The Man Who Chose the Empire.

~ Nathan ~

"Look at the screen, Nathan," Julian said. He pointed a long, clean finger at the bright monitor sitting on my mahogany desk. "The wire transfers don't lie. She started setting up these accounts months before the public audit even began."

I stared at the lines of white numbers glowing against the black background. Blue Sky Holdings. Apex Global. Crestview Offshore. Millions of dollars, moved in neat, quiet chunks out of our primary operating accounts.

My head throbbed. The skin around my eyes felt tight and hot from three days without real sleep.

"She was in Chicago with me on the fourteenth," I said, my voice sounding flat and thick in my own ears. "She showed me her hotel check-in times last night."

Julian let out a quiet sigh. He pulled a chair out and sat down across from me, leaning his forearms on the desk. "Nathan, my friend, think for five seconds. Who bought those Chicago tickets? She did. Who managed her own itinerary? She set up an automated script before you two even boarded the plane. It takes ten minutes to program a delayed transfer key."

He slid a heavy paper folder across the wood. It clicked sharply against my cold coffee mug.

"She built your security network, Nathan," Julian added softly, his tone full of pity that made my stomach turn. "She knew every single loophole because she drew the blueprints herself."

The door to my office clicked open. My father walked in with his silver-tipped cane striking the carpet in hard, steady thuds. He didn't look tired at all. His dark grey suit was perfectly pressed, his white hair combed back without a single strand out of place.

"The board of directors is panicking," Arthur barked, stopping right next to my chair. "The news has already picked up on the federal inquiry. If we don't present a clear, definitive suspect by noon, our stock value will drop forty percent by the time the market closes."

"We can't just throw her to the prosecutors without checking the server logs again, Father," I said, my jaw tightening. "There are holes in these timestamps."

"There are no holes!" Arthur slammed his palm down on the edge of my desk, making the monitor shake. "Her digital stamp is on every single offshore transfer! Her signature is on the shell corporation articles! How much more evidence do you need before you stop acting like a besotted boy and start acting like the Chief Executive Officer of this family's company?"

I looked away from him, staring down at my dark wooden desk.

In the bottom right drawer, buried under thick financial ledgers, lay an old, faded photograph. It was a picture of Isabella and me sitting on a cold concrete floor five years ago, holding two paper cups of cheap lukewarm coffee, celebrating our very first five-thousand-dollar contract. She had been wearing a oversized wool sweater with frayed sleeves, her dark hair tied back with a simple rubber band, laughing until her eyes crinkled at the edges.

*I built this company beside you when we had nothing,* her voice echoed in my head from last night. *Why would I steal from you now?*

"She's your wife, Nathan, I understand," Arthur said, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying calm. "But if you don't sign the formal corporate indictment documents releasing her files to the federal prosecutor today, the investigators will assume you helped her. They will freeze our assets. Wolfe Enterprises will be bankrupt by Friday. Everything we built—everything *I* built to give to you—will vanish."

"Give me an hour," I muttered, rubbing my palms hard against my face.

"You don't have an hour," Julian said quietly fom the chair. "The federal agents are downstairs in the lobby right now. They brought her up from the holding cell for the final evidence verification."

The heavy double doors of my private boardroom swung open five minutes later.

Two broad-shouldered federal agents walked into the room first, their dark shoes clicking loudly against the hardwood border. Between them walked Isabella.

Her hands were bound in front of her waist with shiny metal handcuffs. She wasn't wearing her elegant wool coat anymore; she just wore a thin white silk blouse and black slacks. Her dark hair was messy, hanging in loose strands around her pale face. Red, swollen skin surrounded her eyes, but when her gaze landed on me, she didn't look down.

She looked straight into my eyes.

My heart gave a violent, painful thud against my ribs. My hands gripped the edges of the heavy mahogany table so hard my knuckles turned white.

"Mrs. Wolfe," the lead federal investigator said, pulling out a dark leather binder. "We are finalizing the corporate surrender papers. Your husband and the board are reviewing the internal access logs."

Isabella ignored the agent completely. She took two heavy steps toward me, the short iron chain between her wrists clinking sharply in the silent room.

"Nathan," she whispered. Her voice was scratchy, like she had been screaming or crying for hours. "Nathan, please. Look at me."

I forced myself to stand up, but I kept the wide mahogany table between us. I kept my face blank, locking every drop of emotion deep down inside my chest where no one could see it.

"Why is your signature on the Crestview accounts, Isabella?" I asked, keeping my tone flat, steady, and cold like ice.

"I didn't put it there!" She took another step forward, but the agent placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, holding her in place. Tears filled her eyes, spilling over her eyelashes and tracking down her pale cheeks. "Someone copied my security key! Nathan, you have to listen to me! I worked sixteen hours a day right beside you! I love you! I loved our life!"

"The digital signature came from your laptop," I said, repeating Julian's words like a wooden puppet. "The master key was accessed from our home in the Hamptons on three separate weekends."

"I was sleeping next to you on those weekends!" she cried out, her shoulders shaking under her thin blouse. "You know I was there! How can you look at me and think I would do this to you? To our home?"

"Because the numbers don't lie, Isabella," My father interrupted coldly from the head of the table. "And neither do the bank accounts bearing your maiden name."

"Shut up, Arthur!" Isabella snapped, turning her tear-streaked face toward my father with a sudden, fiery rage. "You disgusting old FOOL! You've hated me since the day Nathan brought me home! You wanted him to marry some rich girl with a fancy name, not someone who worked for her living! What a fool you are."

A white-hot surge of pure, jagged irritation snapped the fragile thread holding my sanity together.

Before my mind could process the motion, I rounded the heavy mahogany table in three sharp strides. My hand whipped through the air—a violent, open-palmed crack that echoed off the glass walls like a pistol shot.

SLAP!

The force of the strike whipped her head to the side, sending dark strands of hair flying across her face. Isabella staggered back against the lead federal agent, her pale cheek blooming into a furious, burning red print.

Silence hit the room like lead. My hand throbbed, hot and numb, the sting vibrating straight up my arm to my shoulder. My chest heaved as I glared down at her, my jaw locked so tight my teeth ground together.

"Don't you ever speak to him like that," I snarled, my voice low, raw, and trembling with a rage that wasn't entirely meant for her, but for the entire crumbling world around us. "You don't get to stand here in handcuffs and attack my family."

Isabella slowly turned her head back to face me. She didn't cry out. She didn't reach up to touch her swelling cheek with her bound hands. She just stared at me through the fringe of dark hair, her eyes wide with a cold, shattering shock that burned deeper than any anger.

"That is enough," Arthur said, his voice terrifyingly calm as he stepped up beside me, not a single hair out of place. "She is using emotional outbursts to stall the legal process. Produce the indictment papers."

The agent laid a thick stack of white legal paper on the center of the table. Beside it, he placed a heavy black fountain pen.

Isabella turned her hollow gaze back to me. Her chest was heaving, her breathing fast and ragged. She reached out her bound hands toward me across the wide table, her small fingers trembling in the air.

"Nathan, please," she begged, her voice dropping into a desperate, breaking sob. "Don't do this. I have something to tell you. I was trying to tell you last night before they took me. I'm... I'm pregnant, Nathan. We're having a baby."

The world stopped.

The low hum of the air conditioner faded into pure silence. The bright lights overhead seemed to flash violently.

A baby.

My mind raced backward—the way her hand had rested over her lower stomach during our argument.

My breath caught in my throat. I took a step forward, my hand reaching out toward her bound fingers completely on instinct. "Bella...?"

"Oh, please!" Arthur let out a loud, mocking laugh that cut through the room like a rusty saw. "A pregnancy? Now? Right when the handcuffs are on your wrists?"

My father pulled a clear plastic folder out from his coat pocket and slammed it onto the table right beside the indictment papers.

"This is a medical record pulled from her private doctor's office this morning," Arthur said, his voice dripping with venom. "She booked a private appointment three weeks ago, right after the federal subpoena was first issued to our legal team. She knew the federal agents were coming, Nathan. She planned this entire sob story to use as emotional blackmail if she got caught!"

I froze. My hand stopped three inches away from Isabella's trembling fingers.

"That's a lie!" Isabella screamed, her eyes wide with total horror as she looked at Arthur. "I didn't even know I was pregnant three weeks ago! I took the test three days ago in my office!"

"You're a liar and a thief," Arthur said softly. "And you tried to use an unborn child to destroy my son."

I looked down at the indictment document sitting on the desk.

*Wolfe Enterprises vs. Isabella Wolfe.*

If I signed this paper, the company would officially state that Isabella acted alone, clear its own name from the corporate fraud investigation, and hand all her private access files over to the federal prosecutor. She would go to trial. She would face state prison.

If I didn't sign it, the government would freeze our corporate accounts in two hours. Wolfe Enterprises would collapse before the weekend. Thousands of employees would lose their jobs. My father's legacy—and my own life's work—would turn to dust.

"Nathan..." Isabella whispered.

She wasn't yelling anymore. She was looking at me with a soft, broken look in her eyes that tore my stomach into bloody pieces.

"Look at me, Nathan," she begged, tears running freely down her face and dripping off her chin. "Please. Remember who I am."

I looked at her dark, tear-filled eyes. Then I looked at my father, whose face was hard and sharp like granite. Then I looked at Julian, who stood quietly near the door, waiting.

*The company comes first,* my father's voice echoed in my head from a hundred different meetings. *Without the empire, you are nothing.*

My hands began to shake uncontrollably. I reached out, my fingers cold and numb, and picked up the heavy black fountain pen from the table.

"Nathan, no!" Isabella gasped, her voice high and terrified. "Nathan, don't! Please!"

I didn't look at her face. I knew that if I looked at her face, I wouldn't be able to do it.

I pressed the tip of the pen against the crisp white paper. The black ink seeped into the page, forming a small, dark dot. With a trembling wrist, I dragged the pen across the line, writing my name in big, jagged cursive letters.

*Nathan Wolfe.*

"No! No! Nathan, please!" Isabella screamed, her body dropping to her knees as if the pen stroke had physically struck her down. She hit the hard floor with a dull thud, her handcuffed hands pressing against the dark carpet. "How could you do this to me?! How could you do this to us?!"

I pulled the pen back and dropped it onto the wood. It rolled twice and fell off the edge of the desk, bouncing silently onto the floor.

"The document is signed," Arthur said, his voice full of tight satisfaction. He grabbed the paper and handed it straight to the lead federal officer. "Take her away."

Two agents grabbed Isabella by her upper arms, pulling her roughly to her feet. She didn't fight them. Her legs looked completely useless, dragging uselessly across the floor as they pulled her toward the heavy exit doors.

She kept her head turned toward me the entire time, her tear-filled eyes locked on mine as they dragged her backward down the hall.

"Nathan!" she cried out one last time, her voice echoing down the long, empty corridor outside. "Nathan!"

The heavy mahogany doors slammed shut with a deep, final boom that rattled the glass walls of the boardroom.

The room fell completely quiet.

Arthur let out a long breath, adjusting his coat buttons. "Good. The legal team can release a press statement before the stock market opens." He walked toward the door, tapping his cane against the floor. "Come, Julian. We have a board meeting to prepare."

Julian followed him out, giving me one short, unreadable look before closing the door behind them.

I stood alone in the center of the giant room.

My breath came in short, painful hitches. My stomach felt hollow, like someone had cut me open and pulled everything out.

Slowly, I walked around the edge of the table and stopped at the spot where Isabella had fallen to her knees. I looked down at the floor.

A single wet tear mark was still visible on the dark fabric of the carpet, slowly drying under the harsh white lights of the ceiling.