Chapter Five : A failed attempt

Nicole Garcia

Three days later, I was back in my office, after ignoring all the calls and texts from Justin and Allison who thought I was pranking them by keeping my distance.

Everyone in the office looked up at me in surprise because I almost never came, and if I did, it was either to cause trouble or extort money from Damien and still make him look like shit in front of them. And they were bracing for more drama today.

It was until I made my way towards my personal office and closed the door behind me that I could see them whispering to themselves from the glass, and pointing towards my office.

My assistant, who had never been scared of my outbursts, knocked on the glass and walked in without waiting for an answer. She was holding a tablet and a cup of coffee.

"You look like crap," she said, setting the coffee on my desk.

"Thank you..."

"I mean it. You've been gone for weeks, and you look like you haven't slept a wink."

"I haven't."

She sat down across from me, crossed her legs, and took a sip from her own cup. "Damian?" I didn't even give her a response to that, but she continued as if she didn't care that I wasn't contributing to the conversation. "Everyone knows," she said. "His lawyer filed the papers yesterday and it is already on the blogs. 'Billionaire Heiress Divorced – Husband Cites Irreconcilable Differences.'"

I closed my eyes when I felt the headache coming. So that is what the staff were gossiping about. They knew that Damian and I were divorced now.

"There's something else," Elena said. Her voice was quieter now. "The quarterly board meeting is tomorrow."

"So?"

"So your father is stepping down. There's a vote for the new CEO, and Allison is running."

My eyes snapped open at the mention of her name. "What?"

"She's been campaigning for months. I thought you knew since she is close to you and your best friend, Justin."

Allison? CEO? Over my dead body!

Wait.

Something flashed in the back of my mind. A memory from my past life that connected to the company. Before Justin and Allison tied me up and set me on fire, we had planned something that would destroy Damian's company little by little.

"Elena, what's today's date?" My heart was racing, dreading and hoping that today wasn't the day it happened because I remembered that we wanted to use the board meeting as a distraction to carry out the plan.

"March twelfth. Why?" Elena's brows raised in confusion.

I stood up so fast my chair nearly tipped over. "I need to get to the main office. Right now."

"The main office? Nicole, you're not making any sense—"

"I don't have any time to explain." I was already running, and fishing my phone from my bag. The drive took twenty minutes, and I repeatedly called Damian, but it seemed like he had blocked my number. Even calling the head of IT and the Security, no one answered.

Something was wrong. When I got to the building, the lobby was chaotic.

There were police cars with flashing lights and yellow tape stretched across the doors. The security guards shouting at people to stay back, and some employees were standing on the sidewalk, crying, hugging each other, looking up at the building like it might fall on them. I pushed through the crowd in a hurry.

"What happened?" I grabbed the nearest guard, a young guy with a buzz cut and wide eyes. Of course I knew the company was to be attacked today, but I never know a physical attack had been included in the plan. It was supposed to be a simple cyber attack that would lock down the company systems for a week, making the stocks drop.

"It started with the cyber attack," he said. "They hit the servers about an hour ago and wiped everything. Client data, financials, backups. All of it. It's gone." He was breathing really hard now. "And two hours later, we were attacked by masked men. They broke—"

"Do they know who did it?"

"We don't know yet. But whoever it was, they knew what they were doing. This wasn't a random hit. This was done by people who had inside information."

Inside information. That was Allison, Justin, Jasper, and me. If my memories were clear, we had planned the cyber attack last week before the surgery. Guilt clawed my throat once more. I had to find him.

"Where's Damian? Where's the CEO?"

"He's inside with the detectives."

I ducked under the yellow tape immediately before the officers could stop me.

"Ma'am, you can't—"

I didn't listen as I ran through the lobby, past the security desk, down the hallway toward the server room. Smoke was coming from the open door, and standing in the middle of the mess was Damian.

His back was to me, talking to a detective. His shoulders were tense, his hands shoved in his pockets. When he turned around and saw me, his face expression changed immediately, and my chest tightened at the look of disgust on his face.

"Damian—" I already saw the accusation in his eyes. "I didn't do this. I came here to stop it."

"Stop it?" He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You knew about the attack, you knew when it was happening, and you just happened to show up right after?"

"Because I remembered it from—" I stopped myself immediately. Remembered it from the past? How would I sound ? He would think I was crazy. Or worse, he would think I was lying.

"From what, Nicole?"

"From before," I whispered. "I know you won't believe me. But I'm not the one who did this."

He walked closer until I could hear him. "Three years," he began. "Three years of lies. Three years of manipulation. And now, a week after I sign the divorce papers, my company gets attacked."

"You think I planned this?"

"I think you're capable of anything."

"Damian, I would never—"

"You would never what?" His voice rose, just a little, and his hands came out of his pockets, shaking. "You would never hurt me? You've been hurting me for three years. You laughed when I begged you not to donate your kidney. You aborted our child without telling me. You let your sister mock me in a hospital corridor and you didn't say a single word."

I couldn't breathe.

I didn't abort our child. I really didn't. Why couldn't he believe me?

"This is just another way for you to take something from me, isn't it?" His jaw tightened and his voice turned cold. "I have done what you've always wanted. I have signed the divorce papers. All I asked was for you to leave me alone." He wasn't holding back now as his voice was rising steadily. "Why can't you do that? Why can't you just disappear from my life after I honored your divorce papers?”