The Face-Slap

Isabelle’s POV

The silence in the boardroom was absolute.

Alexander remained frozen, gripping the back of his leather chair so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. His mouth opened, but no words came out. Beside him, Caleb looked between me and the Sinclair brothers, his face covered in cold sweat.

"Miss Sinclair?" Alexander finally managed, his voice rough and unsteady. "What... what kind of game is this? Spencer, this woman is Isabelle. She was an orphan with ordinary parents. She lived in my house for seven years!"

Spencer didn't even blink. He calmly reached for his water glass.

"The only orphan here is your common sense, Hayes," he replied, his tone chillingly smooth. "My sister chose to leave our family seven years ago to play house with an ungrateful parasite. But being married to you didn't erase her Sinclair blood."

"Sister?" Alexander repeated, stumbling backward. His eyes darted toward Lyon.

Lyon leaned back, a cold, knowing smile on his face. "Did you really think an ordinary woman could design four award-winning luxury hotels from scratch, keep your failing company afloat, and never ask for a share of the profits? You didn't marry some stray, Alexander. You had the sole heiress of Sinclair Enterprises sleeping in your bed, and you treated her like an unpaid servant."

Alexander turned sharply toward me, his breathing becoming shallow.

"Isabelle... you... you lied to me? For seven years?"

"I loved you, Alexander," I said evenly, resting my elbows on the table and bringing my fingertips together. "I wanted a man who valued me for who I was, not for the Sinclair fortune. My mother warned me that you were a shallow climber who couldn't tell the difference between gold and dirt. I wanted to believe she was wrong. You proved her right."

"You deceived me!" Alexander snarled. Desperation and humiliation twisted his expression as he slammed a hand against the table. "You let my mother belittle you! You watched me struggle to secure financing! You sat in that house pretending to be a humble wife while hiding an entire empire behind your back!"

"I gave you the blueprints that saved your family from bankruptcy," I replied, my voice cutting through his anger. "I spent eighteen months rebuilding your father's ruined hotels. And yesterday, you stood in my sitting room and told me that without your surname, I was a starving nobody."

I gave Lancer a slight nod.

He stepped forward, opened the gold-embossed leather folder, and slid a white document across the table. It stopped directly in front of Caleb.

The CFO glanced down. His eyes widened as he read the red-stamped heading.

"Mr. Hayes... you need to see this."

"What is it?" Alexander snapped, snatching the paper from him.

"It's an emergency federal injunction," Lancer announced, his deep voice carrying across the room. "Section Four of the marital agreement stipulated that all intellectual property, including the open-atrium structural layouts, patented interior schematics, and high-load glass configurations of the Grand Hayes Hotel brand, were licensed exclusively under Miss Sinclair's maiden name. Following the execution of the divorce yesterday, those licenses were terminated with immediate effect."

Alexander's face turned from pale to ghostly gray.

"That's impossible. Hayes Hospitality Group owns those properties!"

"You own the buildings and their outstanding debts, Mr. Hayes," Lancer replied with a thin smile. "Miss Sinclair owns the architectural copyrights. Under the commerce bureau's order, any commercial operation using her designs without a valid license is subject to an immediate cease-and-desist."

"You can't shut down my hotels!" Alexander shouted, his voice breaking with panic.

"I don't need to shut them down," I said calmly, leaning forward. "Harynx Capital already holds seventy percent of your secondary debt notes. The loan you came here to request today was meant to cover the thirty-million-dollar liquidity deficit you'll face before the end of the month."

Alexander went still, all color draining from his face.

"Caleb," I said, turning toward the trembling CFO. "Tell your CEO what happens to Hayes Hospitality Group if Harynx Capital calls in those notes today."

Caleb swallowed and loosened his collar with shaking fingers.

"Mr. Hayes... if Harynx calls in the notes without providing the expansion funding, our credit lines will be frozen across every major bank. We won't be able to meet payroll by Friday. The company... the company will go into immediate receivership."

Alexander stood motionless as the consequences of his actions finally sank in.

The woman he had threatened with starvation, the wife he had mocked, the quiet shadow he had ordered to design a nursery for his pregnant mistress, now held the power to bring his company to its knees.

"Isabelle..." His voice had lost all its arrogance. He stepped toward the table, speaking in a desperate whisper. "Please. We were married for seven years. We can talk about this. Vanessa... Vanessa was a mistake. An impulse—"

Lyon rose in one swift movement. He slammed his silver lighter onto the table, the sharp crack echoing through the room.

"Take another step toward my sister, Hayes, and you won't leave this tower on your own two feet."

Alexander stopped immediately, his face tense with fear.

I picked up the eighty-million-dollar loan application he had proudly placed on the table earlier. With two deliberate movements, I tore the thick document in half, then tore the pieces again before dropping them onto the table.

"Your meeting with Harynx Capital is over, Mr. Hayes," I said coldly. "Get the hell out of my building."