All Chapters of Rejected, Now He Craves For Me: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Julien's POVI found her a few evenings later, the immediate crisis of Damien's collapse finally settling into something quieter, the formal investigation proceeding steadily through legal channels without requiring either of us to remain constantly vigilant against whatever came next.She was in her office, later than usual, a glass of wine sitting mostly untouched on her desk, staring at nothing in particular when I knocked on her open door."Do you have a minute?" I asked."Of course," she said, gesturing toward the chair across from her.I sat down, uncertain exactly how to begin the conversation I'd been turning over since the boardroom confrontation with Damien, though I understood, sitting there, that avoiding it any longer would simply let another quiet wound fester unaddressed between us."I need to ask you something honestly," I said. "And I need you to answer it honestly, even if the answer's uncomfortable.""Alright," she said, something careful settling into her expressio

Julien's POV I stood at the window of my office on the third floor, the same office I'd taken my first week back, back when the room still felt like punishment rather than the place I actually belonged. It didn't feel that way anymore. I'd stopped, somewhere over the past year, thinking of it as a sentence I was serving. It had simply become where I worked, where I was useful, where the version of myself I actually wanted to become had quietly, patiently taken shape. Down below, the city moved the way it always did, indifferent to everything that had happened this past year, though I understood now how much had actually shifted underneath its surface. Margaret, gone, her name barely mentioned anymore except in old headlines no one bothered revisiting. Sterling Capital, formally dissolved of its remaining threat, its patriarch's old fraud finally exposed and settled through legal proceedings that gave Isabella's father the vindication he'd waited thirty-one years to see. Damien, faci

Julien's POVJeffery called an emergency meeting three days after the fabricated documents first surfaced, his expression carrying none of his usual composed calm when we gathered around Isabella's conference table."I traced the shell accounts," he said, spreading a series of financial diagrams across the table. "It took time because whoever built this structure layered it carefully, multiple proxy investors, offshore holdings, deliberately designed to obscure the actual beneficiary behind each transaction.""But you found it," Isabella said."I found it," Jeffery confirmed. "Every single shell account, every proxy purchase, every fabricated document leak, traces back eventually to the same source."He pulled up the final diagram, a name centered clearly at the root of the entire structure.Damien Voss.The room went very still."That's not possible," I said, though even as I said it, something cold was already settling into my chest, memory reorganizing itself around this new inform

Julien's POVDamien's announcement went public on a Monday morning, timed precisely for maximum visibility. A press release, formal and confident, calling for an emergency shareholders' meeting to present a "strategic merger proposal" designed, he claimed, to stabilize Hartford Enterprises during what he called "a period of significant financial uncertainty."The timing wasn't accidental. Hartford's stock had continued declining, now down nearly twelve percent from where it stood before the fabricated fraud accusations first surfaced. Every financial outlet covering the announcement framed it exactly the way Damien clearly intended, a generous ally stepping forward to offer stability to a company teetering under crisis, its leadership potentially too compromised to manage the situation alone.He had no idea we already knew everything.I found Isabella in her office that afternoon, surrounded by documents, her focus absolute in a way I recognized now from every previous crisis she'd na

Julien's POVJeffery stepped forward before Damien could gather himself enough to respond further, a laptop tucked under his arm, his expression carrying the same precise focus I'd watched him bring to every previous discovery this past year."Since we're already presenting documentation," Jeffery said, addressing the room directly, "I think it's worth walking everyone through exactly what that evidence contains."Creed moved toward the projector at the front of the room, connecting it to Jeffery's laptop while the assembled press watched with growing anticipation, several reporters already leaning forward, sensing the story shifting into something considerably larger than a simple contested shareholders' meeting.The screen behind the podium lit up with the first document, a detailed diagram tracing the shell account structure Jeffery had spent weeks uncovering."This is Ashcombe Partners," Creed said, his voice carrying clearly across the room, "the initial shell entity Mr. Voss use