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Chapter 22: The Smear Campaign
Fecha de publicación:
2026-07-22 00:26:08
Último capítulo
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 23: Choosing Sides
Julien's POVIt took me four more days to find the last piece I needed.The trail led to a board member named Richard Voss, a quiet man in his sixties who rarely spoke up in meetings, the kind of person everyone forgets to watch closely because he never gives them a reason to. I found the connection almost by accident, cross-referencing a shell consulting firm listed as "corporate advisory" on the adjusted Caldwell reports against Voss's public financial disclosures.The consulting firm didn't exist. Not really. It was a shell registered under my mother's estate lawyer, funneling payments to Voss for "advisory services" that matched, almost to the dollar, the timing of every discrepancy I'd traced through the reports.I sat with that information for an entire evening before I let myself accept what it meant. My mother hadn't just planted doubt through gossip and boardroom threats. She'd paid a Hartford board member directly to falsify numbers and leak them to the press. That wasn't in
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 22: The Smear Campaign
Isabella's POVThe headline was already trending by the time I got to my office.*"Hartford Enterprises: Cracks in the Merger? Sources Suggest Financial Mismanagement Under New Leadership."*I read it twice, standing in the doorway with my coat still on, before I even set my bag down. My phone was already buzzing, message after message piling up. Naomi. My father. Two board members. A reporter I didn't recognize, asking for comment before nine in the morning."Have you seen it?" Naomi asked, appearing in my doorway before I'd even taken my coat off."I'm looking at it now." I sat down slowly, scanning the article. It cited "internal sources" claiming Hartford's post-merger earnings projections had been quietly revised downward, that the integration of Hamilton's operations was costing far more than announced, that shareholders should be concerned about who was really steering the company. No names. No solid evidence. Just enough doubt to make people nervous."It's not true," Naomi sai
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 21: Cracks in the Boardroom
Julien's POVI noticed it on a Tuesday, buried in a stack of reports I wasn't even supposed to see.Naomi had accidentally left a folder on the printer near my desk, the kind of mistake that happens when someone's carrying too much at once. I picked it up to bring it to her, and that's when the numbers caught my eye. Quarterly projections for the Caldwell account, the same account I'd spent weeks reconciling by hand.The totals didn't match.Not by much. A few hundred thousand here, a discrepancy in the shipping margins there. Small enough that most people skimming the report would never notice. But I'd spent three months buried in these exact numbers, invoice by invoice, and I knew them the way I used to know boardroom faces. These weren't my numbers."Naomi," I said, catching her in the hallway before she reached the elevator. "This report on the Caldwell account. Where did it come from?"She glanced at the folder, frowning slightly. "That should have come from finance. Why?""The n
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 20: The Long Game
Isabella's POVPeople kept asking me why I did it. Why I demanded the shares, the merger, his obedience under my name instead of just walking away with the money and never looking at him again. My lawyer asked. My father asked, gently, over dinner one night. Even Claire asked, though she already suspected the real answer before I said it out loud.I always gave the same reply. "Because he owes it to the company." Because Hartford Enterprises deserved fair compensation for six years of being treated like an afterthought. Because it was good business.None of that was a lie, exactly. But it wasn't the whole truth either.I sat in my office late one evening, long after everyone else had gone home, staring at the quarterly reports without really reading them. The truth, the part I hadn't said out loud to anyone, not even Claire, was simpler and harder to admit.I didn't do this for revenge. I did it because for six years, I had no control over anything. Not over Julien's attention. Not ov
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 19: Mrs. Hartford
Julien's POVThe board meeting ran long, longer than anyone expected, and by the time it ended, most of the room had already filed out, leaving papers scattered and coffee cups half full. I stayed behind, gathering the files I'd been asked to prepare, when I saw her still standing near the head of the table, reviewing notes on her tablet.I don't know why I said her name the way I did. Maybe six years of habit. Maybe just wanting, for one second, to talk to her the way I used to, before all the titles and papers and careful distance between us."Isabella," I said. "Do you have a minute?"She looked up, and something in her face closed immediately, like a door shutting quietly but firmly."It's Mrs. Hartford," she said. "To you."The words landed harder than I expected. Not because they were cruel — she didn't say them with any real anger — but because of how easily they came out. Like she'd rehearsed the correction long before I ever gave her a reason to use it."Of course," I said. "
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 18: Margaret's Gambit
Julien's POVI found out from my own lawyer, of all people. He called me at nine at night, his voice careful in a way that told me the news wasn't good."Three Hartford board members," he said. "Your mother met with them tonight. Offer two of them positions on a new subsidiary board if they vote to challenge Isabella's leadership. The third one turned her down and told Adrian Hartford everything."I sat there for a moment, phone pressed to my ear, feeling something cold settle in my chest. "She's trying to unravel the merger from inside Hartford's own board.""That's what it looks like."I thanked him, hung up, and drove straight to the Hamilton estate without stopping to think it through. Some part of me knew I should have called Isabella first, warned her before confronting my mother. But the anger moving through me needed somewhere to go immediately, and I wasn't in the mood to wait.My mother was in the study again, the same room, the same fireplace, like she never left it."You w
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 10: The Reckoning
Isabella's POV The Rolls hadn’t even come to a full stop before Genny was out of the car, heels clicking like gunfire on the gravel. I followed, legs numb, heart hammering so hard I could taste it. She didn’t head for the drawing room. She marched straight to the library, flung the double door
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 9: The Day Out
Isabella's POV Aunt Genevieve arrived like a hurricane in haute couture. The dove-gray Rolls purred up the drive at exactly ten. She stepped out in sunglasses big enough to have their own postcode, a cream silk jumpsuit, and heels that could double as weapons. One look at my borrowed hoodie and
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 7: Home at Last
Isabella's POV The car turned off the main road and the gates appeared, tall, black iron, the Hartford crest still gleaming in the dusk. I forgot how to breathe. Jayden slowed the Bentley, rolled the window down, and the scent hit me first: lilacs. Hundreds of them, thousands, spilling over the
Rejected, Now He Craves For Me Chapter 6: A trip down Memory lane
For some moments the room felt still. Isabella’s words hung in the air, trembling between disbelief and revelation. “I—I remember.” Jayden didn’t speak right away. He just watched her, watched the way her shoulders shook, the way her fingers pressed into the couch as though she needed something s
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