."

He ended the call without saying goodbye. I had noticed he never did that. No closing pleasantries, just the information and then silence.

I went back to the desk and pulled up Arthur's email. Sofia's custody filing was forty three pages. I made a cup of tea I didn't drink and started from the first page.

My phone lit up on the desk.

A notification. Pack community board, someone had tagged me in a post.

I opened it without thinking.

I watched three seconds of it and put the phone face down on the desk.

I sat there with my hands flat on the table and my eyes on the wall in front of me.

There are things that hit you in a way that no amount of preparation helps with. You can know something is coming. You can brace for it, you can tell yourself you are ready.

And then you see it and you realize you were never ready at all.

I picked the phone back up slowly and looked at the notification count.

Forty thousand views and still climbing.