The Knight's Group Bleeding

Chapter 11

Caleb’s POV

The silence in my office used to feel like power. Now, it felt like the air was being sucked out of the room by a vacuum.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Knight Group’s headquarters, looking out at the city that was supposed to be mine. For the first time in my life, I felt the height of the building not as an achievement, but as a precipice.

My phone had been ringing for three hours. I hadn't answered it. I couldn't. Every call was a new leak, a new disaster, a new drop in a bucket that had suddenly developed a thousand holes.

"Sir?"

I didn't turn around. I knew it was Gideon, my head of security and de facto assistant since my actual secretary had resigned two hours ago via a three-sentence email.

"Give it to me," I rasped.

"The Chief Technical Officer just walked," Miller said, his voice flat.

"He’s taking the entire architecture team with him. They’ve signed non-compete waivers, but they don't care. They claim the company’s ‘ethical standing’ is compromised. They’re moving to a boutique firm in London. One with heavy Sterling backing."

I slammed my fist against the glass. The vibration rattled my teeth. "Ethical standing? I’ve been their god for three years! I made them millionaires!"

"They aren't looking for money anymore, Caleb," Miller said, dropping the professional title. It was a subtle sign of the crumbling hierarchy.

"They’re looking for a lifeboat. The Sterling Group didn't just buy our debt; they’ve blacklisted anyone associated with us. If they stay here, their careers are dead. They’re choosing survival over loyalty."

"Loyalty is a fairy tale," I hissed, turning to face him. My eyes were sunken, the skin beneath them bruised with exhaustion. "What about the Phoenix Project? Did the secondary bid go through?"

Miller looked at his shoes. "The city council rejected it. They cited instability in leadership. Within ten minutes of the rejection, the Sterling Group announced they’ve acquired the rights to the waterfront property we were using as collateral. We’re being squeezed, Caleb. We’re being bled dry by a ghost."

Evelyn. She was doing this. The woman who used to bring me coffee and ask me about my day was currently dismantling my life with the clinical precision of a surgeon.

"Leave me," I commanded.

As Miller exited, the door felt heavier than usual. I sat at my desk, a slab of obsidian that now felt like a tombstone. I reached for a glass of scotch, but the bottle was empty.

Usually, the bottle was never empty. Evelyn saw to that. She saw to everything.

I looked around the room. The dust on the bookshelves. The pile of mail that hadn't been sorted in days. The flickering light in the corner that no one had called maintenance to fix.

For three years, I had believed I was a genius of management. I thought the Knight Group ran like a Swiss watch because of my brilliance. But as I sat in the gathering gloom, a terrifying thought began to take hold:

I hadn't been managing a company. I had been living in a curated reality.

Evelyn hadn't just been a wife; she had been the invisible infrastructure of my existence. She was the one who handled the personal assistants, the household staff, the bills that I never even saw.

She was the one who smoothed over the ruffled feathers of my executives behind the scenes. She was the silence that allowed me to be loud.

And now that the silence was gone, the noise was deafening.

The drive back to the villa was a nightmare of traffic and rain. I pulled into the driveway, expecting the gates to open automatically. They didn't.

I sat there, honking the horn for five minutes until a frantic-looking security guard I didn't recognize ran out into the rain to manually override the system.

"Where is Stevens?" I demanded as I rolled down the window. Stevens had been my head of house for five years.

"He quit, Mr. Knight," the guard shouted over the wind. "Along with the kitchen staff and the housekeepers. They said their contracts were held by a subsidiary of Sterling Global.”

The word felt like a physical chill.

I drove up to the house. The lights were blazing in every window, but not in a welcoming way. It looked like a building on fire.

As I stepped through the front door, I was hit by a wall of high-pitched laughter and the thumping bass of house music.

The foyer, usually a place of quiet marble and the scent of fresh lilies, was a disaster. There were empty champagne bottles on the antique console tables.

A group of people I didn't recognize, skinny men in silk shirts and women with hungry eyes were lounging on the velvet sofas, spilling drinks on the rugs Evelyn had spent months sourcing from Turkey.

"Caleb! Darling! You're home!"

Seraphina drifted toward me, looking like a neon light in a funeral home. She was wearing a dress that cost more than a midsize sedan, and her face was flushed with wine and triumph.

"What is this?" I asked, my voice a low growl.

"It’s a launch party!" she squealed, wrapping her arms around my neck. Her perfume was thick, cloying, and entirely wrong. "I’m announcing my new fashion line. All the editors are here, Caleb! We’re going to be the most talked-about couple in the city!"

I pulled her arms off me. "The editors? Seraphina, the company is under a hostile takeover. I’m being sued into the ground, and you’re throwing a party?"

She pouted, her lower lip trembling with practiced perfection. "Oh, don't be such a bore. It’s exactly what we need! A show of strength! If we look like we’re winning, the investors will come back."

She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the dining room. "And wait until you see the plans! I’ve hired Pierre to do the renovations. We’re going to gut this whole floor. I want floor-to-ceiling gold leaf in the dining room and a glass staircase. It’s only going to be $2 million, Caleb. A drop in the bucket for a man like you!"

I stopped dead in my tracks.

I looked at the dining table.

This was the table where I had sat and watched Evelyn eat her silent meals. This was the table where she had placed the rosemary lamb.

Now, it was covered in discarded hors d'oeuvres and ash from cigarettes that someone had put out on the wood.

"Two million dollars," I repeated.

"At least!" Seraphina laughed, oblivious to the storm brewing in my eyes. "The kitchen is so... depressing. It looks like a servant’s quarters. I want it gone. We’ll put in a professional sushi bar instead."

I looked at her. I really looked at her. I saw the filler in her lips, the calculation in her eyes, the sheer, staggering emptiness of her soul.

For three years, I had told myself that Seraphina was the prize. She was the woman who fit the image of a billionaire’s wife. She was loud, she was beautiful, she was visible.

And for three years, I had ignored the woman who actually kept the roof over my head.

"Seraphina," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "Where is the mail?"

She blinked. "The what?"

"The mail. The bills. The property tax notice. The utility statements. The payroll for the guards."

She waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, I don't know. Some man in a suit came by and took a bunch of folders. He said he was from Management. I assumed you had it handled."

My heart stopped. "A man in a suit? What did he look like?"

"Tall. Scary. He had a Sterling pin on his lapel," she said, already turning back to her friends. "Anyway, about the gold leaf decorations…."

I grabbed her arm, harder than I intended. "He took the records? All of them?"

"Ow! Caleb, you’re hurting me!" she hissed, pulling away. "It was just paper! Stop being so dramatic. Now, come and say hello to the editor of Vogue. I told her you’d sponsor the gala next month."

I didn't answer. I walked past her, headed for the kitchen.

The room was a mess. There were dirty dishes piled in the sink, dishes that had never stayed there for more than ten minutes when Evelyn was here. The trash was overflowing. The floor was sticky.

I opened the pantry. It was empty. Not just low on food, empty!

I realized with a jolt of pure, unadulterated panic that I didn't know how to order groceries. I didn't know the password to the household accounts. I didn't know who our electricity provider was.

I didn't even know how to turn off the music that was currently vibrating the walls.

Evelyn hadn't just left. She had taken the manual for my life with her.

I walked back into the living room. The party was in full swing. Seraphina was standing on a coffee table, holding a glass of champagne, toasted by a crowd of parasites who were currently drinking the last of my liquid assets.

"To the Knight Empire!" she shouted.

"To the Empire!" they echoed.

And I was here, in a house full of strangers, watching a woman I didn't love spend money I didn't have, while the empire I built was being eaten by the woman I had betrayed.

The irony was a physical weight.

I had wanted a life that looked like a magazine cover. I had wanted a woman who was a trophy. I had wanted to be the man who had everything.

And in my pursuit of the image, I had destroyed the reality.

I walked to the front door, ignored the music, ignored Seraphina’s calls, and stepped out into the rain.

I stood there, letting the water soak through my expensive suit, looking up at the dark windows of the master bedroom.

“Hey baby, I was calling you!” Seraphina whined

I wasn't in the mood for her whining.

"Oh, I almost forgot, Caleb, I saw you obsessing over that crumpled sonogram, so I sent a copy to the Sterling Group’s legal team to prove Evelyn was unstable but they just messaged back saying the Chairperson wants to thank you for finally providing the DNA evidence they need to strip the black sheep off, whatever they mean by that. “ She said and rolled her eyes.

All the blood drained out of my ears and I immediately touched my pocket to find it empty.

She didn't just….what?!